High Explosive Bomb at Gloucester Road

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lisa Butcher of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Len Taylor and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

In 1939 when rumours of war began to spread and the six month’s conscription started I was just too old to be included in that and before any of the chaos who were called up had finished their six months, war was declared on Sunday 3rd September 1939 by the Prime Minister broadcasting to the Nation at 11.00am.

As were most mothers with sons of the right age for call up, my mother was in tears, my father, who was an Overman at Whitwick Colliery, offered to get me a job down the pit. I told him I could not live with that, but promised I would not volunteer, but if called up for conscription I would have to go for my own conscience.

I was of course, soon called up and my first preference was to be in the RAF as a Rear Gunner, but I failed a very strenuous medical and was turned down.

In due course I was called up to the Army to be a Gunner in the Royal Artillery, along with a few other local chaps, one being Jack Walker from Heather.

We had to report to the RA Barracks at Oswestry, it was a dark day to remember, getting off the train at a small station near the Barracks. We were ordered to form three ranks on the platform, where a rather large Sergeant Major addressed us by saying he had seen a lot of recruits coming in but we were about the worst shower he had seen and promised to knock hell out of us until we became good soldiers – they certainly took great pride in making you feel uncomfortable.

We were marched to the Barracks and shown where and how we would live for the next three months. I will never forget the first dinner that evening – potatoes and cabbage were the strangest colour I had ever seen and tasted even worse than they looked, with all the eyes in the potatoes looking at you and daring you to eat them. It really wasn’t a grand welcome.

The next day we collected our uniforms, the only things that fitted were your boots. If any of the rest fitted, you were accused of being deformed.

Then came the first parade of this motley looking mob and the first thing was the order for haircuts, anything less than a crew-cut you were ordered back again, however we survived those first few days and got down to serious training of both our minds and bodies. I think our bodies probably suffered the worst.

That kind of training finished with a series of inoculations, I shudder to think what could have happened with these, judging by today’s standards. We were lined up and the “Doc” had one needle which he kept filling up and jabbing away as fast as he could. Some fainted and he just jabbed them where they lay, and for some hours later, slowly but surely everyone went down to the T.A.B. inoculations, which seemed to give you malaria instead of protecting you against it.

After those three hectic months when most of us had been knocked into shape and the rest left behind, we were sent to a firing camp on the Welsh Coast, to put into practise when we had been taught – anti-aircraft Guns.

We first had to go into a Gun Pit whilst anther Gun Team were firing the Guns, to allow us to get accustomed to the noise. It was an experience to begin with; some men couldn’t stand the noise and had to be taken off the Guns, but once we got going it was almost fun competing against each other for the best Gun Team.

On finishing our live ammunition gun training we were given seven days leave. I took this opportunity to marry the girl of my dreams. Getting all of that fixed up took half my leave, but I was a very happy man for a few days but reality came back and I had to return to the Army.

On getting back to my Regiment we were told that the Blitz on London had started, and we were sent to form the first Anti-Aircraft Division, whose task was to defend the capital. We had some very interesting and sometimes frightening experiences during that time.

One of the first things I remember about the Blitz was arriving on the outskirts of London, where we took over a gun site with four 3” Naval Guns and a Command Post. We thought these guns looked rather small, as we had done all of our training on much larger guns and had got familiar with the blast, so when we got called out on the same afternoon to intercept three Stuka Bombers, we manned the guns without our ear plugs.

The Bombers attacked the factories we were guarding, so we opened up with our ‘small’ guns but soon realised our mistake when our ears were badly punished. We had not realised that the smaller the shell in artillery the worse the crack of sound. As the guns get larger the sound from them develops from a crack which really hurts your ears to a sound more like a roll of thunder which is not so painful. We were very careful to wear our earplugs after that lesson.

We used to wear a special shoulder flash, which was a picture of a German Dornier Plane with a sword through the middle. Most Londoners recognised this flash on our uniform and so we received rather special treatment – cinemas either didn’t charge us at all or only a token charge, and we often had more free beer in pubs than was good for us in appreciation of our efforts to defend London.

We stayed in London all through the Blitz, but not in the same place for long. We were on Gun Sites across London, after getting bombed and set on fire with incendiary bombs.

One night I was off duty and down at the nearest pub for the kind of medicine that might have got you some sleep, when a bomb fell outside our pub and blew the front in. In the scramble that followed I picked up a tea plate with the pub’s name on it as a souvenir of that evening. I still have that plate, it even has the landlord’s name on it. I have considered for the last fifty odd years whether to own up to this theft and take my punishment, but I don’t even know if the pub still exists. Its name was ‘The Robin Hood’ in Anerly Road.

During this time the civilians were wonderful. Just imagine living near to a Gun Site with sometimes as many as sixteen heavy guns firing for most of the night. We used to see them open the front doors every morning and part of the routine of their cleaning was to sweep out all of the fallen plaster from their walls and ceilings, while feeling very pleased that they still had the building standing up.

When bombing first began on London it could be a little un-nerving if you happened to be caught on the Underground Tube Trains between stations under the Thames. This was because they stopped these lines and closed flood doors in case a bomb penetrated the river and flooded the Tube, in other words you were the sacrifice to stop the flooding becoming general. This practice was eventually dropped.

Of course, the Tube stations were used as Air Raid Shelters, thousands of people slept down there every night from September 1940 until May 1941 which was the worst time of the Blitz.

One site we set up at Wellington a few miles from Croydon Airport was a secret Gun Site that was camouflaged during daylight. Next to it was built a ‘Dummy Air Strip’ where fire was started at dark hour to make the German aircraft think they had set fire to Croydon Airport and drop their bombs on that and we would attempt to bring them down. It was terrible for the people who lived in that area as they were a constant target.

We had many lucky escapes. One I remember very well; a bomber approached our gun site and let go with a stick of three bombs. The first exploded about 100 yards short of our guns, the second bomb fell right inside the next gun pit to ours but did not explode. It buried itself in the ground and tipped the gun nearly on its side. The other bomb exploded some 100 yards further away from us-boy what luck!

After the raid was finished and not knowing when the bomb might explode, we took turns going into the gun pit carrying a round of ammunition weighing 56 pounds each. There were hundreds in the gun pit and lucky for us the bomb did not go off. When day-light arrived so did an Army Bomb Squad to diffuse and dig out the bomb, which was a large 500 pound bomb that fortunately did not have any of our names on.

After the bombing died down we had a rather quiet time waiting for something to happen. During this time the film industry decided to make a film record of events as they occurred. We were asked to help by becoming extras. Some of us dressed up as soldiers returning from Dunkirk and others dressed as Germans to take part in mock battles. The star was Jimmy Hanley. We didn’t get paid but it was some light relief for the normal duties of being a soldier.

We then began training for the D-Day landings. We had to learn to use our heavy guns not only against aircraft but against tanks, also as Field Artillery and as Coastal Artillery against any enemy shipping that might arrive anywhere near us. It was hectic training that took us all over Britain, and we eventually passed out as being ready for the Big Day.

During the first few days before D-Day we had to waterproof everything, which involved filling every nook and cranny with Bostik, which came in five gallon drums and was like a kind of sticky grease whose object was to keep the sea water out of vital parts of our equipment. We finished this filthy task and were ready for the action when out of the blue came orders for us to de-waterproof. It was a damn sight harder to get off than it had been to put on. However, we were given only a short time to complete this task, and we were rushed to the South East Coast. Of course at this time we didn’t know why but we were soon to learn the hard way.

Through the intelligence they had found out that London was to be attacked by a new secret weapon and with all of our experience during the Blitz we were called to put into practice once more against this new weapon. It soon arrived in the shape of the ‘Flying Bomb’ which was a pilot-less aeroplane timed to reach London and run out of fuel crashing down with a mighty explosion. It was a frightening thing to begin with, but became almost a competition to see how many could be shot down before reaching the coast line.

We stayed there for a few days whilst a new line of defence was established down the coast line, then we were released for the invasion of France.

This is a rough sketch of my first few years in the Army. New experiences were in store for us once we got into Europe.

I would like to add that during this time I had received some leave and as a result my wife and I were blessed with a lovely son and on embarking for France I left my wife behind, having done the same trick again. Good stuff these army rations!

Letter writing during the Second World War

During the early days of the Second World War many men and women from the age of 18 onwards either volunteered or were conscripted into the Armed Forces. For most, it was the first time they had ever been separated from family for any length of time.

It was felt that one thing that could be done to counteract possible feelings of separation or loneliness among serving members of the Armed Forces or those left at home was to encourage letter writing. Many local newspapers played a part in this strategy by encouraging people to write in and find a 'Pen Pal' and exchange letters. One of the local newspapers who did this was the 'Norwood News', whose main circulation area covered an area of south London including Norwood, Thornton Heath and Croydon.

Norwood Newspaper

One of those who wrote took up this invitation and wrote asking for a 'Pen Pal' was a Leading Aircraftswoman in the WRAF Marie Cranfield, originally from South Norwood, London. In 1942 Marie was 19 years old. By co-incidence, her letter went to soldiers in the Royal Army Medical Corps one of whom was Marie's first cousin Clifford English.

Ronald Ritson, who was one of Clifford English's best friends in the Medical Corps, read Marie's letter. Ronald was originally from Scilly Banks, near Whitehaven in what was then the county of Cumberland. Scilly Banks was a small village of about twenty dwellings and a Brethren Chapel. It is now in the county of Cumbria.

Pen Friends

Ronald and Marie started to write to each other and exchanged photographs. Things stayed like this for a while. Then Cliff English left the Unit and was posted elsewhere. This is how Ronald explained it to me on one occasion:

‘‘Well then, there was this young fellow that I had met up with in Aldershot. They called him Private Clifford English. Now, he left us after a while. I don’t know where he went to start with. I think he finished up in North Africa and Italy. We were training up at Inverness then.’’

‘‘But while I was in Inverness, I got another letter from my future wife. She told me that she had met her cousin, who was Private Cliff English then. He made corporal later on. Anyway, they must have got talking, and he had likely given her my pedigree, I suppose! So she sent me another letter and I sent a letter back, and so on. We kept in touch.’’

Engagement

The two Pen Pals, Marie and Ronald, kept writing to each other for some time. After a while, Ronald’s Unit was moved from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands to near Portsmouth on the South coast of England. This is how Ronald explained to me what happened next:

‘‘So when we went down near Portsmouth, they used to let us have some weekend leave. But, living so far away in Cumberland, I just couldn't take any extended leave. However, I could take a twenty-four hours leave. So I went to Marie’s Mam and Dad's place in South Norwood and stayed there for twenty-four hours in London.

This was when we first met, really. Otherwise, we had just been pen-friends up until then. My future wife's family were called Cranfield, so she was called Marie Cranfield. I must have spent about three weekends with them I suppose.’’

Marie’s home address was 47 Huntley Road, South Norwood, London SE25. Ronald’s letters were sent either to that address or sometimes to a different address depending where Marie happened to be billeted by the WRAF, such as Eastcote, Ruislip. Eventually, in 1944 Marie and Ronald became engaged, as Ronald explained:

‘‘Now, when we used to meet up, we used to talk about getting engaged. Well, I wasn't too keen really to begin with. Mainly because I said to her that I didn't think I would come back! Marie asked me why I thought that.’’

‘‘So I said "Well there's going to be this going overseas. I have two brothers at home so I'm the only one that's come into the army." Being among the first to go across into the war zone that turned out to be Normandy, I didn't think I'd have much chance coming back alive. However, we did get engaged before D-Day. It was before D-Day.’’

Letters from the Frontline

Ronald took part in the Normandy Landings and landed at Sword Beach on 8 June 1944. He subsequently travelled through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Writing letters home became even more special when Ronald was with the colours on active service in mainland Europe. When I asked Ronald about letter writing from the Front line, this is what he said:

‘‘I used to write home to my father and mother and my two brothers that were at home at that time, Tom and Joe. Then I used to write to my Pen Friend Marie in London, who was by then my fiancée.

Of course, as you know, Marie later became my wife. I think we did pretty well really getting letters through. They might have been held up sometimes but this was probably for some good reason. But generally with letters, they did get through.’’

On the evening of Tuesday 11 July 1944,Ronald wrote a letter while in his camp at Plumetot, Calvados. Just a few hours before Ronald had driven his CO Major Hargreaves into newly-liberated Caen and witnessed scenes he later told me were ‘indescribable’. In the letter he mentions none of this. In a wartime frontline letter, specific references to places and names are avoided. This is a transcript of that letter addressed to ‘2033627 ACW1 M.F. Cranfield, London’:

‘‘Private R. Ritson,
7517826, RAMC,
26 Field Hygiene Sect.,
BWEF

Tues 11 July

My Darling Marie,

Today I have received another of your most welcome letters. I‘m pleased you are keeping fine, as I am in the best of health. We all feel much better and happier since the day we landed.

Today we had bread for the first time since we left England and it was nice and fresh. I think it had been baked here by the Army. But it was lovely. Of course all our other food is in tins. It’s very good, but nothing like the food cooked at home.

Well darling I hope you have heard from your Mum and Dad. But I have a feeling they will be much safer where they are for the time being.

The letter which I have received is dated Friday 7 July. So it hasn’t taken very long has it dear? Now they are coming in by air, it’s very good.

I hope you are getting some of my letters dear, also a few bars of chocolate which I sent off over a week ago. And I have sent lots of letters off, so I do hope you are getting some darling.

We have still got our wireless, and get some good music on. It’s grand to know it’s coming from home. We have just heard General Montgomery on the wireless and should say a recording from over here, but I think it‘s very heartening. What do you think Marie?

I keep hearing from home, and Mother writes to be remembered to you, and hopes you are keeping well and sends her best regards to your people and hopes your Dad is getting much better. I had a letter from my pal and he asked had I brought you out there, and says I must take you up there even if it is on my next leave (if we get any). Even my relations always ask about you. So you are going to be very welcome no doubt.

There are one or two of my old pals over here, some were from my own village. It’s rather funny with only being a few houses there are three of my pals, four including myself and I have a feeling there is another one which must make five. So, it’s quite a lot considering there are only twenty houses there. But I haven’t met any of them yet. I may do, one never knows.

Well darling, I think that is about all I have for the moment. So in the meantime, please take good care of yourself and keep your chin up. I’m always thinking about you, darling. So Cheerio for now and the best of luck.

All my love,
Ronnie
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX’’

Conclusion

On Thursday 8 February 1945, Ronald and Marie married at St Chad’s Church, South Norwood, London. Mainly because they were originally ‘Pen Pals’, the story of their wedding was the lead story in the local Norwood newspaper, ‘Norwood News’ published on Friday 16 February 1945. Both of them continued to serve in the Forces until in November of that year Ronald was released to return to his former job as a coalminer at Walkmilll Colliery, Moresby Parks in what is now Cumbria. Originally, because of housing shortages, they had to live in the same cottage as Ronald’s parents and younger brother at a place called Scilly Banks. Although there was no Mains electricity, they were able to obtain fresh food and there was candlelight, oil lamps, running water and a battery-powered ‘wireless’.

Marie and Ronald saved virtually all of their wartime letters in a box. From time to time they would look through the letters, read them again and think of past experiences, both good and bad. During the war, many of the letters were shown to close friends in their unit when they were received. However, after the war probably only Marie and Ronald ever read these personal wartime letters.

Some years later Marie and Ronald decided to place their wartime letters into a sealed box and place it in the ground. Although the exact location where they buried the box is unknown, it is thought this may be in the Scilly Banks / Moresby Parks area in Cumbria, near their first home. .

As with many others with experiences of World War Two Marie and Ronald talked very little about their wartime experiences to others, and especially the post-war generations. The main reason was that no-one asked them! They retained several items to remind them about wartime, such as photographs, the newspaper article about their wedding and a couple of letters they had written.

It was some time after Marie passed away in 1990 that Ronald told me about his wartime experiences to help with my research for a university project. It was only then I learnt, and perhaps began to understand for the first time, the extent that World War Two was indeed a «People’s War». Everyone who lived through those times must have had experiences that should be recorded and remembered. In Marie and Ronald’s case, Normandy and Norwood were two places that would always remain in their memories.

During the war I worked as a lift boy at a large block of flats about 100 yards away from the sea and my boss was an ex army man, a quarter master sergeant in the rifle brigade.

He called me down to the flat on the Sunday when I was on duty and said ‘listen lad, this is very important’ and the message came through from Neville Chamberlain that we had started the war against the Germans. The first thing that happened was within the hour the sirens warning went off and there was an aircraft heard. We heard the aircraft around but obviously they were just flying around and I’m sure it was a German aircraft. It was seen over St Leonards, very close. It didn’t take long really, the all clear went and then he got on to explain what could happen. In this block of flats they were a very reserved type of people there and they were back to back. There was a boiler house there and they said ‘look the first thing we are going to do’ he said ‘is we are going to breed some rabbits, so if food is short, we’ve got rabbits’. I didn’t live here at the flats at that time but that was his first thoughts on how we were going to eat when the rationing would come.

It was very shortly afterwards, within a couple of months that we were invaded by young children from London, the evacuees. They arrived one morning by train, the residents were asked to take the children in and give them a home. So we, my mother and my grandfather who we were living with, decided that we had a spare room and that we would take two children. We had two girls who came along. They were about 13, they came from Greenwich in London and it was for me, the 16 year old, great fun to have someone share the house, and someone to play around. It was really good to have someone else in the house but it wasn’t for long because as there was no activity in London. There were no expected air raids, their parents decided — most of them did this — at Christmas instead of just going home for Christmas, they didn’t come back. But of course we all know it wasn’t that long after that things started to hot up all round.

The next major thing happened that I remember is the boats coming over from Dunkirk and landing our troops back in this country who’d been serving in France. That is the first time that really things showed that there was something going on. The troops after landing, were in Bexhill, where the regiment were stationed. They stayed in some of the big hotels. Also some of the RAF came to do their training as pilots and aircrew. By the autumn there were notices up in the town that, (I think it was in mid-summer) that people, if they would like, they were encouraged to be evacuated themselves. My mother and grandfather went up and finished up near Trowbridge, away from the coastline. I didn’t want to go, so my boss said you can stay in the flats. We’ll fix up a couple of rooms down in the cellar, which was quite clear, nothing much in it. So we (his wife who died shortly before), so we both stayed down in the cellar in case of air raids. Mr Thatcher being an ex army man, he decided that he would invite some of the army boys on their evenings out or what not to come down into the flat we made in the cellar and play darts and cards and he would give them tea and coffee. So we had plenty of company. Most of the tenants had then gone and they just moved away keeping the flat on but they moved away to various areas in which they thought were safe in the country. One morning there were four or five of us, the postman had called in, Mr Thatcher and one or two of these lads and we were standing in the main hall, the siren went off and before we had time to move there was a terrific bang. Well it was never discovered exactly what had happened. Obviously there was a bomb dropped but it hadn’t hit anything. It had exploded before it reached the ground or it might have landed in the sea, but no crater was ever found. But it broke many of the plate glass windows in the flats and most of them were on the seaside of the building, so it could have been a blast bomb. But it meant a lot of tidying up for us to do to clear the glass away. That was a very fortunate thing for us, because it could have been very near. We often had hit and run raiders come in. They would fly in and by the time the sirens had gone they’d circle in on their way out so it didn’t give our aircraft, the Spitfires, time to get down from their airfield to keep them away before that, bombs had been dropped across the town. We had quite a few on the coast, Eastbourne, Hove, Hastings and I remember one particular occasion Bexhill had two or three bombs, one hit a local chemist shop and also one of the cleaners that were in the town. One of my friends who were at school with us, he worked in this dry cleaners and it was a direct hit so he was killed on that occasion. Blackey Barker we called him, he was quite a dark lad and it was a great shame. There were several other times hit and run raiders came in. One afternoon we had a Messerschmitt, the warning was on and we were down in the cellar and this Messerschmitt came in, or came through, obviously escorting some bombers and they were shooting their machine guns and I know I went up from the cellar and looked out and I was really torn off a strip for going out and having a look because later on when the all clear had gone we found some of the spent bullet shells and holes in the wall so I was very lucky. But my boss didn’t appreciate what I’d done and he really gave me the dressing down.

Another occasion, a little later on, I had to be home, to see if everything was o.k. and stayed the night and on the way back, there was an aircraft, a warning and an aircraft. We saw it was a clear morning, a clear moon up in the sky, it was quite early and I stopped and spoke to the milkman as I was going to work. We saw this aircraft circle round the moon and as we thought it was going away we both said ‘oh well it’s not dropped anything…’ we can hear bombs coming down. Well the nearest landed, to us, landed about 400 yards away and they dropped 13 bombs across the town. So it did quite a bit of damage. It just missed the town hall, there was quite a bit of damage there. There was several occasions when we had working in the town and living by the sea in this building that stood out, it was right next to the De La Warr Pavilion so several occasions that we had near misses around there.

One day there was a big fire next to the De La Warr Pavilion, the other side of where our flats were and it was the Metropole Hotel, which the air force had taken over. I still have pictures (small photos) of the fire at the Metropole but no one ever knew how it caught light. Whether it was carelessness by the forces or some kind of bomb but we never found out what caused it.

Of course being 17 there were several of us young lads who used to get around the place and I remember one evening, there were two of us just walking along the sea front and we came to the end, past the clock tower and to where what was called the flag staff where they put a siren up on the scaffolding. So in devilment we decided to climb the scaffolding not realising the problems we could have caused. As we were coming down the air raid warden was waiting for us. It was a very good job he knew us because he said we cold be blamed for trying to sabotage the siren that was up there so we got a good dressing down for that. He went up and had a look to make sure everything was working all right and I imagined it was working. It went off a few days later but when you’re young you do silly things and not realise what you’ve just done.

As I was then 17 ½ and not available, or not possible to go into the army or the forces because my eyes were not so good, I decided I would go to London to an engineering course and work in munitions so my boss wrote a letter to the minister for labour saying that I’d tried and nothing happened so he wrote to Aneurin Bevin and said that I wanted to serve my king and country and so within a week I was called to the labour exchange and fixed up to go on this course. I would be highly qualified to go into engineering. Well this I did and by November I went to Waddon training centre near Croydon and spent the next 3 months at this centre earning very little, just enough to pay some lodgings money. A lady and man that had this big house, there were about 20 people there lodging and most of the money that we earnt went to pay out for our digs. After going through the course, I got a good job in the company Phillips which was a big electrical engineering company and I thing it’s still going now, Phillips. That was only 3 or 4 miles cycle away from Waddon to Hatbridge, near Mitcham. I managed to get a job as an improver in their tool room, which was something well worth doing because I spent the rest of my life in engineering and doing tool grinding and tool making. So for me it was very good to do that but I still had one or two near misses when I was staying in Croydon.

I remember one day going to the cinema. I was on nights and going to the cinema on a Monday afternoon and my friend who had to work asked me if I could take his girlfriend to the pictures because he’s promised her that she would see this film and it was at the Davis Theatre in Croydon. In the middle of the film there was a terrific explosion, the siren had gone but nobody used to worry because we were inside. We didn’t think we would be any safer outside, the terrific explosion was in the front and fortunately for me I was fairly well back in the stalls and a bomb had gone through the roof down into the stalls but it didn’t explode but several people were killed on that occasion and I fell that, that was another life that I had had. I’ve been well looked after by someone above. So when I went out afterwards I realised that one of my friends daughters worked there as an usherette, so I looked around for her and found her and I went afterwards to see her father, saying that she was alright. But by the time I got back to the lodgings there had been a call for me from the Home Guard, which I had to join a few months before. This was to call me up into town with the rest and to patrol because there had been other bombs dropped and a certain amount of looting. I had quite a busy day that day. I didn’t go to work that night; well we were called out all night so we didn’t get away until the following morning.

One or two things I remember about being at Phillips. The first thing was that there was no proper air raid shelter in the actual company and not enough for everybody. So there were quite a few, it was all men in the department I was in and we used to go into one part where we thought it was reasonably safe when the siren had gone off. I was amazed all the young lads, most of them fairly young or less than 30’s anyway and we used to go down to this place and all the time that there was a warning on they would sing and it was really great friendship. It was good to hear all these men singing the popular songs of the day and some of the older songs such as Roses Are Blooming In Piccaddy and that type of thing as well as the popular shows at that time and the Holy City is another one that I remember. Another thing that I recall of the men in the tool room, on a Saturday before Christmas we always had the day off and we would go to Morden station but we all had to wear bowler hats which was great fun and travel up to London where we would see a show. Well before that we would go and have a meal and see a show and all the way up in the tube we would sing carols and it’s something to hear at that time anyway. We might have been noisy but we weren’t a rousy crew and people used to listen and laugh with us, then after seeing the show we would have something else to eat then go back to Wimbledon. Wimbledon Palais to a dance and that was an annual event that happened every year but of course some of the boys they lost their bowler hats. I know coming back and spending the day and not being used to hats like that many of them had to buy a bowler hat for the person that lent them their bowler hat.

After working at Phillips I had to do quite a bit of night work. So I decided a couple of times to cycle back down to Bexhill. Well it was quite a long journey, especially on a cycle without any extra gears or anything but the worst thing, I got lost several times because all the road signs were taken down because of the threat of invasion so it was very difficult unless you got to know the roads. You could easily turn off especially over the Ashdown Forest or somewhere like that but I know I was lost twice. The second time coming back I went on a slightly different road it was the weekend which they called the Big Fire in London and quite a few fire engines had gone up from the coast to help. The London Fire Brigade and on my way back on the Monday morning I met quite a few of them coming back towards the coast and it took me quite a while to get back and of course I had to go back to work in the evening so I made an early start getting back early afternoon and then going onto work about 7 o’clock.

Another memory I have of Croydon and the war. My landlady woke us up one night and said the sirens had gone and there were several aircraft about. While we were talking about it there was the sound of an aircraft as we thought and it suddenly went quiet and I remember saying ‘it’s alright it’s landed at Croydon Airport’ and then there was an explosion. What it was, it was the first night we had discovered that it was the fly bomb or Doodlebugs as they were called so I remember that first night and the bomb had only just landed 2 or 3 roads away. Shortly after that I remember particularly cycling home from work after doing just a Saturday morning and watching this fly bomb come over and what they did, when they cut out, it normally did a half circle turn back and then drop onto the ground. I remember this one flying across and praying that it wouldn’t cut out until it got past. Of course someone else would have got it and I was terribly worried at that moment that it could have done exactly the same and it would have been very much nearer.

One other very important thing happened quite late in the war. I met a girl at Phillips when I was working and she was working there and she later became my wife in 1946 and we were married for over 30 years before she died. So that practically concludes my wartime experience and I would like to say that VE Day or rather the day war finished, I spent at Phillips social club jollying it up with some friends. I went up to London and waved my flag and there were thousands of other people at VE Day and also I saw the big victory parade which they had after and when the generals of all the regiments paraded through the streets of London which was quite an exciting thing but that was a couple of years after the war.

There is just one other thing I have just remembered. It was while I was a Bexhill, it was about two years after the war had started. The first big raid by Germans on Croydon. I was going to see my friends at Sidley and the warning went and we could see in the clear sky it was a beautiful summers evening we could see clearly squadrons of German aircraft. The bombers flying in formation through to London we thought, well that was the beginning of the big bombing raids in London. They went in formation, they came back in formation but the only things we saw and know afterwards there were one or two of the fighters shot down not far from the coast. One near Catsfield so we know at least two were shot down and they still came back in that formation flight as they went out. I just remembered that when I saw it and I think that’s about all I can remember about the war.

Introduction

Some years ago I was researching the Battle of Normandy and World War Two for a university project. I asked one of my uncles for assistance as he had served with the RAMC during the war, taken part in the Normandy Landings, Battle of Normandy and other battles before V.E. Day on 8 May 1945. During the World War Two he was 7517826 Private Ronald Ritson, RAMC. He signed a form to say I could write about the events of his life, that they could be donated to an archive that could be read by others.

One day, Ronald said to me “You do know I was two days late for my own wedding?” When I said I didn’t know of this, Ronald told me about the events in February 1945 when he married his fiancée. During the war she was known as 2033627 ACW1 Marie Florence Cranfield. Unfortunately, by the time Ronald told this to me Marie had passed away. Hence I was unable to record Marie’s version of events that, looking at retrospectively, seem unusual even for World War Two.

However, Ronald did have a contemporaneous copy of ‘Norwood News’ dated 16 February 1945 that had featured Marie and Ronald’s wedding as the front page lead story that day. I have used these and other sources to write the account of Marie and Ronald’s wedding. I believe it is an accurate account of what happened based on the evidence.

Engagement

One of the things that the official authorities encouraged during World War Two was writing letters. For many people it was the first time many young people had been away from home for any length of time. Many local newspapers played a part in this strategy by encouraging people to write in and find a ‘Pen Pal’ and exchange letters and even photographs. One of the local newspapers that helped with this was ‘Norwood News’. Its main circulation area covered an area of south London covering Norwood, Thornton Heath and Croydon.

In 1942 Leading Aircraftswoman Marie F. Cranfield was 19 years old and was one of those who started writing to a ‘Pen Pal’. By chance this was a Private Ronald Ritson a soldier in the Royal Army Medical Corps who came from the small village of Scilly Banks near Moresby Parks in what was then Cumberland, and today is in Cumbria. By further coincidence, one of Ronald’s best friends in the RAMC was one of Marie’s cousins, Private Clifford English, also from South Norwood, London.

It was through Cliff English that Marie and Ronald met in person for the first time. Eventually, early in 1944 they became engaged. Marie continued to serve with the WRAF in the London area including, it is believed, a posting at RAF Uxbridge. For his part, Ronald landed at Sword Beach, Calvados (Normandy) on 8 June 1944, eventually moving into Belgium and the Netherlands.

Wedding plans

Throughout the period while Ronald was in Normandy and Marie in Norwood, they continued writing to each other on an almost daily basis. Marie and Ronald began to make plans for their wedding and began putting aside a little money to pay for it. Ronald’s four shillings a week (20 New Pence!) was no use to him while in Normandy.

On 17 June 1944 Ronald received a little help to arrange things from his Commanding Officer, Major Hargreaves. The CO wrote to Mrs Hargreaves, also back home in Britain, asking her to assist Marie and Ronald to set up a Post Office Savings Account and arrange Ronald’s magnificent sum of four shillings a week to be paid into it. This was a small act of kindness by Dr and Mrs Hargreaves that was never forgotten. It is recorded here so that it is acknowledged and also that others will know how important such apparently insignificant acts were during World War Two.

Wedding plans

Eventually, in the New Year of 1945, Marie and Ronald were able to set a date for their wedding day. By this time Major Hargreaves had left Ronald’s Unit to take up a Staff job in Paris. By this time Ronald’s Unit, 26 FHS, was in the Netherlands, close to the German border and the Siegfried Line. So it was that Major B. Mann, the new CO, kindly arranged that he could have leave, travel to London and marry Marie.

Naturally, with Ronald at the frontline in Europe, it was Marie and her parents and sister who made virtually all the arrangements. The wedding was arranged for Tuesday 6 February 1945 and would take place at St Chad’s Church, South Norwood. The reception was booked for the Hol-Mesdale Road Baptist Church. Marie had a wedding dress made and also one for her sister Joyce who would be bridesmaid. By coincidence, Marie’s cousin and Ronald’s friend Cliff English had won a five week’s ballot leave from the Sanitation Section of the RAMC he was then serving with in Italy, so he too would be at the wedding.

With it being wartime, only a few of Ronald’s close family were able to travel to London for the wedding. They lived over 300 miles away near the West Cumbrian town of Whitehaven. In wartime sometimes even the closest of relations were unable to attend family events such as weddings, christenings or funerals if they were needed elsewhere for the war effort. Ronald himself had been unable to obtain leave for his brother Tom’s wedding earlier in the war. Nevertheless, Ronald’s mother and two brothers were able to travel to London for the wedding.

The Wedding Day

Ronald should have arrived at Norwood on Monday 5 February the day before the wedding. His relatives arrived that day by train and were accommodated with Marie’s relatives nearby. Ronald however, did not appear. The wedding day came and went and there was still no bridegroom. Nor was there any word from him. In circumstances like this, no news is not good news.

So the arrangements were postponed until the following day. Wednesday came and there was still no bridegroom, and still no word. So the wedding was put off yet again. I asked my Uncle Tom about this and he said, “I said to them I didn’t think he was going to turn up!” My father Joe Ritson remembered he saw and heard a German ‘doodlebug’ for the first time, and that the Londoners just went about their business in spite of it.

Meanwhile, Ronald the bridegroom was rather ‘lost in France’ not knowing what to do. He had got as far as Calais and was then unable to cross the English Channel because of stormy weather. In those days, especially with there being a war on, there was no means of telephoning or sending a message to let anyone know what was going on. The ‘Norwood News’ headline about the event stated,

“Wedding Twice Postponed: The Bridegroom had to wait across the Channel. The Ship was held up until storm abated”

However, while crossing the Channel, Ronald was able to send a ship-to-shore telegram to Marie to say he was on the way. At last, the wedding could go ahead! According to ‘Norwood News’, “It all ended happily for Norwood Pen Friends”.

So Marie Florence Cranfield was married to Ronald Ritson at St Chad’s Church on Thursday 8 February 1945. The priest was a Father Corrocan and the organist a Miss Brown. Tom Ritson, Ronald’s elder brother, was the Best Man and Joyce Cranfield the bridesmaid as had been originally planned.

Somehow, Marie had managed to obtain a white crepe-de-Chine wedding dress, halo and orange blossom and carried red tulips. Her sister and bridesmaid Joyce wore powder blue taffeta with a matching net and carried pink tulips. There was only one photograph of the wedding, of the bride and groom, the bride’s parents, the Best Man and the Bridesmaid. The wedding photograph didn’t even make it into the ’Norwood News’ article!

There were about thirty guests at the wedding. However, because the Baptist Church hall had another prior booking for the Thursday, the guests were entertained at Marie’s family home. Marie and Ronald then went on honeymoon to Ronald’s home village of Scilly Banks in what is now Cumbria. It must have seemed a rather tranquil place after all the events in Norwood! Because of the delayed wedding, Marie had to obtain a few days’ leave extension from the WRAF. She received the telegram granting this leave while at Scilly Banks.

Conclusion

Cliff English, who by this time was a corporal in the RAMC, also got married during this leave, on Saturday 17 February 1945. No doubt that wedding was a rather more organised event than Marie and Ronald’s wedding had turned out.

The events that happened at many wartime weddings seem extraordinary when looked at years afterwards. At the time, and to those who lived through World War Two it may have been that events did not seem so extraordinary, whether they were bad or good. Perhaps this partly explains why for many years I knew hardly anything about what is really a good and happy memory of the war.

Marie’s wedding day, in spite of everything that happened, must have been one of the happiest of her life. Unfortunately, we cannot now ask for Marie’s view of what happened. It cannot have been every wartime bride who had the bridegroom lost in France.

Marie and Ronald enjoyed many years together, living at various times either in South Norwood, London or in and around Whitehaven, Cumbria and had four children. Marie passed away in October 1990 and Ronald in July 2000. I am pleased to honour their memory by writing this memory of World War Two.

This story was submitted to the BBC WW2 People’s War site by Mrs M A Nallen of St Benedict’s Catholic High School on behalf of Stephen Corsi and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.
SECOND WORLD WAR MEMORIES OF STEPHEN CORSI

1939-1945
Aged 10 years 8 months at outbreak of war; 16 years 4 months in May
1945.
THE PERSONAL WAR
On 29 August 1939, I was sent back from Italy by train in care of sleeping car conductor to Paris, where I was met by my father and flown to Croydon, stayed one night in London then on to the country by train. This was the first time I had ever travelled entirely on my own on a main line railway with having to change of trains. However, I had been using the London Underground system regularly for 3 years by then.
Then on Sunday 3 September at 11:00 everyone listened to the radio to hear the Prime Minister say that the country was at war. Actually, it would have been a greater surprise if he had not said it, because it had seemed inevitable, since Poland had been invaded 3 days before.
Life seemed to be normal all through the war as everything developed slowly. By 1941 it felt as if we had had identity cards and ration cards all our lives. This was particularly true in the country where rationing was very well supplemented by local produce.
In the cities, you could eat in restaurants without ration cards up to a value of 5 shillings per meal. Expensive restaurants overcame this with a “cover charge”. People who were very hungry sometimes had 2 lunches in different restaurants to fill up.
Ration cards were issued for food, clothing and petrol. Food and clothing was adequate but not generous. With the help of unrationed food you could get by quite comfortably and the gardens of houses were turned into vegetable plots, tennis courts were dug up and many open spaces ere rented out as allotments to people who had no gardens.
Many houses kept pigs, chickens, goats and other livestock which were fed on leftovers from cooking or from growing vegetables.
Everyone was issued with gas masks but after a few months hardly anyone carried them.
At first, cars received petrol rations but later only essential vehicles were allowed to have petrol. Paraffin for farm tractors was coloured red to stop people using it in their cars. You could fill the carburettor with a few drops of petrol to start it and then a car would run on paraffin. Some cars were adapted to use town gas and had large silvery balloons fitted on their roofs to carry it.
At night all the curtains had to be shut tight to prevent even a chink of light getting out. Cars had special covers over their headlights so that they only shone downwards.
I rarely went near any major cities for next five years, merely passing through when necessary.
I watched the red sky above Coventry when it was being bombed but was too far away to hear the explosions. By contrast to the devastation of Coventry and Birmingham, it is said that only 1 bomb fell on Leamington throughout the war on open space between 3 possible targets.
For the first year of the war, some of my London School were transferred as a group to Arnold Lodge, Leamington, sleeping in the family home of our former headmaster, in Jury Street, Warwick.
As a boarder at school in Dunchurch (1940-1942) we went down to the cellars whenever the sirens sounded. One night a land-mine (large bomb on a parachute) landed near the middle of the village and when I came back upstairs after the all-clear my bed had moved a foot away from the wall.
Our home, in London, was a six-storey town-house and one night a bomb landed precisely on top of the wall dividing it from next door, knocking down some 5 metres of wall. The top two floors were later found to have moved about 3 centimetres sideways. The building was shored up and my father continued to live there except for the top floor and I would sometimes spend the occasional night there.
The house had been built just after the 1914-1918 war and the first owner had thought that there might be another war and had built it with a cellar which was designed to be used as an air-raid shelter.
One night, when in London for a couple of days I went across the river by underground to visit friends but when returning was caught on the wrong side of the river during an air raid and had to spend the most of the night in the tube train.
One day when he1 on a farm, the farmer and I heard a German aeroplane approaching and we hid behind a haystack but we must have been seen because the tail gunner fired off his machine guns at us but without effect.
Towards the end of the war the Germans started to use flying bombs (Vi), which people affectionately called “doodlebugs”. These were planes with ram-jet engines and no pilots and no remote control. They were started up pointing towards southern England and when they ran out of fuel they came down. There was a very eerie period of about 10 seconds between when the engine stopped and when the explosion came. Those ten seconds could seem like hours. Fighter planes used to be sent up to shoot them down over open ground and sometimes, if they were found near the coast, the fighters would get under a wing tip and ease them round so that they would fly back to France.
After these came the rockets (V2) . In some ways these were an improvement because the first thing you heard was the explosion, which meant that you had escaped as it must have fallen some distance from you.

I had two paternal uncles both of whom had been born in London and had British passports. One uncle (Edward) was a doctor but had been practising in Italy at the start of the war (15 June 1940 for Italy). He was interned with his brother (Tino) but being a non combatant was exchanged and came back to England. After which he joined the army medical corps (RANC) and worked in field hospitals in France. My father (Henry) was too old to be called up in 1939 but he had worked in field hospitals in 1914-1918.
The other uncle (Tino) was released in July 1943, when the Italian government stopped fighting, but the Germans more or less took over Italy for the rest of the war and he became a partisan for some time before escaping to Switzerland where he was interned for the rest of the war. This was in a hotel in Lugano, which happened to be owned by friends who had been allowed to stay in the top floor flat. His wife (Bice) and son (Carlo) had escaped to Switzerland earlier and were living as refugees with other friends in Lugano.
The end of the war came twice, once on 8 May 1945 and then on 15 August 1945. Most people remember the first date more than the second and certainly bonfires were lit on 8 May and everybody celebrated but there was probably as much joy in August when it really was all over. However, life went on afterwards much as before, rationing continued and later on bread was rationed for the first time. In some ways it did not feel as if the war had really ended until ration cards were abolished in 1951.
In 1946 I visited Guernsey, which had been occupied by the Germans. However, the Senior Officers in the Channel Islands, being mostly professional soldiers past retiring age, had always seen that their troops behaved correctly. The one thing that I remember is that all the schools were full of furniture. The soldiers had moved the furniture around between the houses that they had commandeered and returning householders had found these pieces in their homes and were displaying them for the real owners to find and collect.

THE REAL WAR
The “real war” hardly seemed to affect daily life in England. There was no television so news came by radio or in the newspapers. Everyone followed the progress of the fighting but at no time did the population believe that the Allies could lose in the end. When Hitler invaded Russia, repeating Napoleon’s mistake of 130 years earlier, everyone in Britain heaved a sigh of relief as the end then seemed to be inevitable.
The war in North Africa was seen as a purely professional operation in which the tanks merely replaced the medieval knights in armour. It was followed with interest but with a certain amount of detachment as if it did not really affect us.
People became rather depressed when Singapore fell in 1941 and also on the occasions when we lost major ships like the “Hood” and the “Prince of Wales” but otherwise the reverses were taken in one’s stride and the victories were considered to be our due.
After the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, interest became more intense but by then, with both the Americans and the Russians fighting on oour side, the only question was “How long will it take to get to Berlin?”

THE DOWNSIDE AEROPLANE CRASH
The following is based on a letter to an old school friend dated 11 May 1994 about a crash by a fighter aeroplane on a bank where most of Downside School was gathered to watch a cricket match on Saturday 15 May 1943. The pilot and 9 boys were killed and 14 boys were injured.
“I read your account of the crash in the Raven with interest and until then I had no idea that the full picture of what happened that afternoon was unclear. It is now a very long time after the event but I think that it is still not too late to record what I remember seeing.
I was playing cricket on the upper field and at the time was fielding in a position facing the pavilion. My concentration was not entirely on the game and I was watching the antics of these two aeroplanes with some interest and even trepidation as they were flying lower than any I had seen before.
As was always the case, the instructor was in front and the pupil was flying behind and some ten to twenty feet below his leader. The final pass was very low and over some very tall fir trees at the edge of the field. The first plane cleared these but the second one just touched the tallest tree, probably with its tail, so that its nose tipped downwards. At that height there was no chance for Sub-Lt McCracken, the pilot, to do anything and he ploughed straight into the crowd on the bank.
There is a tree with a dead section at the top at approximately the point where the aircraft touched and it would not surprise me if this was the actual tree that was struck and that the dead section had resulted from a partial fracture of the trunk.
Everything that happened after that moment is a blur and the only things that I can remember were that we were all given sandwiches the next morning and told to go out and not come back before teatime. I also remember seeing the shrouds laid out in the squash court and only half-believing that underneath these were the bodies of my friends, particularly David Lowndes whom I had already known for seven or eight years. My most vivid memory is of his brother Michael coming back from hospital with his terribly scarred face. On the Monday everything returned to normal and life continued exactly as before being only interrupted for the joint funeral of the dead pilot and boys.
I ought to have been in one of the Junior House dormitories with all the other first year boys but had been moved up into the Smythe dormitory at the beginning of that term so I have no recollection of the empty beds on the Saturday night. This might also explain why I was playing cricket when most of my friends were sitting in the crash area.
I hope that this helps to clarify the actual sequence of events and I would be very pleased to know whether there is any evidence to support (or disprove) my memory of that terrible event.”