Blitz Kids (31 page)

With more volunteers having joined No. 3 Commando to replace the men lost at Dieppe, Fred Walker found himself in the Mediterranean ready for the assault on Sicily and Italy. In July 1943, his unit landed on the Sicilian coast at Scoglio Imbiancato, before advancing
on the town of Cassible. Fred later described the night landing and the attack as ‘a doddle’ and recalled how, despite having been in the Army since 1941, it was his first chance to really strike back at the enemy:

In the days that followed Fred found himself in his first real action. Dieppe had been an introduction to the chaos of war, but now he was about to find out about the intensity of combat. Advancing on a German-held bridge that the commandos needed to capture and hold, Fred found himself as the lead scout. As he later recalled: ‘I think they were trying to get rid of me!’ As they approached the bridge they saw German vehicles coming across from the other side. One of his mates fired a Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank (PIAT) gun at the column. The bomb went straight through the first lorry and hit the one behind. It was full of ammunition and immediately exploded and burst into flames. With the enemy realizing their position was under attack, the commandos were hit by intense defensive fire.

As the battle wore on, Fred found himself crouching behind trees, unable to dig in to the solid earth and fighting back against increasing odds. As the battle reached its conclusion, it was clear their situation was hopeless:

Whilst some escaped inland, Fred joined a group that made for the coast:

They quickly surrendered to the Italians and felt a sense of terror as the Italian officer put a gun to the head of one of the commandos. He froze, expecting to be murdered. They were lucky, the Italian was only trying to scare them and they were quickly handed over to the Germans for interrogation. Thinking quickly, the commandos, who had lost their uniforms when the boat sunk, claimed they were merchant seaman whose clothes had been lost when they were shipwrecked. They had rowed ashore. The ruse was unsuccessful: ‘This German paratrooper said, “You are No. 3 Commando.” They knew all about us.’

That night the commandos were able to slip away from their captors. Using the cover of darkness they found a small ditch and crawled along until they found a cave on the beach. There they fell asleep. In the morning they saw a German officer standing outside: ‘I went up to him and asked for food, cigarettes and water. They just gave us cigarettes – the Germans had nothing else. They were in trouble themselves.’ With German resistance finally failing, Fred was able to reach Allied lines.

With the commandos having sustained heavy casualties, efforts were made to find reinforcements. With the commandos expecting to play a major role in any invasion of France, good quality soldiers were needed to fit into the most heavily trained units in the British Army. In September 1943, commando representatives arrived at the 13th Infantry Training Centre in Maidstone to find volunteers from among the most recent batch of recruits. Instead, they encountered a former ‘boy soldier’ on the staff of the training centre, who remained keen to get into action.

Stan Scott had originally attempted to join the commandos whilst still sixteen years old and serving in a ‘Young Soldiers’ battalion, but had been refused on the grounds of age. Listening as the officers told
the recruits about the exploits of the commandos in the Mediterranean, he was convinced to volunteer again. At the end of the talk there was a call for volunteers to step forward: No one moved: ‘I thought, “This is a chance to go into action.” I marched up, halted and saluted – dead regimental – “I’d like to put my name down.” He told me sorry, but as an NCO on the strength of this training unit, he couldn’t take me.’ Frustrated but not disheartened, Stan asked what he would have to do to be selected and discovered he would need permission from his commanding officer: ‘I went down that hill to his office like a bloody rocket.’ Within minutes he had seen the regimental sergeant major, been granted permission to see the colonel and been given written permission to be released: ‘I went up that hill so fast. I got to the gym and they were still there. I composed myself, marched up and told him the colonel gave his permission that I may volunteer for commando service.’ Within days, his orders came through and he made his way to Achnacarry in the Highlands, where selection and training took place.

At Achnacarry, Stan went through the same punishing routine that had been experienced by Fred Walker and his mates two years earlier: ‘It was unbelievable. You cannot imagine it: it was winter in Scotland – I thought I wasn’t going to get through it. We would do a fifteen-mile speed march, then do more training when we got back to the camp.’ It rained every day, they were sleeping in tents, but Stan Scott enjoyed it. Unlike some of the other units he had served in, everyone was there because they wanted to be. They were all volunteers, all dead keen and all did their best to meet the expected high standards. As Stan recalled: ‘After the first week, I’d have stood in the way of the
Flying Scotsman
, I felt that strong.’

It was on one of the intense speed marches that Stan came closest to failing the course:

It was a prospect that did not appeal.

He asked the medic if there was anything that could be done to speed up his recovery:

His return to training was also aided by some advice from a fellow commando. He was told to get boots that were a size smaller but in a wider fitting: ‘Then I had to pee on them before I put them on. He also told me not to wear socks. It worked. I never got another blister, they fitted me like gloves.’ The advice meant his feet survived the course, he received his green beret and was posted to No. 3 Commando. On his first leave after completing commando training he realized why he had endured all the hard training: ‘I was wearing my No. 3 Commando and Combined Operations badges – with my “green lid” [beret]. I went to the Railway Tavern for a drink and met my dad. I felt on top of the bloody world!’

Having failed to achieve his aim of joining the RAF, Eric Davies had left his Carmarthen home and joined the Army. After training he was sent to North Africa where he joined a carrier platoon with the 1/5th Battalion of the Queen’s Regiment, part of the fabled 7th Armoured Division – ‘The Desert Rats’ – as they landed in Italy in September 1943. Having made the fateful decision to join the Army just after his seventeenth birthday, rather than await either the call from the RAF or conscription after his eighteenth birthday, meant that he was fully trained by the time he was eighteen-and-a-half. Had he waited for his call-up he would have still been in the UK. Instead, he was about to go to war.

For Eric, the campaign started slowly: the enemy troops his battalion met were mostly Italian who were eager to surrender and, as Eric told
himself: ‘life was not too bad’. And then things began to change. War engulfed his life, taking over every element of his existence: ‘We realized this was not a nine to five job. Once it started, it never ended. There were attacks during the day and patrols at night.’ The first time he came up against German troops, the sky seemed to be full of aircraft, there were shells flying through the air – both Allied and enemy – and enemy infantry in plain sight. Worst of all, there were the ‘monstrous’ enemy tanks that put the fear of God into him:

It was not long before he found himself caught up in house-to-house fighting in the Italian town of Scafati, as the Germans repeatedly counterattacked their positions: ‘This was close fighting where you saw the whites of their eyes before killing them.’ It was not just the killing that had a profound effect on the eighteen year old. He was horrified to see a pack of rats descend on a corpse in the rubble of an Italian home. As he watched, the rats began to strip away the dead flesh. He saw his first case of shell shock as one of his comrades jumped up and ran away during a mortar barrage. As the campaign continued he grew to accept the death: ‘By now I had lost a few friends. Because I had stopped and spoken to them as they lay dying – and had hugged some of them – their blood had got into my clothes, and it smelled.’ This smell of death seemed to linger with him for the next two years.

One consequence of these casualties was that there was rapid promotion for the survivors. As the old hands – who had fought in France in 1940, been evacuated through Dunkirk, and then fought through North Africa and into Italy – were killed or wounded, it was up to youngsters such as Eric Davies to replace them. Just eighteen years old, he was promoted to corporal, then to sergeant. As the division was withdrawn from Italy in late 1943, Eric realized those brief
months fighting had made him one of the veterans. He tried to absorb what had happened to him since he landed in Italy:

With the invasion of France not far off, it would soon be his turn to impart his knowledge to a new wave of conscripts – boys of his own age – and teach them how to stay alive.

For all the early hopes of war being ‘over by Christmas’ – which became a sort of annual mantra – the war went on. The air raids had come, gone and returned, and had spread across the country in a seemingly endless ebb and flood. The innocent teenagers of the early war years had matured into fighting men. And for the youngest of the children, those who could hardly remember the pre-war years, peace appeared an abstract concept. Truly, the world had been turned upside down. For the teenagers, their life seemed predestined: from spring 1942, youths aged sixteen had to register for training in preparation for war service. Although registration was compulsory, there was nothing to force anyone into training. However, with the RAF glamorized by the Battle of Britain, boys flocked to the ‘Air Training Corps’ in the hope of eventually gaining their wings. For teenage girls the ‘Girls Training Corps’ was established.

The experience of war had an enormous impact upon the nation’s youth. For many, it seemed normal teenage pursuits had been put on hold. As John Cotter recalled: ‘You couldn’t meet girls. I’d been to one
or two dances but never had any success, so I didn’t think it was my scene. I stopped going until I joined the Air Force.’ In West London, Bill Fitzgerald – who was employed in a factory making tents for the Army – had a similar experience of teenage life:

In South London, one teenage girl recalled how the bombing meant she did things she would never have previously considered:

Army Cadet Bill Fitzgerald realized the strange situation he was in: ‘We were the innocents. We did army training with rifles, but weren’t mature about sex.’ It was an experience recognized by Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who had joined his school’s Home Guard unit aged sixteen: ‘When I was in the Home Guard I was trained to kill – but I had no knowledge of girls. I missed out on what I would have had if I had been at home but I can’t imagine my childhood being anything other than the war. It took over everything.’ At least Bill Fitzgerald was working in an environment where he had daily contact with young women:

As he later admitted, real life seemed to be on hold: ‘I was just waiting for my call-up papers to land on the door mat.’

Yet, this also had a liberating effect as attitudes to life changed. One probation officer reported on the behaviour of teenager couples, noting how they made their beds up together on the floor of public air raid shelters, with the full knowledge of their parents. As the authorities noticed, children and teenagers embraced their independence. Having returned from evacuation in 1941 aged nine, Sylvia Bradbrook found she had acquired an unexpected amount of freedom:

As war progressed, attitudes to life soon changed. It was difficult for children to retain a wide-eyed innocence as death became increasingly prevalent. Even the loss of family members, regardless of whether the death was war-related, failed to make the impression it had just a few years before. For Merseyside teenager Tony Sprigings, even his mother’s death from tuberculosis in 1941 failed to affect him as much as one might have expected: ‘Because there was so much mayhem
going on you didn’t get any sympathy from anyone. If you’d lost a parent, people thought, “So what? I’ve just lost mine.” So we were brought up in a tough kind of way. No one gave you time to get over things.’

There developed a desperate desire, especially among the young, to seize the moment and enjoy everything – and anyone – available. In towns and cities where death had become a constant companion, youngsters became eager to gain some experience of life while they still had one. The constant threat of death combined with the increasing drabness of everyday existence to generate a sense of openness. When they went to cafes they found spoons fixed to the counter, rather than handed out to every customer. Pubs had beer but few glasses as industry was unable to meet consumer needs. Instead, some pubs insisted customers bring their own and beer drinkers resorted to hanging a jam jar on a string hung around their neck so that no one could steal it. Food was rationed and bland. Clothing was drab and worn out. Cosmetics were hard to find. And city streets were smoky, dusty and dirty. Those who worked spent long hours in their factories and offices. It is no wonder that, when they went out for the night, they were determined to enjoy themselves.

To overcome shortages of stockings, women were encouraged to go bare legged whenever possible. Younger women were advised to return to wearing ankle socks, something that did not appeal to a generation of teenagers who were enjoying the fruits of early maturity brought on by the freedom of the war years. To cope with shortages of cosmetics, girls collected exhausted lipsticks, melted down the remnants and re-formed them in usable sticks. Cold cream was mixed into lipstick to create a makeshift rouge. Eyelashes were brightened by brushing them with castor oil, whilst shoe polish and burnt cork doubled as mascara. In aircraft factories, female workers used varnish from the paint shops to paint their nails.

Despite the parental concern shown for many girls, plenty developed an independence that seemed nurtured by war. Jean Redman, who as a fifteen year old had worked in the evacuee administration department of Bedford Town Hall, found war had opened her eyes to opportunity. More than anything, war meant she had begun to mix with a wider circle of people than she could previously have imagined:

One of her friends even met and married a member of Glen Miller’s band that was billeted in Bedford during 1944.

Jean also developed a spirit of independence. In 1940, aged sixteen, she and a friend cycled the fifty miles to London where they booked into a youth hostel and enjoyed life in the capital. Every day they travelled into central London, soon becoming familiar with the tube stations crowded with shelterers. It was a strange, slightly unreal, sensation – being on holiday in London whilst it was the target for enemy bombers, but she enjoyed the freedom and the excitement of the city in wartime: ‘London had just been bombed but we didn’t care.’

The trip encouraged her to seek more adventure. Too young to be conscripted into the services and convinced her parents would refuse permission for her to volunteer at seventeen, she chose an alternative route:

Having escaped the gaze of her parents, Jean Redman ironically found her new employers were even more concerned for her welfare.
Working on a farm outside Windsor, she soon befriended local labourers, many of whom were Romany gypsies. They accepted the former public school girl with open arms, inviting her to their encampment where she shared meals around their campfire, surrounded by horse-drawn caravans. It was a far cry from the world she had known back in Bedford where her comfortable existence would never have exposed her to such a stratum of society. Whilst Jean enjoyed the company of her new friends, her employers considered the gypsies unsuitable companions for a well-educated, middle-class girl. She was soon switched to a new position within the estate where she witnessed a very different world: each day as she made her way around the farm a car passed her carrying the royal princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, and she became a familiar sight to the princesses who started waving to her as they passed.

Working on a poultry farm, Jean found the job rewarding:

In more normal times Jean Redman would have been following her intended career path, to be a teacher. But these were not normal times. All across the country, education had been disrupted by the pressures of wartime conditions. One Croydon boy estimated that he attended around fifteen different schools in the six years of war, as his family moved around and he was bombed out of his home: ‘Some were just for a matter of weeks. It was chaotic and I no time to build up friendships. My education probably suffered but everyone was in the same boat.’ Returning from evacuation in spring 1944, ten-year-old Kathleen Stevens was shocked by seeing the condition of education in
south London: ‘On the first day the headmaster looked at my mother – then looked at me – and asked, “Can she read?” I thought, “What on earth is he going on about? Of course I can read. I am ten!” I was completely gobsmacked.’ She was amazed when the headmaster pulled out a book containing lists of words:

It was not just in the urban areas that education had been placed under a strain. Schools throughout the country were cramped and crowded, as they attempted to cope with the influx of evacuees. In Somerset, Ken Durston experienced the changes that included having two evacuees in a home already occupied by five children. If that were not enough, when the mother of one evacuee was killed in the bombing, his father came from London and moved in with them: