Wartime

It was hard to believe that while all these, to me carefree, days were passing, there was a war on. I was only six when it started in 1914 and it didn't register much with me until my two brothers went up to Norwich to volunteer for the Army. The full horror of the bloodshed to come hadn't been thought of in these early days. Consequently the first wave of patriotism was in full swing, and there were long queues at the recruiting stations. Charley, my younger brother, had always been the stronger of the two, but as fate would have it, Reggie was accepted but Charley was rejected. He had a displaced cartilage in his knee, and he came back to carry on with the little business while Reg went off to Ireland for his training in the Royal Engineers.

The last time he came home on leave, and was preparing to go back, I wondered why Mother was crying, while Father sat in his chair trying to comfort her. What I didn't know was that Reg was off to France. By this time, most everyone knew of the carnage going on at the Front, and that most of the young soldiers stood little more than an even chance of coming back whole, if in fact they lived to come home at all. After a week or two the little cards saying he was all right arrived periodically, as did the odd heavily‑censored letter. The first time he came home on leave he brought me a German pocket knife which boasted several gadgets, including a small saw. I was the envy of all the other boys for weeks.

I'm afraid all the talk of death and destruction left me cold. I was far too busy playing. In fact, the war didn't make much impact on village life unless you had a husband or son away in France.

Rationing, of course, was in force, but with gardens full of vegetables, eggs from your own chickens, a sack of flour from the local mill, we got along very well considering. Meat didn't matter too much, as no‑one could afford a lot of this even in peacetime. Butter was always available from farmer friends or relations, war or no war.

We felt the shortage of cooking fats and sugar more than anything. Father, who had a sweet tooth, would start the week with a basin holding his ration, but to make this last a week was more than Joe could manage. He would then have to use saccharine which he hated. I do remember a vile concoction of so‑called fat substitute, which looked and smelt like cart grease. The first shortcakes made by Mother using this stuff advertised their presence by smelling out the whole house, and you could have kicked them to Norwich and back without them disintegrating. Poor Mother, who prided herself on her cooking, never tried that again.

The war really did come nearer with the arrival of the first zeppelins. We were all sound asleep when there was a succession of loud explosions, and the water jugs on the wash‑stands were rattling around in the basins. For a few seconds everyone was paralysed, then the noise of doors and windows opening came from the street. Charley hauled on his trousers, and ran up the road to join the frightened and excited villagers.

"It's bombs, Joe!" gasped Mother from the next room. Then Father awoke. "Don't be frightened, dear. Whatever it is, God will take care uf us." I crept into bed with them, while Father held me with one arm and Mother with the other. As usual, Father went straight to the fountainhead, praying earnestly for our deliverance.

It all sounds rather silly today, after the last war's experiences, but believe me, we were scared stiff. All was now quiet except for the throb of engines slowly fading into the distance, and the voices of our neighbours still discussing the raid. A few of the younger men, Charley included, got out their bicycles to try and find out where the trouble had been. He was soon back with the news that the bombs had dropped 'Bungay way'. Actually they had fallen in an open field near, of all places, a nunnery in an adjoining village, without doing any damage. The next evening lots of people biked over to see the craters, and the sleepy rhythm of the village was broken for a time.

Someone would bike to the station each evening, to hear of any reports of zepps about. This was the only way of getting up‑to‑date news in those days before the radio.

The highlight came a few weeks after. It was a clear dark evening when a commotion started down the street ‑ the zepps were about. Before long we heard the sound of engines in the distance. Father shuffled as far as the gate on his crutches, and I stood beside him holding his hand, which was a never‑failing source of comfort to me.

Suddenly there was an almighty flash, and then, clearly outlined in its own flames, we saw the zepp. It was several miles away it's true, but as it drifted down, blazing fiercely, Father was saying quietly "Thank God", and a cheer arose from the onlookers. It actually came down somewhere in the Leiston area. Next evening Charley and some of his pals biked over to see the wreck and he came home with a piece of aluminium as a souvenir. Poor old Dad, prayer was a never‑failing source of help to him, whatever the circumstances.

Soon after all this, Reg came home on leave again, and got married. I can usually remember all the family weddings, but there is little I can recall about this one. Probably because they were normally happy occasions, with a good beano of a meal, but this one was so quiet. Everyone knew that Reg had to go back to the Front in a day or two. It was the only time I every saw my brother cry, when he strapped on his kit-bag, picked up his rifle and said goodbye to his new wife, and Father and Mother. Father, I could see, was praying silently, and I stood and held his hand, not really understanding what it was all about, except that it was a very quiet sorrowful house that night.

It was now 1916, and the dreaded envelopes containing news of wounds or death were arriving regularly in the village. I don't think Father and Mother really began to live each day until the postman had been.

Then the dreaded morning when he came up the path, with a buff envelope in his hand. Poor Mother, I can see her now, the pulse in her neck throbbing visibly, coming into the living room holding the unopened envelope.

"Give it to me, dear" said Father as he sat in his chair. He opened the envelope, pulled out the form inside, and read it to himself. His face changed, and he turned to Mother.

AIt's all right dear, he's only wounded."

I remember wondering in my childish mind what was all right about being wounded, but decided Father must be right, as Mother gave a huge sigh of relief and grabbed Father round the neck.
"I knew my prayers would be answered", said Father, "I knew God wouldn't let him be killed", and their tears mingled as he held her to him.

It turned out that Reg had a bad wound in his chest, but when he eventually came home on sick leave, it was a vast relief to hear he wouldn't have to go back to France.

It was around this time that Lowestoft was shelled from the sea by German warships. One effect of this was that as many people who could left Lowestoft for the surrounding villages. One of my cousins, Carrie, left the coast to come and live with us. She was a merry soul, and brought some much‑needed life to our old house. She and Charley were always playing tricks on each other, and in one of these Charley almost scared her to death. He tied a string to the bedclothes at the foot of Carrie's bed, then led it through a hole he had bored in the wall to his adjoining bedroom. In the middle of the night he pulled the string, and off came all Carrie's bedclothes, to the accompaniment of shrieks of fright and later, laughter.

Another trick was thought up by Mother. During the evening she went upstairs, and emptied a packet of baking powder into Carrie's chamber pot. We were all in the know except Carrie, and were waiting to see what happened. We weren't disappointed either, for the bedroom door burst open and Carrie, scared stiff, appeared screaming "My God, Agnes, I'm dying ‑ look at my water!" Small wonder, either, for the pot was full of frothing bubbles pouring over the bedroom floor.

By this time, most everyone was busy on war work of some kind. My two eldest sisters, and Charley's girlfriend, were all working in a munitions factory in Beccles. Charley was ship‑building at Lowestoft, just coming home for weekends. Even with us kids, war games had taken over, and Germans versus British was the order of the day, with our bows and arrows and popguns working overtime.

The months passed by, the news from France began to improve, and eventually the wonderful day in November 1918 arrived. When the news of the Armistice finally broke, one of the trains on the old Waveney Valley line celebrated by whistling continuously as it puffed its way along to Beccles. It wasn't long before the church bells started to ring, and it was then down tools everywhere for everybody. Union Jacks appeared from nowhere, and the village street was full of noisy, excited people. Father tied a pole, surmounted by a large flag, to his invalid chair, and cranked himself along to join in the fun. It was an unbelievable day, never to be forgotten, although the war itself was soon to be put in the background.

One wartime memory, silly though it was, concerned spying. During the war a new house was built on a little‑used back road in an isolated part of the village. The owner was a complete stranger, and worst of all from the gossip-mongers' point of view, he spoke with what they all fondly imagined to be a foreign accent. This all contrived to make the more suspicious of the villagers imagine all sorts of dark doings. The climax came when, no doubt to set off the appearance of the roof, he had a big stone eagle set at the end of the ridge. This did it with a vengeance! He simply must be a German spy! Believe it or not, when the zepps were about, some of the men armed with pitchforks would make their cautious way to within sight of the house. They then kept watch for any suspicious lights which might conceivably be a signal to the enemy. I don't know what would have happened had anything occurred. I wouldn't have put it past some of them to impound the poor fellow, and scare the living daylights out of him with their pitchforks! The house still stands there today, complete with eagle, and I often smile when passing, at those crazy days.

In due course, along came the day us youngsters had been anticipating for weeks ‑ Peace Celebration Day. We had a real beano of a feast in a convenient barn, then there were presents for all the children, with sports and competitions. The highlight of the competitions was catching the greasy pig. One of the farmers in the village gave a half‑grown young porker, which was smothered in thick grease, and then turned loose on the park. Whoever caught it could keep it. Competition was in deadly earnest. It wasn't the honour of catching it that attracted all, young and old alike, but the thought of all the lovely roast pork, sausages and pigs fry that would be available to the winner.

The commotion was unbelievable! The squealing of the frightened pig, dogs barking, and the shouts and screams of the chasers created pandemonium, especially among the ladies, with their hats flying, hair all awry, tripping over their long skirts as they made desperate dives at the galloping animal. If and when they made contact, they tried to clasp it in their arms, leaving themselves liberally smeared all over with cart grease, and trying desperately to hang on while a dozen others fought to pull it away.

There was a ditch running down the side of the meadow, and the pig bolted into this. One lady was standing astride in the ditch bottom, legs apart and bracing herself against the expected impact. It looked a dead cert for her, but at the last moment the pig bolted between her legs, ‑ the fact that she was very bowlegged didn't help! Mother, who was close behind, took a flying leap, landed right on top of the animal, grabbed an ear with one hand and the tail in the other, and hung on for dear life. And she made it, for the exhausted porker gave up the struggle, leaving Mother smothered in mud and grease, but triumphant! Piggy finished up in Father's sty, and later on all those mouth‑watering dreams came true.

I came across a relic of that wonderful day when I unearthed the book I got as my present. As I browsed through it, it made me smile. It was called 'Modern Inventions'. There were airships, aeroplanes, gyroscopes, and many others now part and parcel of our everyday life. One article which intrigued me was on sun motors, that is, low pressure steam engines powered by heat‑catching devices to heat the water and produce the steam.

This was way back in 1918. Now, after all these years, we see heat‑attracting panels appearing on people's roofs, and I wondered why all those years between had apparently been wasted. I suppose cheap and plentiful petrol didn't make research into alternative sources of power worthwhile.