91ÈȱŹ

“Rowena
 
crashed into the house shouting ‘DUCK!’ ”

In the Air Training Corps (ATC) we learnt something of aerial navigation: Course, Track, Drift
The course was the direction in which the aircraft was aimed. The track was the direction of travel over the ground and the drift was the difference caused by the aircraft being affected by the wind. The track could be determined by a series of sightings onto an object on the ground. One reason for The Blackout was to hinder the enemy determining his track and the wind.

During one raid two ‘mines’ landed in the West Derby area of Liverpool a mile or more from ‘51’. Was it Ballantyne Road? The first exploded but the second’s parachute caught in a tree and the Wardens were able to tie the mine in the tree until it could be dealt with.
A citizen was missing after that incident and his body was found on the roof of The Mansion House some distance away some weeks later.

Rowena must have used her key to enter the house - unless the door had been left open for her and Dad - for the door had no latch, only a lock. She dashed into the house shouting ‘Duck’ and threw herself down on the floor. Only seconds later came a great ‘WHOOMPH’. ‘51’ sustained no damage that night that I recall.
Rowena said she’d seen a parachute going over. But why did Rowena feel the parachute boded ill, and how did the explosion occur so soon after her warning? Perhaps this was the night of the two mines.

It was decades before I realised those mines on Liverpool were not ‘terror weapons’ as were the V1s on London later. Those mines were sea mines intended for the River Mersey but carried by a wind wrongly assessed or wrongly applied by the bomb aimers. Ships were sunk in The Mersey possibly by such mines. There is an example of such a mine in Liverpool’s Maritime Museum. Could it be the one in the museum is the one the Wardens tied to a tree?
Were those mines Magnetic Mines?

Explosions were strange! Buildings further could be more damaged than those nearer. ‘51’ sustained not a single broken window yet one of the inward opening doors opened outwards until it was repaired.

An ammunition train was hit in Tuebrook a mile or two from ‘51’. That night must have been a particularly heavy raid (or the targeting was local?) for I was in an Anderson — perhaps the Dingwall’s at 49?
From time to time the place would light up (the raids on Liverpool were always at night) and some seconds later there would be a mighty ‘whoomph’ and the Anderson seemed to rock. This happened a number of times probably as successive railway wagons exploded.

Railway men won gallantry awards that night.

The following day there was ‘mucky cotton wool’ scattered over a wide area and all the trees had ‘mucky cotton wool catkins’. There were parts of railway wagons on Queens Drive 200 yards from ‘51’.
Felipe’s house was nearer the train and I went to see. They had not been hurt but the house was badly damaged and they had to be re-housed. There were houses that had lost a whole wall so that one could look into rooms as if they were doll’s houses.

“and wept
But why then?”

The reason the Mothers wept after that early raid was expressed by the phrase they all used as they looked at the glow in the sky.
“The Docks!”
The experienced and wise mothers appreciated the significance
It was no less than A National Disaster! Thoughts of The Dead did not cause them to cry.

“could it be he was too terrified to meet us?”

Surely Mr Gibbs would not have let us go without saying something. He was too dignified and too courteous.
The motto on our school badge was in Greek. To transliterate: it was ‘ANDREZESDTH’
’Be courteous and act with courage if you can’.
It was many years after the war, pondering on Mr Gibbs’ apparent discourtesy on that occasion, I suddenly felt Mr Gibbs could really have been too terrified to meet us!

Mr Gibbs had told staff and parents a tale of why Oulton was to be closed. His explanation would have been accepted. But Mr Gibbs himself was ‘A need to Know’ and he would have learned, what the Nation was not told, that there was a battle in the Atlantic, and we were losing.
Surely Oulton was needed for the War.
Mr Gibbs might have been afraid that in the emotion of saying ‘Goodbye’ to the Prefects he might let the cat out of the bag.

I queried Liverpool Maritime Museum, sixty years later, about Oulton but heard nothing.

“What are you reading?” and “The only Bren gun”

The University’s ‘Senior Training Corps’ (Was there ‘a Junior’ — I never met one?) had regular parades, drills and assault courses
and shooting with rifle, Bren and mortar. I never threw a hand grenade other than a dummy.
There was ‘a camp’, which took a slice out of our meagre vacations.
We went on a particular assault course, which had a cliff that we had to descend hand over hand down ropes. Most of us had negotiated the cliff and were on our way down the course when the Army Instructor stopped us and ordered us to form up (three ranks at attention). It seems a following student had fallen down the cliff.
The Army Instructor simply blasted us with “That is the only Bren gun we had!”.
We were never told who that student was or what happened to him.

On parade we were inspected by General someone, The Officer Commanding Northern Command. It was then I discovered we were not just ‘91ÈȱŹ Guard’ but ‘A Counterattack Battalion’!

The General stopped in front of me and asked, “What are you reading?”. I replied, “I’m not reading anything Sir. I just haven’t got time!”
My answer was greeted with laughter because the question meant ‘What University Course are you on?’

‘the optimum pattern of ack ack batteries’

Ack ack batteries are antiaircraft batteries.
I know little of this but Gordon Bell (across the road from ‘51’) was ‘A Predictor mechanic’. Predictors were aiming devices for ack ack batteries. They were mechanical computers with binoculars or something. Gordon had a spider in a box for replacing ‘crosshairs’.
There was virtually no chance of hitting an aircraft with a shell; the idea seemed to be to coordinate a group of guns so that their combined shrapnel would hit an aircraft as if in a box. Hence the student’s problem concerned how many guns to a battery, how to aim each gun of the group, and how to time the firing and the explosion of each shell.

We were not told the Daysbrook Lane ack ack gun, a single gun, was merely to boost our morale. It could hit nothing! I wonder did it fire dummies or no projectiles at all?

Gordon got TB. He must have died. I was never told. Was he, although in the army, buried from St Christopher’s?

Death was second nature. Rowena’s friend Jack Dalrymple 
 Val Griffiths, the OC of ‘St Christopher’s Boys Brigade’ (from where Doug graduated to The Terriers). I think Jack died in Italy in ‘The Reconnaissance Corps’; and Mr Griffiths, who was, I believe, on Montgomery’s staff, was killed by a mine in North Africa.

In Liverpool there were thousands of casualties.

‘Henri’s Law’

What things remain in memory? I do not seem to remember Mum, or Arthur or Billy the dog. Is this because they were so familiar? Surely Mum and Arthur would have been with me ‘under the stairs’? Or could Mum have gone into the pantry, which was a small room with four strong walls and possibly safer than ‘under the stairs’ if the house had collapsed?

I have no memory that ‘Billy’ was the least bit upset by the bangs. He was a Scotty mongrel and had a tiny but strong ‘kennel’ in the kitchen. He was quite old.

I remember Pillar Boxes had their tops painted green, and that we had to go back to the school to have additional canisters added to our gas masks.
And I remember in a lull one night Rowena was reading in the Living Room when a blast sent soot out of the fireplace and Rowena looked like a Kentucky Minstrel. But I do not remember that mess being cleaned up. But someone must have put in a lot of work doing it!

Now ‘Henri’s Law’ I do remembered. It was such a surprise!
In the Electric Lab one day the team had connected 12-volt cables to a huge DC motor. I noticed instantly the motor started turning the wrong way, and I seized a cable and a terminal to change the connections and was thrown across the room.
’12 volts’!

‘I felt guilt; such a feeling as people were to have years later’

For my visit to Prestwick Aerodrome I had ‘a sleeper’ (a bunk) on the train, believe it or not.
I do not know if Prestwick Aerodrome was unique in Britain or whether The Geneva Convention protected it. I think it was ‘An International Airport’. There was no rationing there. I suppose it was because of the aerodrome’s status that there were sleeping compartments on the train. Notwithstanding the Bloody slaughter between the Nazis and us there were Rules?
I felt guilt knowing there was no rationing there and I could eat what I wanted! I found it difficult to eat anything at all! And feel I only had what rationing would have allowed.

“ ‘An ethereal fossil’ of an incoming V2”

A fossil is, in simple terms, an impression of the prior existence of something. There may be nothing of that something left. The fossil itself will not last forever.

One sunny day in 1945 I was alone in ‘504’. It must have been lunchtime as I was alone in the office. I was standing in the window at Mr Austin’s chair and looking at that place that so moved Wordsworth.
It was a clear sunny day. The sky was blue without the vestige of a cloud. As I looked at St Paul’s, a couple of miles away on the skyline, the Sun would have been South -to my back as I faced St Paul’s.
My eyes were focussed on St Paul’s when ‘a straight, opaque white, gossamer thread’ appeared. The thread was one or two units long and perhaps six units above St Paul’s — ‘a unit’ being ‘the height of St Paul’s’. The thread was vertical and it was vertically above St Paul’s. It was quite fleeting.
The thread was ‘precise’. That means there was nothing from it up into the blue and nothing from it descending to St Paul’s.
I realised the thread’s portent, as Rowena must that parachute’s.
I stood watching St Paul’s wondering what would happen and anticipating confirmation.
I seemed to wait a long time and had almost given up; but it may only have been thirty seconds? Then beyond St Paul’s a neat column as of grey brown marble rose. The neat column went to twice the height of St Paul’s; and then seemed just to disappear without ever becoming untidy.
That V2 must have struck in the Finsbury Square direction.

As usual after six years of The War I put it out of my mind.
It wasn’t until the ‘911’ outrage in New York (2001?) that I recalled the column, and guessed its height as about the height of the World Trade Centre Towers.
It was only then, sixty years after, I thought of The Dead.
I did not go to see where it struck.

Was that V2 unpainted I wonder.

JOHN KNIBB

[This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wolverhampton Libraries on behalf of John Knibb and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions]

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