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Below is my Membership Card for the A.R.P. dated 7th November 1939.
As we moved into what is now known as the "phoney war" Anderson shelters were supplied to the public, millions of holes were dug in gardens to accomodate the corrugated iron parts, very early DIY I suppose, and primitive bunk beds were added , Dad also including a small electric fire and a naked bulb for light.
By this time, as a member of the A.R.P. I was busy distributing Gas Masks, Studying Aircraft Recognition and worst, assisting parents to fit babies into "Baby Bags", a self contained Gas Protector.and very distressing to the babies. Working overtime at the Airport and ARP duties meant that the LDV (later Home Guard) duties became impossible so had to be forgone although they did teach me how to fire a Lee Enfield Mk4 Rifle and a Browning Automatic.
A school mate of mine, Ron Collins and I were the two messengers attatched to our local Wardens Post at the bottom of Harrison Road run by Mr. Phillips. Ron also worked at the Supermarine factory opposite me at the airport.
FOSTER WICKNER , prior to the war had produced a very attractive light aircraft on the lines of the Auster called the Wicko but converted the factory to the production of "plastic" components such as Gun Baffles and transparent canopies etc. All ovens and presses, girls and guys and overseen by Mr Hyatt.
All the Hangers at Southampton were pre- war built and housed numerous industries including the completion of Spitfires. Working in a hanger directly opposite this I was able to see Spits being wheeled out and test flown by Geoff Quill and Alex Henshaw on a daily basis. Seeing Geoff upside down with the aerial about ten feet off the grass was indeed a sight to behold. Although I have no photos of that particular time, the one below shows pretty well what it was like then although all camouflaged and of course the field completely grass.
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The hanger I worked in was the one front right of the picture and Supermarine were in the one diagonally to the right.. On the opposide of the airfield were staioned a Fleet Air Arm training unit "HMS Rook" equipped with Blackburn Rocs and Skuas. Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier were under training there and were seen heading off to London on Ralphs Motorcycle most weekends.
Autumn 1940 of course saw the start of the real war, Air Raids day and night, a very busy and many times frightening experience.Because we had a telephone at home (funny things one remembers 75586) I was automatic choice to call the Wardens out on receipt of a "Yellow" alert. Hours and hours were spent in the Wardens Post waiting for a raid that never transpired.so eventually a more imminent Red warning was introduced particularly to save waste of production time in industry.
The City Centre of Southampton was virtually destroyed during the night Blitzes but fortinately our particular suburb was spared apart from the odd bomb or two.
The Supermarine Works at Woolston was devestated during a fierce daylight raid, and the Railway Bridge under which many of the workers had had sheltered suffered a direct hit
Cunliffe Owen Aircraft, makers of the revolutionary Flying Wing aircraft had a factory on the southern edge of the airfield. It was the largest single span roof hanger ever built. One lovely autumn afternoon me, the girls and the guys from our factory were sitting out on the grass having received a Red warning. The shelters were too far away so we never ever bothered.
What appeared to me at the time to be a flight of about six Blenhiems appeared from the direction of Bittern Park at about two thousand feet heading across Swaythling and over Cunliffe Owen. As we watched from about a quarter of a mile away strings of bombs fell, the first a couple of hundred yards short of the hanger, the rest right through the factory roof and and the farthest just beyond a couple of pairs of houses on the other side of Wide Lane.. Bombing of the highest order, not a single anti-aircraft gun fired and not a fighter in sight. Must have been Junkers 88's but to this day I'm not convinced.
Working overtime one evening. It was about six o'clock when we heard some explosions not so far away. Dashed to the hanger door just in time to see a Heinkel III and an ME 110 roar past at about fifty feet spraying bullets. They shot off over Bittern hill and away. If they had followed the railway line and Wide Lane straight instead of veering off I wouldn't be writing this. They were so low that the bombs they dropped wide of our hanger were lying flat on the grass. It seems that they had come in across Eastleigh, dropped a stick, straffed the women workers coming out of the Local Laundry and bogged off home.
Decided to go across the field to the shelters one day after a Red alert..............Mistake.........got straffed by a single Junkers 88 but he missed all of us as we dived into a gun pit.
Called out one night about one o'clock in the morning. Wheeling the bike into the road I heard a wierd whishing sound. It was a full moonlit night with high cloud so quite a light background. Coming across my line of sight from right to left was a Dornier 17 with engines off at between I suppose, 500 to a thousand feet. I watched it dumfounded as it glided towards Shirley. In a minute or two it had dissappeared and all was quiet. I got on my bike and was half way up the road when there were two tremendous explosions. It had released two parachute mines which devestated a large area around Roberts Road and Hill Lane. As I write this it occurs to me that I was probably the only person to see that Aircraft that night.
On a quiet afternoon, a Heinkel III flew casually up the River Itchen so low that the Bofors gunners couldn't depress their guns low enough to hit it. It turned round somewhere past Woodmill, flew back down the river, sank a destroyer at its moorings in Thornycroft Shipyard and presumably flew home unless someone got him on the way back.
Looking back it seems hard to imagine how people kept going with so little sleep and the tensions of constant threat but at 17 it was probably the adrenelin that kept me at it although like most I had the odd bad night. I remember Dad cycling all the way out to Baddesly one night to get away from it and a stray bomb fell a couple of hundreds yards away. He never went out at night again. He was also on the top of a tram in the middle of town when they bombed Woolston and they all went right over the top of him. Nothing to do but sit tight.
And so we did, day after day, night after night through out 1940. It is said that a large exodus occured out of town each night during the hight of the raids. May be true, maybe not but not by us or Firemen and members of the Rescue Service,
We had a rescue guy attached to our Wardens Post, name of Mr. Rivers. Past call up age in his early fifties I suppose. Big, strong, nice bloke. Got called to a surface shelter full of school children which had received a direct hit at one end........... Mr. River's hair went pure white overnight..
During one daylight raid, mostly ME110's and the odd ME109, over the docks and Millbrook area a gun position on top of the huge Cold Storage building in the docks opened up on a home going Jerry. Jerry took umbrage, came round and bombed it. The Cold Storage burned for a fortnight, fireman working knee deep in molten butter etc. When people got up in the morning and said "it's still burnin'" everyone new what they meant.
Dad had evacuated Mum and my kid brother Mike to my Grandma and Grandads at Ningwood a couple of miles from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight and even there they got the stuff that Jerry used to dump before he went home. No peace anywhere in those days.
However as the year came to a close and things quietened down my thoughts turned to joining up. The RAF of course being the obvious choice. So on the 16th of December 1940, I visited the Recruiting office in town, much to the displeasure of Mr. Hyatt, my boss at Foster Wickner because I was actually in a reserved occupation and signed on the dotted line.Sure is a bit tattered by now but I've had it for over sixty two years.
