Open Writing

ANOTHER OPENING ANOTHER SHOW

I often find when wishing to begin a dissertation such as this that it is the opening words which prove to be the most elusive. Once they are written to my satisfaction, then usually the remainder of the item follows with little difficulty. No such problem presented itself, however, with regard to this subject. For I realized the introductory phrase had already been written many years ago, and all I had to do was to quote it. It was Rob Wilton’s immortal line: ‘The Day War Broke Out’.

I cannot say I remember that day in all its fullness, but what I do remember very well are two episodes from that time.

I was still at school, a brash brat, totally undeserving of the affection shown to me. Today I dislike intensely the boy I then was, the one who lived with his grandmother, a guardian whose whole reason for living was the welfare and happiness of an ungrateful grandson.

Grandma was a God-fearing lady. So, as a result, that morning I had attended Sunday School, from which we were released around 10:30 a.m. Consequently I was at home when Neville Chamberlain broadcast his feared words ‘that this country is now at war with Germany’.

Whether I actually heard that broadcast or whether the news came via someone else, I don’t recall, but I do remember that both myself and two or three of my mates seemed somewhat dumbfounded, traumatized even. Conversation was stilted. We were simply at a loss as to what to do next, apart from waiting for guidance from our families, without realizing many of these were as much disconcerted as we were and would have appreciated guidance from some other with superior knowledge.

I recall looking up at the sky, perhaps expecting enemy bombers to appear at any minute which would begin to rain bombs down upon us. As it was, the sky remained empty of danger. White clouds sailed across an expanse of blue high above them, and the sun shone brilliantly.

Our small gathering congregated by a creosoted, slatted wooden fence, which marked the boundary between our row of houses and the local pub. I remember standing against that barrier some years earlier when barred from entering our house because neighbours proficient in their duties were inside ‘laying out’ my mother, she having died a short while previously.

We, as schoolboys of the time, were well aware of the German nation. They were the sworn enemies of the British. We had poured over the illustrated volumes which depicted scenes from the Western Front. We knew of the merciless dealings of U-boat commanders. We were well schooled in the brutality of the Hun.

A schoolmate of mine had his father’s First World War bayonet. It bore pit-marks on the blade, and we pondered over the question ‘was it German blood which had caused the pitting?’

Young minds and their imaginings are fertile sources. And our minds on that fateful day were filled with wonderings as to what the future might hold for us, although none of us actually admitted to our misgivings.

Later, after nightfall, on that decisive wartime Sunday we heard for the first time the genuine mournful drone of the air-raid siren. It had been heard previously, but that was only in practice. That night’s warning was for real.

We know today that the warning given was false. No actual raid occurred. It was over-zealousness on someone’s part, reaction to shadows, trigger-happiness. But it was sufficient to paint pictures in the minds of millions of the nation’s population. Death, devastation, and mutilation were envisaged, gas attack perhaps. For months past we had all been obliged to carry with us a gas mask as protection against such a poisonous onslaught.

We learned from that very first day of the conflict that it was to be a total war. Everyone in the country was to become involved, civilians and armed forces alike.

For my grandmother that latest outbreak of hostilities was the third one she had experienced, but that trouble, unlike the previous two, was for her not just ‘another opening, another show’. The other ‘shows’ had occurred miles distant, first the Boer War, then the Great War. The latest contest was then being brought to her door, as it were.

That grand lady was in her early 70’s in 1939, a respectable age for the period, and her chief concern was my welfare. Perhaps that was the trend which her mind followed on that first night of the Second World War, consoling herself no doubt in the belief that long before I came of conscription age the whole business of war would have been finalized. How wrong she was to be proved. Yet that worry never materialised in her lifetime, as she died peacefully in 1942.

Meantime, on that first wartime Sunday evening I recall lying on the floor at home. Grandma had turned off the gas light -- no doubt as per instructions -- and I was reading from a Sunday newspaper my first piece of morale-boosting journalism. The reporter had taken an extract from the Old Testament in which was described the struggle between two nations, one which came from the south, and was obviously Germany, headed by an evil leader against a second race of people who dwelt in the north. That was Britain. Though the struggle was long and difficult, nevertheless goodness which lay with the northern tribe combined with the blessing of their God, allowed them to finally triumph over the evil-doers.

All of that I remember reading out loud and verifying its existence by consulting the Bible. A flashlight was my means of illumination. I was quite accustomed to reading by that method, having consumed many books in that manner whilst below the bedclothes. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was the importance flashlights were to play in the forthcoming nights of blackout.

Shortly afterwards that evening the ‘all clear’ was sounded. Lights came back on in homes, and life was picked up from the point where it had been so suddenly interrupted. Little did we realize at the time, but that was the pattern of lifestyle which was to develop over the many years of conflict.

I, along with millions of others, was at school when the Second World War began. When it ended we were adults. Our teenage development years were spent under wartime conditions. We were never to know the freedom of spirit. Hostilities and their associated regulations constricted our transitional period.

All such life-changing events, though, never entered our thoughts on that fateful Sunday morning in September 1939. They would then have been beyond our comprehension. We had a lot to learn.

Thus passed my first day of World War II, being finalized by the oft-repeated words of Samuel Pepys as his day ended, ‘And so to bed.’