Blitz Kids (26 page)

In an attempt to provide the infantry with a high calibre of junior officers, posters were displayed in schools encouraging boys to volunteer for service as soon as they were old enough, hoping this would encourage educated boys to prepare themselves for the battles ahead. Genuine efforts to encourage schoolboys into the Army to serve as officers were also needed to stave off competition from other quarters. As one War Office report noted, the number of young soldiers deemed suitable to train as officers had declined, lured ‘no doubt to the attractions of the RAF’.
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One potential officer discovered within a 70th battalion who more than fulfilled the expectations of the War Office was Anthony Farrar-Hockley. He ran away from school aged fifteen to join the Army, only to be discharged when his age was discovered. Undaunted, he signed up again aged seventeen, served in a YS battalion, was promoted to sergeant whilst still just seventeen, selected for officer training and commissioned just after his eighteenth birthday. He served in Italy, France and Greece with the Parachute Regiment and was promoted to company commander by the time he was twenty. In later years he served in Palestine, Cyprus, Aden, Egypt and Korea, where he was captured and held prisoner for two years. By the time he retired, he was General Sir Anthony Heritage Farrar-Hockley, GBE, KCB, DSO & Bar, MC, one of the country’s most noted soldiers and a respected military historian.

Less highly ranked, but no less well known, was another graduate of a 70th battalion, Charles Whiting. Born in December 1926, he volunteered for the Army in 1943 having added two years to his age. Just days after his eighteenth birthday he found himself heading for the front in a train that came under attack by German aircraft. He served with the infantry in the final five months of the war, using his experiences as the basis for the books that later made him famous. By the time of his death in 2007, he had written around 350 books – both novels and works of non-fiction – almost exclusively on the Second World War.

Despite the desire of so many youngsters to be on active service, the early stages of the war saw continued opposition to any soldier under
twenty going overseas. When pressed in Parliament, Churchill highlighted that mistakes were not easy to remedy, telling the house: ‘One does not want to pull perfectly fit young men of nineteen and upwards out of their sections and platoons, and they themselves would be very much offended if they were so treated.’
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Those who challenged the errors were swimming against the tide of necessity. As the manpower situation became increasingly stretched, the rules on conscription changed. In late 1941, conscription age was lowered from nineteen to eighteen-and-a-half. In January 1942 the age at which conscripts could be sent overseas was reduced to nineteen-and-a-half. Then the conscription age was lowered to eighteen, as was the age for overseas service. To allow for youngsters to continue to receive advance training, the recruitment age for YS battalions was dropped to seventeen-and-a-half. However, this meant they had just six months advantage over men of their own age group, rather than the eighteen months they had enjoyed at the start of the war.

From June 1942 the way the Army trained its recruits changed. Training was taken out of the control of individual regiments and standardized as part of the General Service Corps. Under this new system, all recruits received their initial six weeks training at a Primary Training Centre, before facing a selection board to decide where they should serve. This had an impact on the YS battalions, which from October 1943 no longer carried the names of individual regiments. Many young soldiers disapproved of the change, objecting to wearing the ‘General Service’ badge and preferring to wear the badge of the regiment for which they had volunteered. This was considered a matter of pride, particularly those who volunteered to serve in ‘family’ regiments.

Having twice been denied his dream of becoming a soldier, Ted Roberts was forced to wait until he could legitimately sign on for service. In 1942, reaching the age of seventeen he was finally able to join a YS battalion without the constant dread of his date of birth being discovered. This time he made a choice that took him far from his London home: the Highlands of Scotland. Having already served in two light infantry regiments, he was well acquainted with the drill methods and high-speed marching practised in such regiments, and had no desire to learn a new and unfamiliar routine. However, with
both of his former regiments not accepting new volunteers, he was forced to look elsewhere. With only the Highland Light Infantry looking for a new intake into its YS battalion, Ted headed north of the border.

Arriving at the barracks with a group of other volunteers, Ted was shocked to hear the air raid sirens. Luftwaffe ‘raiders’ had come across the North Sea and were above the camp. Seeing a gun pit with twin Bren guns on an anti-aircraft mounting, Ted was tempted to run to the position and open fire. After all, he had been trained to fire the guns during his previous stints in the Army. However, realizing that demonstrating his ability with machine-guns would raise questions about his past, he decided to keep still and allow trained soldiers to man the guns.

On his first day in Aberdeen he collected his kit and was allotted a space in a barrack room: ‘It was all Scotsmen in the barracks, I couldn’t understand a bloody word they were talking about.’ Despite his concern, the next day brought some relief: ‘There was a new intake and it was all English blokes.’ Then, when he first went on parade, he was relieved to discover that even his corporal was a Londoner.

Having already undergone a considerable amount of training, Ted Roberts found himself able to daydream whilst his fellow recruits listened to their instructors:

The corporal took him outside and called the sergeant over: ‘The corporal says, “We’ve got a Home Guard here who thinks he knows it all.” I said to the sergeant, “Can I speak to you in private?” And I told him I’d never been in the Home Guard, I’d actually been in the Army twice.’

The sergeant immediately arranged for Ted to be promoted to
lance-corporal
and put him on barrack duties whilst the others continued basic training. He helped out by teaching the recruits fieldcraft and showing them how to use cover. Already proficient with small arms, Ted helped out on the rifle range, showing the recruits how to aim and fire their weapons. He was again enthused by Army life and soon became proud of serving in a Scottish regiment:

He noticed how much better armed, equipped and trained the Army was compared to 1940 when he had been sent on guard duty with an unloaded rifle:

With his training completed, Ted was given a choice of units to go to and was offered either a commando unit – the Lovat Scouts – or the Glasgow Highlanders:

It was with this regiment that he eventually went to war.

Whilst those under-eighteen year olds who wished to serve in the Army or RAF were forced to falsify their age, there was one place where boys could legally join the anti-Nazi crusade: the sea. Both the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy accepted boys for service.

From the age of sixteen, hundreds of boys legally signed on with the merchant fleet, though by giving false ages and submitting forged letters claiming they had their parents’ permission, many fourteen and fifteen year olds were also able to serve ‘under the Red Ensign’. It was the least glamorous of all choices, but that meant little: the sufferings and sacrifice of the merchant seamen equalled that of any service. They may not have worn glamorous uniforms or fought in instantly recognizable battles, but without them the war could not have been won.

When the only thing keeping the nation fighting were the sea routes to the United States and the British Empire, it was the Merchant Navy that kept the flame of defiance alight. Without them, the speechmaking of Winston Churchill would have counted for nothing. It was aviation
fuel shipped across the Atlantic that powered Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. Without the men and boys of the Merchant Navy, the tanks that ensured success at El Alamein would never have reached Egypt. And the UK would have been starved into submission long before D-Day. Yet, as Winston Churchill admitted in 1945, the Merchant Navy was: ‘so rarely mentioned in the headlines’.
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The ships and sailors came from all four corners of the globe. There were merchant ships and crews from all the seagoing nations of occupied Europe, including the mighty Greek merchant fleet. There were Dutch and Belgian barges – that had escaped from their homeports and were vital in the Dunkirk evacuation – working the coastline of the UK. There were seamen of every race, creed and colour of the Empire. And there were eager teenage boys from all over the UK who had taken the decision to go to sea. Whether from a sense of patriotism or adventure, or simply because they were from seafaring families, they helped save the nation.

The Merchant Navy was the easiest of all the services to join – in many cases it involved little more than a trip to the local dock office – and it was also the quickest route into the thick of the action. Whilst joining the RAF meant many months of flight training, serving in the Army entailed at least six weeks basic training, followed by months of battle training, joining the Merchant Navy as a deck boy could mean heading out to sea within days or even hours. As a result, whilst a fourteen-year-old boy who joined the Army after Dunkirk might not actually see action until after they had turned eighteen in 1944, a boy who joined the Merchant Navy at the same time would have been a hardened veteran by then if he lived to reach eighteen. It was the one service where boys were made to grow up fast.

It was a dangerous job, but one that had to be done. As ships were bombed and torpedoed around the globe, new blood was needed to crew the new vessels leaving the world’s shipyards. Despite the loss of so much shipping, there were plenty of boys willing to step into the shoes of those who had been lost at sea. Douglas Morse, who gave up his job as a milkman to volunteer for the sea at the age of seventeen, and who had earlier been bombed out from his south London home, recalled the sense of fatalism that gripped the families whose sons chose to serve at sea:

One important factor helped support the Merchant Navy through the dark times. In an era when Britannia truly did ‘rule the waves’ – with a fleet totalling almost one third of all the world’s merchant shipping – the UK supported the sea-going services through an historic network. There were dockyards producing merchant vessels, staffed by communities with a long tradition in shipbuilding. Most importantly, Britain was blessed with training facilities. All the port cities had maritime training schools and some, like London, were home to many such establishments. Since Victorian times, these schools had provided the merchant fleet with well-trained boys ready to serve at sea. With the vast fleet plying its trade around the world, the sea had long been the place for boys in search of adventure.

One such candidate was Bernard Ashton, a fifteen year old from the Kent coalfields whose miner father insisted he should never go underground. The family had travelled south from Yorkshire in the late 1920s to find work. They settled in Deal and young Bernard soon took to the coastal life. He soon began working among the fishermen:

In the summer holidays he also helped out on the beach, setting up deckchairs and helping the local boatmen take out holidaymakers keen to do some fishing.

Falling in love with the sea, Bernard knew he never wanted to be a miner. After leaving school he worked briefly on the surface at the colliery, then on a farm, but neither inspired him. His desire to travel was fired by the books he read. He consumed tales of adventure and books on how the British expanded the Empire. Inspired by these tales,
and in love with the sea, he took the obvious step. In the summer of 1939, with war looming, it was arranged for him to join the Prince of Wales Sea Training Hostel (later the Prince of Wales Sea Training School) in Limehouse, east London.

In an era where many young men remained at home until they married, often in their twenties, boys training for sea had to become independent. Before he left for London, Bernard’s mother gave him instructions in how to darn socks, a skill that would be useful at sea. Arriving in the capital to begin his training, Bernard was met by two boys from the school. They were dressed in smart blue serge uniforms and impressed him with their attire. They travelled to Limehouse by bus, taking the new recruit through the streets of an area that was home to London’s Chinese community. Bernard was excited. He had been inspired by exotic tales of life in foreign parts and here he was, not yet started his training but already entering a world he had not experienced before: ‘I’d read about the Chinese in my books and the night before I’d been dreaming about Chinamen with their knives.’

He was immediately absorbed into a new world. He was impressed by the sights of the area: ‘I went to the docks and saw all the ships. It was amazing.’ He soon took in his surroundings: the school had a central square with a ship’s mast in the centre and there was also a platform with a rotating compass for the boys to learn navigation. The course was a short one: just six months and then boys would be found a ship in which to start their career. With so much to learn, their days were full:

On washing days, the boys had to scrub their uniforms by hand, then hang them out to dry. They weren’t allowed to use clothes pegs.
Instead, they used ‘snotters’, a length of twine used to tie the clothes to the washing line. It was just another opportunity for the boys to practise tying knots. Each day they attended afternoon parades, where everything had to be just right. The boys worked hard to prepare their bell-bottom trousers which had to be made up in six-inch squares, folded back and forward, then put under the mattress to crease rings into them. At the end of a long day it was ‘lights out’ at nine-thirty. In the summer of 1939, Bernard Ashton spent many long evenings sitting out on the balcony, smoking with his mates, and listening to the music and chatter from the nearby pub.

With their working days full, the boys were allowed some free time at weekends. On a Saturday, some boys were escorted to the local cinema by the matron, where they surreptitiously passed forbidden cigarettes along the row. Those not going to the cinema hung around in local parks, showing off their smart uniforms to the local girls. On Sundays they put on their best uniform, complete with ‘Trafalgar Collar’, and went to church.

Whilst sea schools such as the Prince of Wales were shore-based establishments where the emphasis was on teaching them about seamanship in the classroom, others were more ‘hands on’. Elsewhere, boys – quite literally – ‘learned the ropes’ whilst living and working onboard a ship. Many of these were obsolete wooden vessels that had once sailed the seven seas. One such ship was Training Ship
Exmouth
, owned and operated by the Metropolitan Asylums Board and used as a Poor Law Training School, which was moored in the Thames at Grays in Essex. Famous ex-boys included Eric Morley, the founder of the Miss World contest and Charlie Chaplin’s brother, Sydney. The original ship arrived at Grays in 1876, remaining there until 1903 when she was found unfit for further service. Her purpose-built replacement arrived at Grays in 1905 and remained there until 1939, when – despite her age – she was used as the headquarters for fire-fighting ships on the Thames. In 1942 she was towed to Scapa Flow and used as a depot ship for minesweepers.

The staff of the training ship were all former Royal Navy officers and petty officers, and the ship was run with strict discipline. Each Sunday, the captain inspected the boys and their messes, running white-gloved hands under work surfaces to check for dust and dirt. Having joined
the
Exmouth
aged twelve, Reg Osborn enjoyed his time onboard. He found there was an enthusiasm among the boys, all wanting to be the smartest on the ship. To achieve this they had some interesting, if arcane, rituals:

For boys on TS
Exmouth
, the ultimate sign of their nerve and ability was to climb to the top of the foremast and stand on the ‘button’, the highest accessible point on the mast. As Reg Osborn later wrote, the ‘mast would sway alarmingly as the ship was moved by the wash of passing liners and merchant ships, of which there were many in those pre-war days’.
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As a boy at another training ship recalled: ‘These days, the health and safety people would have a fit. We would go aloft, without any safety nets. But at the time I thought it was normal.’ Reg himself admitted he never plucked up sufficient courage to reach this point and win the accolade of being a ‘button boy’.

As a purpose-built, twentieth-century, steel-constructed training ship, the
Exmouth
was actually fairly modern compared to some of its rivals. The Thames Nautical Training College, based at Greenhithe in Kent, was centred on a much older vessel, HMS
Worcester
. By the time war broke out in 1939, the
Worcester
had been a training ship for more than sixty years and had been joined by the
Cutty Sark
, which was also used for training the boys. Among HMS
Worcester
’s former cadets were the multimillion-selling author Dennis Wheatley and the ‘Nelson of the East’, Japan’s Admiral Togo Heihachiro. She had started life in the 1830s as the
Frederick William
, a 110-gun Royal Navy ship. She was finally launched in 1860 but, with the Navy converting to ‘iron-clads’, the
Frederick William
became obsolete almost immediately and was converted to a training ship.

The coming of war meant that many sea training establishments were relocated. The cadets of HMS
Worcester
left for Foots Cray Place in Kent, with their ship being taken over by the Royal Navy, although the boys continued to take some classes on the
Cutty Sark
.
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The cadets’ new home was somewhat grander than an obsolete Victorian warship. The grand Italianate villa, complete with marble floors, provided both the classrooms and the sleeping quarters for the cadets. The cadets slept in bedrooms, in two-tier bunks, rather than the draughty mess decks of a rolling ship. There were bathrooms and additional shower rooms. With additional classrooms in wooden huts in the grounds, it looked more like a minor public school than a sea training school.

Despite moving ashore, life continued with military precision. A bugler raised the cadets from their beds each morning. There were physical exercises and uniform inspections before breakfast. After breakfast there were classes, training visits to the
Cutty Sark
and practice lifeboat drills. The cadets learned both basic seamanship, such as knots, as well as more advanced arts of navigation and signalling.