The Beginning of the End of The British Empire: True Short Stories That Show How the Demise of British Empire Began With The Second World War

By Roger Payne OAM

This is a Short Story Book with A Difference: It has true stories in it that show what it was like to live in a GIANT BUBBLE called the 2nd World War. Many of the stories describe the emotional and physical cost of a World War on the British people who were forced to endure almost 6 years of continuous fighting. Numerous individuals chose to suppress their emotions by adopting the famous British 'stiff upper lip' while struggling with their inner fears. It wasn't the best solution; it was the only solution under the circumstances. By doing so it provided them with the sufficient inner strength to keep going through the unknown, for that's what their lives were like during this period, completely unknown and living on the edge day by day. Death was frequently perched on their shoulders, taunting and mocking them. Especially those in the military who lived through the terrible nightmare that was the daily carnage in the front line, because they knew that tomorrow could easily be their last day on earth. It was an abnormal existence dealing with their own mortality, and many succumbed to what was known at the time as 'shell shock,' and by the end of the war, it was too much of a burden for countless men and women and was a contributing factor in many suicides in a society where being outwardly strong was considered to be an important asset.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Release date: Feb 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9789388161923

Roger Payne OAM

Roger Payne served in Britain's elite Parachute Regiment from 1960 to 1969. He and his family moved to Australia after he enlisted in the Australian Army as a physical training instructor to train National Servicemen for Vietnam. He remained in the Army until 2003. During that time he developed new programmes for the Corps of Infantry and received the Army's highest award, the Chief of the Defence Force Commendation. A year later he was awarded one of the highest awards an Australian citizen can get, The Order of Australia. He is still the only serviceman to be awarded both.

Book preview

THE BEGINNING

NORMANDY AND BEYOND: The Allies have finally taken the initiative and land at Normandy. Back on French soil they begin the long and gruelling push up through Europe against an enemy that has a thousand tricks up his sleeve to thwart them getting into Germany. Along the way they find that German resistance is getting tougher and their casualties are mounting significantly, far beyond what they imagined. They are losing so many tank crews that they are forced to transfer whole regiments of RAF Regiment troops to the armoured corps. It is much harder than they anticipated, and every inch of ground has to be fought over. It did not change until the Allies crossed the Rhine and were pushing deep into the Fatherland, some units still fought to the death, then suddenly the Allies began to meet thousands of Germans soldiers still with their arms, but not a threat. They had a choice to make. Did they want to surrender to the Allies or to the Russians. Having heard what the Russians were likely to do to them if they were taken prisoner, the choice had been made for them.

(1) Sammy Kettle - Lots Road Chelsea - London’s East

End

It seems ridiculous but when the war was declared my Mother and Father were overjoyed because at last, my father found permanent employment in the Army where he got 2 shillings a day, a King’s ransom for our family, and he ended up as a Staff Sergeant 6 years later in the Army Commando. When the war was over he decided to stay in regardless what he’d seen and done and transferred to the Royal Marine Commando as they were disbanding the Army Commando. My Dad would always say that his family always bred their men to be lean and mean. But by the end of the war he was muscled and mean. The other big family joke was that the Army had refused to take him before the war because he was so thin, now they couldn’t get his name on the forms quick enough and fattened him up by giving him three good meals a day and lots of fresh air and exercise. With the 10 shillings he’d allowed us from his pay each week we could live a better life and as he got promoted, he got more money. He seemed to find his feet in the military. He didn’t even mind the discipline and the yelling and screaming. Then Mum found a better job and added to our weekly income our lives improved dramatically.

Unfortunately, the 10 shillings from Dad’s Army wage, didn’t arrive at the Post Office for a month afterwards. So, we were scrimping and saving like before. Until then, there was never a penny in our two-room place. Food was usually the once a day ‘Kettle Broth,’ the last defence against the ‘Wolf’ who was perpetually at our front door. My mother, sisters and I always sat around the bare kitchen table eating our meal as Father was never home early. He would be out looking for employment of any kind, Carry ye bag’s lady? Mind ye horse guvnor? Got any work Mister? Anything that was available in the East End of London Dad would do, and he worked like a slave doing it to. Meanwhile, we were always hopeful and apprehensive; would ‘The Gas Man’ come? It was the right day! He always came the same day every month without fail. We’d be looking at one another wishing he was on time when a rat-a-tat on the door the door announced ‘the Gas Man’ had arrived at last.

Billy my brother would always rush to the front door and opened it. If he could have laid down a cape like Sir Walter Raleigh and bowed, he would have, for here was our salvation. Mr. Bradman always smiled and tipped his trilby hat at my mother and said, "And how are we going, Mrs. Kettle?" My Mother would always reply Very well thank you, Mr. Bradman. He knew the truth, but he would never dream of saying so. It simply wasn’t done. Dozens of his ‘customers’ was in the same situation. Mother would be standing behind the chair she had drawn out for him to sit on. He would always say, Thank you, Mrs. Kettle. It’s a pleasure to come into such a clean home.

Mum would get all embarrassed, but it was true. Mum always kept the place neat and tidy even though there was next to no furniture in it. Mr. Bradman would sit down take off his trilby hat and place it on the table. Next, he would take out a large heavy notebook from his shoulder bag and place it on the table-top. He always had a pencil behind his left ear, and this was the next thing he would remove. He open the notebook and would write down our name and address underneath dozens of others he’d been to see that day. When he’d done that he would stand up and say, Do you mind Mrs. Kettle? Mother would always say, No Mr. Bradman, be my guest. He would go and unlock the gas meter under the stairs and bring the box that had the money in it back to the table and upended it. I’d look at all those penny’s and think ‘Oh, figure of hope, there must be a God!’ Elbows on the table, hands beside our heads we’d watch the pile of pennies he poured from the box. As he counted, we concentrated on the piles of pennies he put aside, they were ‘our’ rebate. Would it be two bob? three bob? Dare we think four?

Today, thank heavens, it was four shillings and threepence, a king’s ransom. The Wolf who was halfway in the door retreated with a snarl and took up his old position outside. My mind travelled back to the World’s End and its pubs, all those years ago. One of the pubs abutting onto the Kings Road right next to a series of other pubs, separated only by a narrow alley stood the Penny Cinema. In the high wall of the alley was a doorway without a light that led down to the Chelsea Thames Embankment. There was a door on the right that was always open, inside it was dark and cold and evil. This was where the rag, bone and cat’s meat man sat in the gloom and waited for business.

We used to take rags, bones, jam jars, and newspapers there for a few coppers and get a penny skewer of cat’s meat for our cat. I don’t know how it survived as it rarely got a. skewer of meat, I can tell you. At that time, we lived in Lots Road, the Chelsea side of Stanley Bridge that led into the neighbouring borough of Durham. My mother, on her way to work, would take my sisters and I to the Penny Cinema and asked the doorman to keep an eye on us until she came for us 3 hours later? He would for two pence. We would sit there and see the films over and over until we were fed up, and we wanted to go home. Often, we just went out the side door and traipsed home regardless of the weather.

The doorman didn’t care because we never came past him, and Mum when she couldn’t find us knew where we’d gone. She never ever said much except One day someone will grab you and I’ll never see you again. We’d say we were sorry, and that was that. Now we had the gas rebate we could eat something other than ‘Kettle Broth’ which consisted of four slices of stale bread cut into cubes and placed into a saucepan. Mum would then add plenty of pepper and salt, plus a dollop of Marg, bring it to the boil and serve. At times during the winter, my mother, on coming home from her job in the evening would say Come on Sammy, we’ll go to the West End and get a pennyworth of giblets. We would set off through the gaslight streets, passed the Worlds End pub, bound for the West End, and I mean the real West End, not the one where all the shows were, and where the actors and actresses became famous. For me, at my tender age, I kept a firm grip on my mother’s hand as I didn’t want anything the sweep out of the darkness and carry me away.

This part of the West End could be a scary place. We’d walked through darkened streets where tall human shadows passed us in the darkness of the night. To me, they were terrible ghosts who were lost. The only sounds they’d make would be the clip-clop of their cheap shoes. To someone my size, the West End was a dark, dank, cobbled, smelly, rancid dreadful place. It was full of evil things like witches and wizards who ate little boys for breakfast. With my Mum towing me along we eventually arrived at a certain door (I learned later it was the back door of a large poultry shop) Sometimes there would be others there as well all waiting for the off cuts that nobody else wanted even in those days. But that’s how we and thousands of us survived until the war changed everything.

(2) Ben Hall - Finally Get Away from It All - Deal -

Kent

It was early 1939 and to the Post 1st World War population, poverty has never been experienced to the same degree as it was in the 1920’s and1930’s. Some 4% of the population were living below the subsistence level even with the introduction of the dole. Much depended on what city you lived in. If it was Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast, you were considered as living in one of the poorest areas in Britain. Regardless of where you lived your daily existence would be considered degrading and to a great extent much of what you did was often described as petty but unlawful, yet to survive you had to do it. To those of us who were poor life was a game of survival. Take the local cinema. Inside there would be a thick layer of smoke that had to be seen to be believed. It was not unusual to see the poor people crowded around the outside of the emergency door at the very end of each performance.

As these doors were thrown open to let people out at the end of the film, the poor would charge in, like a battering ram pushing everyone out of the way. Once inside, they would rush up and down each row of empty seats scooping the cigarette butts from the ashtrays, all the while being chased by the attendants who often had cut down broom handles to hit anyone they caught. It was nothing to see some unfortunate who had been cornered get a good hiding as they lay on the floor.

But it never deterred them, they’d be back the next day to go through it all over again. For those of us that escaped with our precious ‘fags’ we headed to the city centre to wait outside the various hotels. As the ‘patrons’ stubbed out their smokes before getting on the bus, we’d become engaged in scuffles to retrieve the much valued ‘Cigarette ends’ from the gutter. A real find was cigar butts. These were an extra dividend and a much-prized commodity by everyone. We’d head home where the proceeds of the night’s activity were carefully shredded and rebuilt with the help of the old faithful Rizza cigarette rolling machine, a prized possession. Having got all these cigarettes, it was a case of selling them off to the highest bidder after retaining some for yourself. Cigar ends, now there was something that you never sold off, you always kept them for when you had a beer. Then there were the larger greengrocers who used to ‘top and tail’ the vegetables before putting them out for sale.

‘Topping and tailing’ consisted of chopping off the dirty root end and the unwanted top leaves, bits that the middle and upper class would never buy as they didn’t want to ‘top and tail’ them. So these bits were discarded into a corner bin and sold at a very meagre prices to the poor of the district under the exalted title of ‘Pot Herbs.’ Mixed with a variety of bones from sympathetic butchers who had smashed them with a hammer to produce the bone marrow. This produced a was a substantial meal for the ever-hungry family. At weekends an added luxury was the unsold cakes and bread that would be unsaleable by the Monday.

These were bagged by the local bread shops and sold to the poor. Very little food was ever discarded if it could be sold to the poor. In those days there was no such thing as social security. It was common to see the ‘Ragamuffins’ (poorly clothed dirty children), waiting outside the various train and bus stations with broken down perambulators, (prams). They’d offer to carry suitcases for a copper or two. The older boys of the family would ride their old Boneshaker’ bicycles around the city selling the current daily newspaper.

For every thirteen copies sold they were rewarded with the princely sum of one and a half pennies; that was the old penny at 240 to the £1. Besides being fed and watered, the family had to be clothed and for many, that was the last consideration. Underclothes among the poor were unknown. Almost all of us had holes in the seat of our pants. It was common before getting dressed in the morning to pass the long tail of your shirt between the legs and pull it up at the front. At least this gave you some degree of modesty. On the sanitation side, what is now considered an absolute necessity (toilet paper) was, in fact, non-existent for the poor.

As far as they were concerned, toilet paper had not been invented; even public conveniences did not supply them as they were stolen so quickly. Toilet paper had to consist of what was readily available, i.e. magazines, newspapers, paper bags, etc. There was never a shortage of substitutes. Soot from the back of the fireplace cleaned your teeth, burnt ash from the embers of the fire was used to scour the dirty pans. In many cases, thick cardboard was cut and used as in-soles for shabby shoes that let the water in. All this lack of sanitary products had, of course, it’s backlash. In these conditions’ vermin were commonplace and living in overcrowded conditions did not improve things. Head lice were common and having been discovered, it was not unusual for the guilty to have his or her head shaved. In the so-called slums, the body louse was a bedbug.

They came out at night and lived on the blood of their victims. Come morning they retired to the crevices in the plaster walls and other parts of the room. One could go on and on describing the deprivations of the poor and still not cover everything that they had to suffer. All this was taken as the norm by the middle-and-upper class who did absolutely nothing to alleviate poverty. It was as if it didn’t exist, yet it was there in front of their eyes every day. The government did virtually nothing about it until after the war when it became a political matter forced upon them by the returning servicemen.

Churchill lost the election because the unions banded together with the Labour Party and mobilised the people against the wealthy, especially returning servicemen who were fed up with the war and wanted an end to the Conservative party. The result was a huge groundswell of popularity and a win by the Labour Party. Something that Winston Churchill simply couldn’t believe. Hadn’t he saved the country? No, he hadn’t, we’d saved the country, and we now wanted something back. Yet the war not only changed governments it improved the living standards of the poor people because they didn’t want to go back to the old ways that kept them in poverty. The numbers of men required in wartime saw 1000s of men from poor families enter the military. Calling up so many men from this demographic gave them a living wage some of which could be sent home, thus giving their family a regular income, they would never have had any other way. Before the 2nd World War there was no such thing as social security, if you had no job you had no money, it was as simple as that.

Eventually, the government was forced to take some sort of action to alleviate the suffering and the hardships of the ordinary men and women. Under the infamous disliked title of the ‘Means Test,’ it was considered right and proper for the already deprived and starving families to have their belongings inspected and then ordered to part with anything in excess of their requirements and to sell them and live on the proceeds, after which they may receive food vouchers. Housing for the poor was basically tenement living in squalid conditions.

Proper houses were none existent for all the poorer classes, mixed sexes sleeping together in overcrowded beds led to a certain amount of promiscuity. Incest was not unknown amongst a family’s young girls to be forced into prostitution and more than a fair share of them were put into ‘Service.’ Service meant living in the houses of the rich and working long hours for food and lodging and a very small pittance, euphemistically call ‘pay.’ Obviously, even this had its drawbacks, some girls were treated quite well, and others, unfortunately, were treated like slaves. The majority of returned soldiers from the 1st World War came from the poorer classes. The young of the poor classes were only too eager to try to extricate themselves out of the filthy morass that threatened to engulf them.

I was no exception; my father had been badly crippled in the war and was unemployable. In our large family, the girls chose to go into service, and the boys were only too keen to go into the armed forces if they were eligible. Obviously, with an Irish Mother and an Irish background, we had to be Catholic and attend a Catholic school. Both the Catholic and the Church of England were enormously wealthy yet none of the wealth trickled down us at the very bottom of the ladder.

The Catholic School in our area was St. Aloysius’s. I was never all that religious as God or Jesus had never helped our family in any shape or form and until they did, I would remain ambivalent. One morning, I was sent to school after a short absence, with a note, explaining that I had been unwell. The Mother Superior decided on the spur of the moment that this was untrue and bent me over a desk. I was then in the process of getting 10 of the best on my backside when who should walk into the classroom but my very irate mother. My mother was a very big woman, all fourteen stone of her and it was her religious belief that no one, but her, should physically chastised her children. The Mother Superior and her, had a stand-up argument over why I was being punished and for calling my Mother a liar finished up on her backside on the floor. Not 2 minutes later my brother and I were being led out of the school grounds and down the road to a Church of England school where we were immediately enrolled as Anglicans.

The local Catholic priest almost lived on our doorstep, but to no avail. He pleaded and pleaded but our mother was adamant. It was, however, an expensive exercise. In the end my Mother was summoned to attend the local court in Mitchell Street Manchester, for assaulting the Mother Superior, and was fined the sum of five shillings, a lot of money in those days. The church had a great deal of power throughout society and an assault on the Mother Superior was considered to be a very serious offence. Mum was lucky she didn’t go to jail. As luck would have it there was no difficulty in paying the fine; a street collection raised more than enough, and what was left over she was able to buy five cases of beer straight from the brewery because Dad’s best mate was the manager. So, everyone who contributed ended up having a free beer. It was not every day that a Mother Superior was given a good hiding even though she deserved it. We had no complaints with our new religion, on top of which the school was small enough to concentrate on giving its pupils a reasonable education.

St. Paul’s, Brunswick Street, Carlton was a lot smaller than the Catholic School and had only two classrooms and two teachers. One was Mr. Slater, who was tall and cadaverous and a bugger of a disciplinarian who like to clip your ear if you weren’t paying attention. The other teacher was Mr. Hewitt. He was short and tubby and most sympathetic to his charges. He very often brought articles of clothing, donated by his well-off neighbours, and he distributed them among the neediest in the school. It was within St Paul’s that I first discovered the meaning of humanity. Even the poor went out of their way to share what little they had with anyone who needed help. After leaving school I worked as a plumber’s mate, a grocer’s boy and as a very young receptionist in a dance hall in Oxford Street. This was my training ground for the tricks of the trade.

The Plaza came to life at the weekend, and I was responsible for escorting the customers to their tables. It was the common practice to reserve most of the popular tables near to the band in my own name. I would then make pretence of generosity allowing chosen couples to be seated at the reserved tables. This invariably resulted in a rather generous tip. It was all part of me having a share in a better lifestyle. It was also one of the most popular ways of supplementing my week’s wages. And the best bit about it, nobody ever realized what I was doing. After some months, I decided that I had to leave home.

It was the only way. I knew that it was not going to be easy and that I would have to make a really determined effort to make the final break. I also knew it would also be robbing them of the only breadwinner they had. But it had to be done if I ever wanted to get away from them? I decided that it would have to be on my seventeenth birth-day. I would have to make a clean break and get as far away from them as I could. At last, came the day that I had been waiting for so long.

Tomorrow I would be seventeen years of age. I could not yet envisage my future; I could only look back at my past and it was not a pretty picture. Living in squalid conditions, listening to the family arguments and sometimes, vicious rows. It all was created and made worse by the extremes of poverty, and it wasn’t going to get better. Was now the right time to end it? It had to be; I had to cut the ties that had held me in bondage for so many years. It was a lot easier than I had ever imagined. Waiting until everyone had gone to bed, I left the large bleak house in which I had existed for more years than I care to think about.

I walked through the night, listening to the patrolling policemen tapping their signals with their nightsticks on the stone curbs. More than once I attracted their attention as I walked through the dark rows of shops in the city centre. I always gave the same answer, I’m going to join up Sir, and I’m going into the Navy. I had no idea whether they believed me, but they all pointed me in the right direction and wished me luck. By the time I arrived at my destination, dawn was already creeping over the roofs of the towering office blocks. The early risers were already opening and getting their places of employment ready for the day’s business. It was here that I had my first taste of genuine kindness from my fellow human beings.

As I sheltered in the dark doorway of the recruiting office, I was offered mugs of hot tea from those who were fortunate enough to be in full employment. I had not yet learned that this was the code of the day in those dark days of the nineteen thirties. Eventually, the heavy doors were opened, and I was invited to enter and take a seat. I was not impressed, it was dark and dismal, and the walls were covered with posters of faraway places. There were two desks, occupied by two totally different people. One was short and tubby and dressed in a navy-blue uniform with a white shirt and black tie. The other man appeared to be taller. He wore a blue uniform but buttoned up to the neck and with the buttons brightly polished, he also had a fair share of gold badges on his sleeves. Besides that, his shoes shone like polished gold.

When he spoke, his voice carried just that amount of authority that commanded an immediate response, but at the same time, there was a hint of kindness in his voice. It was a strange voice, firm but gentle, I decided then and there that this was a person in whom I could place my trust. I remember thinking, perhaps he too had run away from home, and I was quite prepared to put my future in his hands and to do exactly as he said. As later events proved, it was a wise decision and one that I was never to regret.

My parents had refused to sign my enlistment papers, so it was necessary for the Recruiting Officer to engage the services of the local J. P. who, after questioning my reasons, signed the papers in their absence and afterwards I received the King’s Shilling and I was duly enrolled. I took a solemn oath to serve my King and Country for twelve long years (or more) and became a recruit in His Majesty’s Royal Marines. I was already ‘Walking Tall.’ After a cup of tea and a corned beef sandwich.

I was then escorted to Liverpool railway station and supplied with a free warrant which would entitle me to travel to some hitherto unknown place named on my papers. It was a place called Deal in Kent. It did not take me many days after my arrival to realize this small town was the ‘Mecca’ for all Royal Marines. I start my new life from here. Little did I know that I would be flung headlong into the maelstrom of war within the next few months and I would become a Royal Marine Commando.

(3) William Giles - Policeman - Central London

At the beginning of the war, only 36% of the food British people ate was produced at home, the rest was imported. It was brought in by ship, which is why the Germans set out to sink as many merchant ships as possible during the war. Their intention was to starve Britain into submission, and they nearly succeeded if sonar hadn’t been perfected so that destroyers could effectively hunt the German Submarines and by the end of the war had sunk some 4,500 merchant ships in both the Atlantic and Artic Oceans. Rationing had been introduced from the day war was declared. But like everything that looked good on paper the reality was what people in the cities got, and what those in the country received, could be very different. Those in the rural areas had far more access to eggs, milk, butter, cheese, and anything that could be hunted, trapped, poached or bought from the local farmer.

Regrettably, there was very little that could be done about it even though inspectors would go around and check on what farmers had, and tried, to make sure that food quotas were met and delivered to special centres that sent it to the cities. As ridiculous as it sounds a Home Guard anti-aircraft gunner in the North of England killed his Commanding Officer, who happened to be the local butcher, simply because the man wouldn’t give him a pound of sausages ‘under the counter.’ On the other hand, Government Inspectors were taking bribes to look the other way too.

The moment laws were introduced making rationing compulsory people began breaking the law. Gangs were making raids on the centres that produced ration books. One such gang stole 1,500000 ration books and the government was forced to cancel that particular batch. Criminals found an ingenious way of breaking into shops. They would wait until there was a bombing raid, then turn up wearing ARP helmets and arm bands and smash down the door and front window and claim to be removing the goods and taking them to a safe place.

They even got the public to help them on occasions. Gangs began robberies on a massive scale at least one a week in London along. In 1940 one woman in Hartlepool was heavily fined after using four ration books to get food for her family of three. Her 15-year-old son had accidentally been sent a child’s book plus an adult’s, and she used both for six months to obtain extra food.

She claimed she thought the extra ration book was because her son was a ‘big schoolboy.’ The magistrate disagreed and fined her heavily. In a typical double standard, or one rule for the wealthy and one rule for the working man. The Army’s head of Military Police was also caught out having 2 ration books. He claimed that he thought one was for use in England, the other was for use overseas. This senior Officer’s barrister stated he had an unimpeachable reputation and that this should be taken into consideration. The judge agreed, so he walked away without any formal charges being laid against him even though he’d used the ration books multiple times.

It was typical of a system that was skewed in favour of the more affluent people in society. In other words, it was a two-tiered system that protected the wealthy and punished the poor simply because of their status. The most senior legal person in Britain, the Solicitor General, was also caught in the net when it was found he had an extra ton and a half of cattle food on his farm. This is the man who oversaw every legal representative in the land, a man who should have been above reproach.

His defence was much the same as the Army’s Chief of Military Police. The judge accepted his excuse on the grounds that because of the amount of government work he was required to do he had ‘accidently’ missed reporting the cattle food. He was let off with a warning. Yet a Civil Defence Heavy Recovery team working in the Dock area of London Docks while the bombing was going on all around them, came across a bottle of liqueur brandy. The team leader decided that his men had been working for long enough and needed a short break. So, he opened the brandy and passed it around, then they got back to work trying to find anyone trapped by the rubble. An ARP warden saw them and reported it and the head of the team was hauled before the courts. In his defence, his barrister said he had an impeccable character and had numerous references to prove it.

He risked his life every day while the bombing was going on and had saved many lives. The judge said: A thief is a thief whatever his role and the cost of the goods and sentenced him to one month’s jail. An appeal eventually saw the charges thrown out but not before the man had already done two weeks in jail. It was a terrible indictment on a system that protected its own. Yet the double standards didn’t stop there. Rationing often drew a distinct line between the ‘Haves and the have-nots.’ When food was rationed in 1940, restaurants were exempt, so those who could afford it supplemented their rations by dining out whenever they could, and the upmarket areas of the cities carried on as if the war didn’t exist. In 1942, restrictions were put on every restaurant.

The first was that no restaurant meal could have more than three courses. The second was that no restaurant could charge more than 5 shillings for a meal (alcohol and coffee excluded.) This had the desired effect on the smaller restaurants causing them to be more frugal in what they chose to offer or serve smaller portions of it so that they could still make a profit on the meal. To ensure that restaurants didn’t just try to get around this through ‘cover charges,’ the restriction also stipulated that the highest cover charge that would be allowed was 7 shillings and 6 pence. The idea was to limit the cost of the meal, the number of courses and the amount of meat and fish it could contain. Yet in the best hotels throughout the country, the wealthy could buy anything from grouse to salmon and deer. They could also drink the finest Brandy and Champagne, including the Military Officers clubs in London and elsewhere.

Because most Members of Parliament went to these Hotels and Clubs the only time something was officially done about it occurred when a black marketeer from Folkstone was caught selling 100,000 eggs to several upmarket hotels in London who all paid twice the market price for them. He was gaoled for 3 years with hard labour and the hotels were fined a £300 each. £300 was a ‘pin prick punishment’ for them as each one would recover the money in less than a few hours of breakfast business.

The system was also socially prejudice when it came to bomb damage. If you rented a home and were bombed out, you received no compensation what so ever. Yet for those that did own a home, or a business they received £500 if they were bombed out plus extra compensation for business goods or household possessions. One enterprising man in London went a little over the top and received 6 years hard labour after claiming to have lost his home 19 times in a three-month period. He received a grand total of £9,500, a King’s Ransom in those days, and worth at least £550,030 today.

Another blot on the landscape were criminals known as ‘Spivs.’ They could be found on almost every street corner in the cities with an open suitcase at their feet, and for a price they could sell you anything. They knew there was a shortage of police on the streets and if one came into view, a lookout would tell them, and they would vanish in an instant. Criminals could get their hands on anything and it wasn’t uncommon for business people to be making a large profit out of government contracts.

Over a 3-year period, a shipbuilder in Liverpool charged an extra 1.8 million pounds for workers he never had. He shot himself when the police eventually came to arrest him. A public servant and a Royal Navy accomplice ended up being sentenced to 10 years each over the fraud for being involved. It was so easy to get away with it too. For example, a soldier’s uniform contained 38 separate items from a battle dress jacket, trousers, underpants, under shirt, shirt, socks, great coat, helmet, helmet chinstrap, side cap, cap badge, boots, boot laces, eyelets on his boots, gaiters, gaiter straps, web belt, insignia on his uniform, bayonet frog, brasses on the belt, equipment webbing, pack, pull through kit for his weapon, sewing kit, studs underneath his boots, boot laces, and 3 sizes of buttons on his uniform (Brass and Bakelite). All these had to be paid for by the government, and then you had his rifle, which had 56 parts to it, or the Bren light machine gun, which had 67 parts, the Sten gun had 47 parts. Not counting all the other weapons big and small the military used.

The Army alone had just under 3 million men in service during 1945, and each one of these men had to have access to numerous items of equipment. In the end the war was so costly the government was forced to borrow a billion pounds from India to keep the British economy afloat on top of the money it borrowed from America and Canada.

When the Americans arrived, they brought with them the PX system, like the British NAFFI, where bottles of spirits and cigarettes especially were freely available. It didn’t take long for some Americans to sell PX spirits and cigarettes to hotels and anyone else who could pay for it. The profits from this source of alcohol were astronomical, and some Americans made themselves huge amounts of money. Mind you the Americans Military also handed out severe penalties for those getting caught. Then there was the selling of the Colt 45 handgun, a favourite of the London underworld. It didn’t take long for the Americans who were once in the Mafia to desert the American military and begin gangs of their own.

Newspapers constantly wrote about the famous ‘Blitz Spirit’ that referred to the public’s Stoic defiance of anything the Germans did during the weeks of constant bombing - particularly Londoners. Throughout the grim days of 1940 and 1941, the Luftwaffe raided the capital on 57 consecutive days and nights. If ever there was a concocted myth, it was the one that said on the Home Front the British people stood as one. Many did, it’s true, but in London, Birmingham, Coventry, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and other cities it didn’t take long before cracks began to appear.

When Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, went to visit the bombed-out areas, he was roundly booed on many occasions as the public was thoroughly fed up with seeing him puffing away on expensive cigars while they smoked terrible Turkish cigarettes and tobacco. On top of everything else gangs of children were given lists of items to steal of bodies in the bombed-out rubble, like rings, and wallets. And people were cutting off fingers to get at rings and other jewellery. It got to the point where almost everyone was involved from Firemen, ARP Wardens, Ambulance, Rescue Teams and the Public in General. It became so bad the Army was required to patrol bombed sites with orders to shoot to kill if necessary.

The Café de Paris was one of the most popular places for Londoners who had the money to relax at night during the Blitz. This was not only because the venue was a night club and restaurant offering different types of live music, including blues and jazz. At twenty feet below ground it was considered the ‘safest and gayest restaurant in town.’ Very few night clubs were given a licence to operate by Westminster Council during the Blitz because of the strict blackout regulations. Yet the Café de Paris became a place of escape in a world full of mayhem. Particularly for army officers and RAF aircrews based in or around London who would race up to the West End to live their often-short lives to the full.

Before the war everyone who was anyone used to frequent the club, including the Prince of Wales. During the war people needed a sense of normalcy and a place where they could forget about the horrors going on all around them, and for those who could afford it this place was the Café de Paris. The night the Café de Paris was hit, Saturday 8 March 1941, it was crowded with dancers and diners in full evening dress. Most of them felt as safer than if they were in the local air raid shelters. That March night, even though a heavy raid (130 tons of high explosive and 30,000 incendiaries) was taking place above the club. The music was provided by West Indian-born swing band leader Ken Johnson, known as ‘Snakehips’ because of his fluent dancing style. His band had just launched into the opening bars of the Andrews Sisters’ hit, ‘Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh!’ and the dance floor was packed. Suddenly there was a blinding blue flash.

Two 110lb (50kg) bombs had struck the Rialto Cinema above the club. They punched though roof of the cinema, then its floor, then smashed their way into the clubs gallery above the band and one detonated. Miraculously the second one didn’t go off and was found sticking into the dance floor of the club. ‘Snakehips’ and most the orchestra, together with restaurant owner Mike Poulsen, were killed outright. In total 30 were killed outright and over 60 were seriously injured. Furniture, instrument cases and stage decorations were hurled in all directions chopping down dancers and people at the tables.

Flying fragments of wine bottles and glass were responsible for many injuries. Sheet music fluttered though clouds of dust. It was a nightmarish scene. The injuries sustained by the merrymakers were horrific and for obvious reasons were not reported at the time. Two men sitting table with the female partners between them were minus their heads but with no other injuries. Their partners had no visible injuries either but were dead. Evening dresses was ripped from the bodies of the dead by the force of the blast. The bomb blast demolished the staircase leading to the dance floor, tearing all of the decorations away from the ceiling. Those that survived struggled to make their way back to ground level through the piles of furniture that blocked the exits. A large number of victims made it to the street bleeding from cuts or carrying the corpses of others.

Albert Weaver, the manager of the Mapleton Hotel, which stood opposite the club, went straight across to the club with torches in order to bring out the injured. Mapleton residents and staff helped carry the injured into the hotel and dressed their wounds before nurses and ambulances arrived. The initial emergency response to the Café de Paris incident wasn’t enough for the number of injured. This was caused by a message sent from the scene to the Westminster Control Centre being misinterpreted. Initially two Heavy Rescue teams, a Mobile Aid post, two stretcher parties and two ambulances were sent. This simply wasn’t enough and extra medical teams and ambulances had to be sent. Meanwhile the injured were sent to hospital in commandeered taxis.

Rescuers were confronted by a macabre scene of mangled corpses. Some victims killed by blast appeared eerily untouched, while a couple, an unidentified man and women, were imprinted on a wall like shadows. The hotel workers were forced to improvise, using champagne to clean wounds. Women tore up their fine evening gowns to use as tourniquets. Some of the escapes were miraculous. One couple in the centre of the blast area escaped without an injuries what so ever. The Café de Paris’ troupe of ten glamorous dancers - due on stage when the bombs struck - were saved because they were still waiting in the wings and were unharmed.

Some survivors even went off to other West End restaurants and clubs to complete their evening’s revels. In sad contrast looters took advantage of the chaos. It was reported that some of the dead had their fingers cut off and wallets and handbags stolen. One thief was caught and before the police could apprehend him angry members of the rescue team had almost killed him. Nevertheless, even among such terrible scenes, one man kept a sense of gallows humour. Carried out on a stretcher, he got a cheer from bystanders when he reputedly called out, ‘At least I didn’t have to pay for dinner.’

(4) Ann Paget - Schoolgirl - Deal - Kent - Dunkirk

It was the 30th of May 1940 and the news about our Army in France was not good. I was having breakfast with my mother and father in the kitchen of our cottage just outside Sandgate in Kent. Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and I looked at my father, he nodded, and I took off like a rocket to open the front door. When I opened it, I had the shock of my life as there was a Police Sergeant standing there, and in those days, Policemen had to be over 6 feet tall, so they were imposing men by any standards. He looked down at me and said, And what is your name little girl? Taking a deep breath, I said, Ann. He bent his knees until he face was level with mine, then he said, Ann, could you ask your father to come to the front door please? With my mouth wide open I rushed back into the kitchen and told my father there was a policeman at the door that wanted to speak to him. Mum called me over while my father got up and went to see the Policemen.

About 10 minutes later he came back into the kitchen and said to Mum, Can you make me some sandwiches and a flask of tea as I have to go somewhere. And he went upstairs When he came back down, he had on the clothes he wore when he went out on the fishing boat. He hugged Mum, and me, gave each of us a kiss and said, Don’t worry, I’ll be away for a few days and he left. We learned later that morning that all the men in that part of Sandgate who were on the fishing boats had been called out and had been taken down to the harbour. They had got on board the boats they used for fishing and left behind a Royal Navy Patrol Boat. It would have been the 4th of June when my father came back, and I was shocked to see the state he was in.

He hadn’t shaved and there were pimples all over his face caused by not shaving, and he stank, but not the fish smell he normally smelled of, it was more of a sweaty smell as if he hadn’t washed since he left. His eyes were red and lined with blood vessels and puffy, I’d never seen them like that before. There were lines all around his eyes as well as bags under them. It was if he hadn’t had any sleep since he walked out the front door. He was obviously exhausted, even at my young age I could see that.

He always wore a white rolled necked woollen pullover under his oil treated cloth jacket and trousers, and they were both filthy, and the left knee in his trousers was torn. Somehow, he’d lost his much loved ‘Greek’ fisherman’s cap, it was his pride and joy, and his boots hadn’t been oiled either, they’d lost their suppleness and cracks were beginning to appear in the leather just above the toecaps. He usually made a point of oiling them daily. Most of all I couldn’t get over the look on his face. He just came in and gave Mum and I a big hug and without saying a word he sat down at the table and put his head in his hands and cried, and I’d never seen my Father cry before, even at his mother’s funeral. Crying was unheard of amongst the hardened fishermen of Sandgate. Mum called to me, and we dragged out the big tub we all used to bathe in, and she began to fill it with hot water out of the large kettle she had put on the stove. She added saucepans of hot water as well.

When the tub was half full, she assisted my father to his feet and literally stripped him of his clothes and told him to get into the bath. His skin was pure white. It was at that point I finally appreciated that he had been somewhere terrible. Whenever possible my Father always shaved, even at sea, as once a beard started to grow, he would come out in pimples, and he hated that. As he sat there, he was staring at nothing, just blinking his eyes and rubbing them with the back of his hands. Mum was pouring water from the tub all over him and gently rubbing him with a bar of soap.

I had never seen my Father like this before and it scared me. Mum went into the larder and brought out the bottle of whiskey that Father only drank on special occasions. She poured him almost double the amount he normally drank. I was quite shocked when I saw her do it. She put it into his hand, and he sipped it slowly and when he’d finished, she gave him a second one.

When Mum had finished washing him, she got him to stand up and she wrapped a towel around him and walked with him upstairs and put him to bed. When she came back down, she looked at me as she could see I was worried. She walked over and hugged me and said, Ann, your Father needs time to rest. Don’t ever ask him any questions about where he has been, or what he saw, when he gets up as he has been to a place where he has seen things that nobody should ever have to see.

Dunkirk was on the radio and in the newspapers for days afterward and when they described what the Royal Navy did and what the small boats did to assist them it dawned on me where Dad and all the other fishermen had been. Every year on the Anniversary of Dunkirk all the men would get together in the local pub and have a few beers. Nobody else was invited, not even their wives. Mum and I would sit at home and have a cup of tea. It was their ritual, not ours. I never ever asked my Father about it, and he never told me. It was a family secret until the day he died.

(5) Rupert Wilton - 100th Engineer Company -

Dunkirk

My company had been ordered to prepared bridges for demolition during the retreat to Dunkirk, so demolition teams were racing ahead of the Army to get things ready and when the last units crossed the bridges we would destroy them. I was in a small Morris truck with four of my men. My maniacal driver, a young sapper named Howard who had just passed his driving course, seemed to have a death wish as he drove. His foot was constantly flat down to the floorboard. Any faster and he would have qualified to be a Spitfire pilot. I was forever reminding him there was no need to try and break the land speed record as the Army was behind us, not in front of us. I got the usual answer Yes Sir! And he’d ease of a few miles per hour, then five minutes later he was back to maximum revolutions.

Standing up in the back and leaning against the cabin roof, thoroughly enjoying themselves, were Sergeant David Black, Corporal ‘China’ Cuppa, and Sapper ‘Tiny’ Reeves, a giant of a man by any standards who just happened to be our Divisional heavyweight boxing champion. Yet temperamentally he was as gentle as a lamb. Right then I was just hoping that there was nothing coming in the opposite direction on this part of the winding road through the wood, because there would be no way we could ever stop if there was. We’d just dropped down into a steep dip, then we shot up a hill on the other side and broke out into the sunlight once again. Suddenly, there in front of us about 200 yards away were three men standing over a dispatch rider sprawled on the road with his motorcycle lying in the roadside ditch.

I screamed out STOP THE TRUCK! and immediately reached for my pistol in its holster on my web belt. Young Howison did a perfect skidding halt, the truck didn’t move an inch sideways, it just slid to a halt about 30 yards from them. I was out the door and running toward the men leaning over the dispatch rider. All I could think of was shouting HALT! - HANDS UP! and I fired one round in the air. It was probably the most stupid thing I have ever done in my life, and I have done a few of them. The 3 of them stood up and then I saw that 2 of them had Smisser machine pistols, the third one was carrying a luger pistol. I went to lower my Smith and Wesson pistol and aim at them knowing that I was going to die very quickly in this standoff, when there was a long chattering burst of fire from behind me and all three of them threw up their arms and toppled over.

Sergeant Blacks voice called out SIR, OF ALL THE REALLY STUPID FUCKING THINGS YOU COULD HAVE DONE, THIS WAS THE WORST ONE TO CHOOSE! As I turned around to agree with him he took aim with his Tommy gun and once again fire another long burst into the bodies. Not 30 seconds later Corporal Cuppe and Sapper Reeves had been dispatched by Sergeant Black and were running passed me. Cuppe stopped about 2 yards short of the bodies and aimed his rifle at them and Reeves knelt down and searched them. In next to no time he had a pile of documents on the ground right next to his leg. He ignored me and yelled, GOT EVERYTHING OFF THEM SARGE. And he walked over to the dispatch rider and rolled him over. HE’S DEAD SARGE, SHOT IN THE CHEST.

Just then there was a loud bang and a shot whistled passed my right ear and instinctively I threw myself on the ground, as did Cuppe and Reeves. Sergeant Black took a look and let off two bursts from his Tommy gun and yelled, THE BASTARD’S ABOUT 50 YARDS UP THE ROAD ON THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE. SEE THAT LONE TREE. HE’S TUCKED IN NEAR THAT. YOU TWO GRAB THOSE SMISSERS AND KEEP HIS HEAD DOWN, I’M GOING AFTER HIM. And he leapt from the truck and pushed his way through the hedge and began firing 5 round bursts as he advance up the inside of the hedge row. The other two grabbed the Smissers and began firing bursts around the area of the tree. It wasn’t long before there was another long burst of fire from the Tommy gun and then all was silent. Next we saw Sergeant Blacks beret being waved in the air, a signal that he had got the man. He pulled the body out through the hedge and dumped it on the road. He then walked back through the hedge and came back with two suitcases and a rifle. He searched the body and came up with a number of items. He smashed the rifle against the road and broke it in two and left it there and brought the suitcases back to me. In one there was a portable radio and along with it were some signals books. We’d take that with us and give it to HQ when we found them. The other had clothing in it and would you believe it, a large amount of French Francs tucked into the lid.

All of us looked at it and after a short discussion found a perfectly solution rather than hand it in, so we split it equally five ways and it fitted neatly into our battle dress pockets. After all, the Germans would have no further reason to use it would they? We smashed up the motor cycle, put the body of the dispatch rider on the back of the truck and buried him not far from the bridge we had to blow up. I took one of the tags from around his neck and I handed it in when we finally got back to the Company. Young Howard made a really nice cross for the grave. We left the German spies where they were. When I finally made it home after several run ins with Stuka Dive Bombers and ME109’s, I handed the money into my bank and they changed it into English pounds without any problems what so ever, Thank God!

(6) Lionel Rivers - MB ‘Ride of The Valkyrie’ -

Dunkirk

Lenny my mate and I volunteered to take a motor boat across to Dunkirk. While I helped steer the boat Lenny put things away in the lockers so there was as much space as possible for the pongos when they came aboard. The owner of the boat, Arthur Conlin, an accountant in the normal world, took turns at the wheel, but I’ve told him that once we get there, I’ll have to take over. He’s competent enough but being under fire and handling a boat is a bit different from going on a cruise around Herne Bay. Around us, there are dozens of boats big and small coming toward us, and even in the dark, you can see they are jam-packed with pongo’s all hanging on for dear life.

One of these small boats just missed us about halfway across, probably because the crew are exhausted. It was a small boat similar to ours, how they were able to handle it amazed me as there was no room anywhere on the deck or even in the wheelhouse. I think we’ll be the last boats going to Dunkirk according to the scuttlebutt back at Ramsgate. We arrive just before dawn and what faced us along the shoreline was absolutely incredible.

There were fires all along the beach and some distance away Dunkirk was like a bad bonfire night experiment. The whole place seemed to be burning from end to end. And off to one side, there was a huge fire caused by the Jerry’s destroying a large fuel depot. The flames were leaping about 150 feet in the air and the smoke from it drifted everywhere. On the sand long lines of men were waiting patiently to be picked up. There a long wooden mole in Dunkirk that can take bigger ships, but smaller boats run alongside a mole made out of trucks driven into the water at low tide that allows men to walk along and drop into boats like ours sitting alongside it.

There a big gap about three-quarters of the way along and mangled trucks lay on their side where a bomb had thrown them. Someone had brought a couple of planks and now there is a zigzag walkway onto the trucks and back onto the main part of the metal mole which runs for several trucks further out. We pull in at the very end and soon we are full up with men, about 40 or 50 of them all standing shoulder to shoulder. I reverse out, slowly turning the boat around and head for one of the bigger ships circling out to sea. It turns