Twice the Man

By Rodney Angell

Rod Angell has woven the details of his eventful life into a vivid story of “rags to a comparatively comfortable retirement.”

He was born in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash and the poverty of his family, struggling in the Depression to live and care for their children on a scanty income; however, all this was of lesser importance to him in later life than being born in the same year as Popeye!

Follow the account of a Yorkshire tyke as he reveals in quite vivid detail the life of a childhood in the ’30s, enduring all the gamut of childhood ailments and disease in a time before drugs, antibiotics, and the wonder of penicillin.

He discusses life as a wartime evacuee, progressing with humorous anecdotes and drama into a challenging, action-filled life as a Grenadier Guardsman on active service and then a drummer to the Royal Household, with all the pomp and ceremony that was his lot. He also tells of the many royal and state occasions he was a part of. The final part of his working life was as a firefighter, with its many challenges, ending his career in the rank of divisional commander.

This book is not the story of two men, but of one who, after a demanding life as a soldier, followed by a dangerous one as a firefighter, surely became twice the man he was.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Aug 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543490008

Rodney Angell

Another autobiography? Not likely! Rather, a collection of some memories from my childhood days which were lived through the early years of depression, then learning to accept a boyhood lived within the confines and shortages of war for six long years, finally followed by forty years in uniform. Every small boy has dreams of what he would like to be when he grows to be a man, and I was no exception save that I had two visions of my future place in the grown up world, and whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my reply was always the same “I want to be a soldier wearing a black fur hat outside the King’s palace, or a Fireman who drives a big red Fire Engine with a loud bell on it!” As fate had it, I was very fortunate in achieving not one, but both ambitions in my manhood, as a Grenadier Guardsman, and a Firefighter hence my title of ‘TWICE THE MAN’ When I retired finally from the Fire and Rescue Service, I became active in another direction for a further thirty years, becoming involved in a variety of exciting and rewarding ventures, but that will have to be the stuff of another book, and I wonder if I would be treading on the toes of a certain Mr Harry Lime, if I were to entitle that result “A THIRD MAN”?........time will tell…

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TWICE

THE MAN

RODNEY ANGELL

Copyright © 2020 by Rodney Angell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/17/2020

Xlibris

800-056-3182

www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

732217

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Infancy

Chapter 2 Christmas When I Was A Little Lad!

Chapter 3 Operation Pied Piper

Chapter 4 A Wartime Holiday ‘Romance’ (Of Sorts!)

Chapter 5 A Wartime Visitor

Chapter 6 A Titch With An Itch!

Chapter 7 Strange Characters!

Chapter 8 The Street Fire Party, Chickens, And Eggs! (1941)

Chapter 9 Taylors And D-Day, ⁶Th June 1944

Chapter 10 A Far Distant Drum Starts A-Beating

Chapter 11 Called To The Sea? - Goodbye Sailor!

Chapter 12 A Boy Soldier Of The King- Part 1

Chapter 13 A Boy Soldier Of The King- Part 2

Chapter 14 ‘All Is Not Well, Sir!’

Chapter 15 Brothers In Khaki

Chapter 16 A Uniformed Presence In The Holy Land!

Chapter 17 Good Friday In Nazareth

Chapter 18 The Bugler Of Mareth

Chapter 19 How The Fifties Started For Me

Chapter 20 Tripoli In Another Age!

Chapter 21 The Night They Were Sleeping In The Mall

Chapter 22 On Leaving The Army, When The Bells Went Down!

Chapter 23 Oh! For A Closer Walk With God

Chapter 24 Kismet

For Barbara, Vicky, Becky, Violet, Christopher,

John T and my Brother, John.

PREFACE

Another autobiography? Not likely! Rather, this is a collection of some memories from my childhood days which were lived through the early years of depression, then learning to accept a boyhood lived within the confines and shortages of war for six long years, and finally spending forty years in uniform.

Every small boy has dreams of what he would like to be when he grows to be a man. I was no exception, save that I had two visions of my future place in the grown-up world. Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my reply was always the same ‘I want to be a soldier wearing a black fur hat outside the King’s palace or a fireman who drives a big red fire engine with a loud bell on it!’

As fate had it, I was very fortunate in achieving not one but both ambitions in my manhood, as a Grenadier Guardsman, and a firefighter (the beginnings of this career is touch upon in the last chapters of my book) hence my title of ‘Twice the man’

When I retired finally from the Fire and Rescue Service, I became active in another direction for a further thirty years, by becoming involved in a variety of exciting and rewarding ventures. But that will have to be the stuff of another book, and I wonder if I would be treading on the toes of a certain Mr Harry Lime if I were to entitle that result a ‘Third man’? Time will tell.

CHAPTER 1

INFANCY

THE CITY OF LEEDS, into which I was born at 7.30 p.m. on Thursday, twenty fifth of July 1929, in the small bedroom of 1a Craven Street, was much different from the neon-lit skyscraper ‘fairyland’ of modern times.

The streets were all cobbled, making every cartwheel send rattles and rumbles echoing as a constant cacophony into the smoke-filled atmosphere, the result of the hundreds of mill chimneys and small coal fires in the thousands of back-to-back dwellings. If one happened to see straw laid on the cobbles outside any of those little houses, it was a sure sign that someone inside was bedridden with any of the multitude of diseases around at the time, and the straw was an attempt to deaden the sound of the cart wheels rumbling past from early morning to late at night. Not so much in the back streets perhaps, but increasingly so in the broader roads where the traffic was heavier and the houses much bigger – occupied by the more affluent families of mill departmental managers, school teachers, and the like. There was only room for Mummy and Daddy’s bed in the tiny bedroom, which meant that their baby boy had a make-shift cot in one of the drawers from the bedside unit. This, above all else, forced them to search for cheap alternative accommodation.

Eventually we moved to a house in Lillian Place, Burley, Leeds, when I was about eighteen months old. The earliest memory I have of that time is of clutching at mummy’s legs and asking for ‘cakey-bread’, a small crust of a loaf end, spread frugally with margarine and dipped in sugar! For my drinks of milky tea, I had a small cream enamel mug. (Saved broken crockery I suppose.)

I was told later that, when my brother Wilfred arrived on the scene in October 1931, my reaction on being introduced to my little baby brother was to start screaming and sobbing ‘kick-him, kick-him.’ There had been another little baby boy before me who died within minutes of birth, so had he lived, would he have reacted in the same way to me, I wonder?

Up to the time of getting married in 1927, my dad had been employed since leaving school in 1920 at the age of fourteen as a delivery boy, then store man, for a large pharmaceutical firm in the heart of Leeds City centre. His pay as a boy was about five shillings (25p) a week. I remember him telling me that a regular delivery he made, at least twice a week, was a large glass carboy of some liquid chemical on his delivery ‘wheels’ trolley. This was a small platform holding the carboy off the ground, with its body resting against the two upright staves kept apart by ladder-like rounds and terminating at the top with handles for pushing. The whole contraption was propelled along on two small iron wheels. Anything more cumbersome or demanding could only be imagined.

This delivery would take him from the centre of Leeds to the far reaches of the Harehills suburb area, a distance of about six miles. It was quite a long way for a young lad to push the great weight of a full carboy, and then push the darned trolley all the way back again, carrying an empty returned carboy from the previous delivery. Relief came from this soul-destroying job when he was about twenty one and he became a van driver’s mate for the ‘Standard Yeast Company’, a firm of confectioners supplies purveyors in the Armley suburb of the city, this carried a bigger wage packet of about 17s 6d. (72.5p) weekly. This enabled him and my mum to get married on the twelth of June 1927 and move into the house in Woodhouse, where I was born.

In those days there was no requirement to have a driving test in order to get the necessary licence to drive, so, after a few lessons, my dad moved from his position of mate to being a driver himself. This meant more money in his weekly wage packet and he started bringing £1 home, which enabled the move to Lillian Place, where because it was a through house, they were able to sub-let their front parlour and bedroom out to a couple of their friends, Lucy and Joe Solomon, for the princely sum of another two shillings (10p) a week, a very useful addition to the weekly household running costs. The young couple remained family friends all their lives, becoming known as Auntie Lucy and Uncle Joe Solomon, remaining as such right up till their deaths in the late seventies. Joe had a very good job as a salesman with Marshall and Snelgrove, a large city centre department store, and at the time of his retirement in the sixties he was a Buyer for the same concern.

My dad would bring his van home sometimes to our house in Lilian Place. That was my first introduction to the flag of our country, for the logo of ‘The Standard Yeast Company’ was the Union flag, and this was displayed in all its bright colours of red, white, and blue on the side of the van. It was a proud little boy who posed for Mummy as she took an early snapshot of myself at the age of three or thereabouts, standing with my daddy and the van. I was fascinated, I suppose, by the fact that my daddy could actually sit in a seat at the front of this big thing, and make it move along the road, giving a loud ‘parp’ as he pressed the big rubber bulb of the motor horn on the side of his van door frame.

As I grew a little older, I started to spend more time with my gran Peggy (Dad’s mum) who lived with the chap I called Grandad Jim, and an assortment of teenage girls (my aunties), and two young men – one was Uncle Jack (son of Gran’s dead sister), and the other Uncle Edgar, my gran’s younger brother. What a huge bustling family! (and only my dad was her own blood child!) I was loved and spoiled by all of them, which was a relief to my mum, who was struggling to make ends meet on my dad’s meagre wages, and she had another young child of three years (my brother Wilfred) to look after too. So, I almost became a permanent fixture at my gran’s huge house on Burley Road in Leeds.

The basement area had a huge cooking range in one room, and another room into which, on one day each week, about five bags of coal were deposited down a chute from the outside of the house, by the coalman and his mate. They used to arrive in the back street behind the house with a loud rumbling of the coal-cart wheels on the cobbles, and the metallic scraping of the shire-horses’ shoes as the two huge beasts heaved to pull the heavily laden cart and its huge pile of coal sacks. As I stood gazing in awe I was told by the coalman as he went about his dirty task, that the horses were called draught horses (or ‘draft ‘osses’ in his broad Yorkshire tongue). One day he held me up to one of them with a piece of carrot held out on my trembling tiny hand. I needn’t have been frightened because the lovely animal just looked at me with great big brown eyes, and very softly nuzzled the carrot from the little human platform with a very soft touch of hairy lips, and gave a big snort as the coalman lowered me to the ground again with a huge grin. I scampered into the house shouting … ‘Grandma! – Grandma! The ‘coley-man’ let me feed his ‘orse!’

I had five aunties who were living with Gran: Rhoda (the eldest), Florrie, Edith, Dolly, and Violet. They all slept in the huge attic bedroom, sharing two double beds. I generally slept in a bed with Rhoda (she was my godmother) and Florrie. Edith, Dolly, and Violet slept in the other. There were no toilet facilities up in the top of the house, but under each bed was a huge chamber pot, called a ‘po’. One night there was a great ‘to-do’ when Auntie Florrie had an accident with one ‘po’ and there was wee all over the lino! Auntie Florrie covered up her embarrassment by shouting – ‘It’s nowt to giggle at Rodney, anyway, you shouldn’t be peeping!’

All the girls worked at the ‘British Screw Company’ on Kirkstall Road, and one Saturday morning, they took me with them because the Lord Mayor was visiting the factory to open a new wing. One of the sheds was working, to show visitors what happened in the works, and I was frightened at first as I saw the big belts flapping and banging as they raced along just under the big glass roof. Others came down from the pulley wheels to the machines where the girls stood looking after them, while hundreds of screws of all sizes tumbled out and clattered down into metal bins underneath. I was puzzled by a little tap over the machines and caused a lot of giggles amongst the girls when I asked why the screw machines had to be washed all the time by the ‘soapy water taps’. My auntie Rhoda explained that it was something to do with stopping the machines from ‘over eatin’’ (meaning it was getting too hot and over heating). I found that a little confusing, as I had heard one girl telling another that her machine was ready for feeding again!

Every Thursday night my aunties lined up, with potato-sacking aprons on, and Gran would allocate a weekly cleaning task to each of them. This resulted in every floor in the house being scrubbed, all the fireplace irons black leaded, boots and shoes cleaned, and ironing done for the entire household etc. Gran was meticulous, having been in service herself as a girl, and inspected every job before letting the person doing it clear up and go off to have some leisure.

There were so many in the household that meals were eaten at a long scrubbed wooden table with benches down each side (Grandad Jim had made the benches) and, except for Sundays, the table was always covered with newspaper, only being revealed in its scrubbed pristine whiteness for Sunday dinner.

Dinner on a Sunday was always a huge joint of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding (cooked round the joint of course), huge mounds of creamy mashed potatoes, butter beans, mushy peas, and lovely thick beefy gravy with the meat juices in it! We didn’t have a sweet pudding on Sundays, I don’t think we could have eaten any either. Before this meal, two of the girls had to take old empty Teacher’s Whisky bottles to the ‘beer out sales’ counter at the Burley Hotel and get them filled with Tetley’s bitter. Everyone had a glass, or a cup, of beer with the dinner – even me!

One summer I caught Scarlet fever and my gran kept me in bed because I became quite ill. Being the early 1930’s of course, medicines were very primitive. Antibiotics and penicillin etc. were things of the future! My mum ‘upset the apple cart’ when she telephoned Seacroft Hospital to ask how I was, unaware that Gran had kept my illness ‘under wraps’ (literally). Half an hour later there was such a commotion down in the bowels of the house as Leeds City Ambulance men explained to Gran that I had to go with them to Seacroft Hospital, because I could not be nursed at home while suffering with a ‘notifiable disease’! After they had departed with me to Seacroft a team arrived at the house, and after telling everyone to get out, the whole of the house was ‘stoved’ − a process which involved a type of smoke bomb being placed in the house with all doors and windows firmly shut – for about four hours. Gran was exploding too, only calming down when Grandad Jim suggested that the family should go along and wait in ‘The Irish Duck Egg’, a large back street house nearby which had been converted into a small licensed premises, complete with a tiny platform for a stage and a piano.

Meanwhile, I was arriving at hospital, where I stayed for five weeks in a bed with sliding barred sides. I can’t remember much of that stay in hospital, as I was only four years of age. A few memories linger however, like the huge rocking horse in the middle of the shiny lino floor, it just stayed there to be looked at. I can’t remember seeing anyone on it … ever! Thinking of those days makes me realise just how far medicine has progressed over the eighty years or so since then and whoever hears of a child going to the hospital with Scarlet fever these days?

Another memory I have is ‘flitting’ from our home one night in 1934, a common practice in those days if, for various reasons, a rapid change of dwelling was required! Flitting was always carried out at night-time, with possessions piled high on a cart, leaving an empty house for the landlord to find when next he called for the rent. However, I think we were just moving to a new house for the convenience of my mum and dad to be near the house where my mum’s sister Ethel lived with her husband, my uncle Reg, a constable in Leeds City Police Force. They were fairly well off because a constable was paid £3-10s (£3-50p) a week. The house we left in Lilian Place was taken over in full, I believe, by Lucy and Joe Solomon so Dad wasn’t actually ‘flitting’ in the usual way by leaving a trail of unpaid rent behind him!

We moved on the back of an old van, and I remember sitting with my mum and little brother Wilfred on the flat boards behind the driver’s cab. (The driver was a friend of Dad’s at the Standard Yeast Company.) The date stands out in my memory as it was ‘Bonfire Night’ and I gazed in wonder as we passed through the streets lit up with the many fires and the multi coloured displays of fireworks.

We eventually arrived at a small back-to-back house in the back streets of the suburb of Harehills, but stayed for only one night, as the house had bugs! It was a common thing in those days to go into an empty house and be struck immediately by the unmistakable smell which betrayed the presence of these horrible things. They would live in the walls, until new residents moved in, at which point the bugs immediately moved from wall to bed – jumping and crawling (for they don’t have wings) – and once ensconced in the bed with the sleeping human hosts, they proceeded to suck human blood. Their proper name is ‘Cimex lectularius’ but to mummy they were ‘bloody bed bugs!’ ‘First thing tomorrow, Sidney’ she said, ‘we’re out of here I’m not living in a house with bloody bed bugs eating my kids!’ The kids being myself, aged five, Wilfred, who was just three; and our new baby sister – Patsy – about fourteen months.

We moved the very next day to Number eleven Bellbrooke Grove off Harehills Lane, a nice little back street, with about four stone steps up to the door. This is where I promptly did my ‘party piece’ which entailed inching my way round the railings outside the door, using the bare inch or so of the toe hold along the edge of the slab to touch the house wall, and then gingerly retreating back to safety, which I never achieved! To this day, a careful examination of the space between my top lip and my nose will reveal the minute black specks of coal left there when I inevitably fell down into the area by the outside coal chute grate, thereby driving my bottom teeth through my top lip!

Within days I was taken a few hundred yards over Harehills Lane to be enrolled in the beginners’ class of the infants department of Brownhill Council School, to continue my ‘education’ where I had left off at my previous school (Burley Lawn Infants) in Cardigan Road near Gran’s house in Burley.

What with being in the hospital and other family matters, it had been reasonably fine weather during my first experience of school life earlier that year, but it was now November! After the compulsory hour on the camp beds in the school hall after dinner (lunch), we sat on the big tufted rug in front of the big blazing fire with its huge mesh fireguard while the teacher started to read to us from ‘Uncle Remus’ – I cut my story reading teeth on ‘Brer Rabbit’, the ‘Tar Baby’ and company! As I sat listening to the story, idly gazing at the fireguard mesh on which the thirty or so tiny bottles of milk rested every morning – ‘To dispel the chill for your little tummies!’ explained teacher.

I suddenly became aware that the lights were on, and it was night outside the classroom window. Up I jumped with a shout of ‘No!’ and ran as fast as my little legs would carry me out of the classroom, through the schoolyard, and all the way across Harehills Lane, to my home, where my mummy listened to me screaming that the ‘school people’ wanted to keep me all night! It was about three thirty, on a mid-November’s afternoon, and getting dark, so of course this little five-year-old child thought that he had been kidnapped! I shudder to think of a little one running across the Harehills Lane of today. There were very few cars in those days, of course, perhaps one every ten minutes or so, and then only being driven at moderate speeds!

My dad was experiencing great difficulty finding work. He had lost his job with the ‘Standard Yeast Company’ when we moved across the city to Harehills, and in desperation, he borrowed a little ‘starter’ of about £3 from Uncle Reg to get himself launched in working for himself. He scrounged the loan of a hand basket from the local butcher, and he started getting up at about 4 a.m. in the morning and walking all the way down into Leeds, where he would get all the ‘giveaways’ he could obtain from ‘Butchers’ Row’ in the retail butchery row in Leeds indoor market, Dad then spent a few pence also on other items such as polony, pork pies, brawn, etc. When his basket was filled to the brim, he would cover it with the clean piece of cloth from home and trudge all the way back. After a nice cup of hot tea at