Tag Archives: Bomber Command

by | October 5, 2023 · 6:17 am

Goose Fair (2)

Goose Fair always brought with it a host of what could be called “camp followers” who, to be honest, would probably have made their way to pretty well every large fair in the country.

Wandering the streets, therefore, were a good number of distinctively dressed gypsy women, who sold “tickling sticks”, bags of confetti, balls on elastic, ropes of beads and “monkeys on sticks”. All vital commodities in Victorian England!

The gypsy women were extremely popular as fortune tellers, and were always recognisable as such because they traditionally carried a linnet in a cage at the end of a long, thin staff.

And in this photograph of a gipsy woman, notice the boy’s funky pillbox hat. Eagerly, he ia waiting for the birth of  Bob Dylan:

A linnet was chosen, incidentally, because:

“When finches come into our awareness, it is a sure sign of joy-filled, happy times ahead.”

I knew that.

Here are some “sundry sellers, who no doubt had access to their own private supplies of tickling sticks, bags of confetti, balls on elastic, ropes of beads and monkeys on sticks:

And at the other end of the spectrum, a little further away, on Upper Parliament Street, around the columns in front of the Theatre Royal, stood the “nymphs of fashion”.

Here are the columns of the Theatre Royal which is to the left of the now long demolished Empire Theatre :

The “nymphs of fashion” were what we would nowadays call prostitutes. They charged men for their sexual favours. Here’s one of the hottest, preparing to drive the young men wild, or perhaps straight to their doctor:

And here she is without her make-up. Surely, I’m not the only one who thinks that’s a man:

Setting aside for a moment the delights of these disease ridden lovelies, I investigated the attractions which appeared most frequently at Goose Fair around 1900. I discovered that, on Long Row, there was “Wadbrook’s Ghost Exhibition” with the celebrated “Pepper’s Illusion”. In front of the Exchange Building, Pat Collins had his roundabouts including his “Mountain Ponies”, his “Venetian Gala Gondolas” and his “Pneumatic Steam Bicycles”. There was “music produced by electricity on the latest musical instrument, the “Gaviolophone”, equivalent to a String Band of 60 performers, playing Opera, Classical and Popular Music.”

Incidentally, here’s Long Row to the north of the Old Market Square. The western end:

The central area:

And finally, the eastern end, with the incomparable Black Boy Hotel, which, during the Second World War, supplied all of the beds required for the sexual adventures of every single member of Bomber Command in all the RAF bases for fifty miles around:

There may well have been “Wadbrook’s Ghost Exhibition” with “Pepper’s Illusion”. There may well have been roundabouts such as the “Mountain Ponies”, the “Venetian Gala Gondolas” and the “Pneumatic Steam Bicycles”. Despite all of them, though, despite even the “Gaviolophone”, many people, and all the children, still liked to see a few exotic animals, no matter how moth eaten they might have appeared.

By 1898, Day’s “No 1 Royal Menagerie” had returned to the Market Square after a short absence. Day’s was “a Special Engagement of the Greatest Lion Tamers on Earth” with “Captain Laurance & Delvonico, The Lion Kings” (96 years before Disney!). There were “20 noble lions of all ages and sizes” who provided the members of “Delvonico’s Wrestling Lions”, “Delvonico’s Boxing Lions”, “The Clown Lions” and “A Lion in a Trance”. All of them were acts which had been “The Rage and Talk of Europe”, as was “The Daring Performance of Captain Laurance” along with “the only Real Original and Absolutely Untameable Lion Wallace”. Wallace had also appeared in 1896 and 1897. He doesn’t look very fierce in this photograph, though:

Among the animals were “Many Specimens of Birds, Beasts and Reptiles” some of which must have been stuffed, as there was actually a humming bird mentioned, a species which, even nowadays, cannot easily be kept in captivity. At the same time though, there was an elephant called “Elephant Jumbo” who was surely a live animal, as an elephant would be a bit of a nightmare for the taxidermist.

Overall, the proprietors of Day’s “No 1 Royal Menagerie” were happy to call themselves, “The People’s Show at the People’s Price”.

Slightly less exotic as animals were Mr Pat Collins’ “Giant Nottingham Geese, All Alive and Kicking”:

“For rollicking fun, there’s nothing to beat them

If you are “out for the night” don’t miss them;

And while you are there, try the razzle-dazzle cars

Drawn by ostriches, and spinning round at lightning speed.”

And the judges’ verdicts……….. “No rhyme and very little reason.”

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by | September 23, 2023 · 6:17 am

Newark Air Museum (2)

Last time we looked at some of the Cold War aircraft in the Newark Air Museum, but there are a good many civil aircraft as well, most of them from this same period.

Let’s start with the exception, though, which would be the Avro Anson, even though this normally peace loving multi-engined aircrew trainer was originally designed as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft. In World War Two, the Anson finished up instead as the mainstay of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in North America, training pilots, navigators, air gunners and radio operators. Newark’s Anson C.19, though, was used as a light transport and communications aircraft. Top speed : 182 mph. The Anson is the bigger silver aircraft. The custard coloured one is a Taylor JT.1 Monoplane.

The Handley Page Hastings began life as the C1 troop-carrier and freight transport aircraft. The aircraft married a completely new fuselage to the wings which had been designed for the abandoned HP.66 bomber development of the existing Handley Page Halifax. This particular individual, TG517, was used in the Berlin Airlift, and then in meteorological flights and finally in the Cod Wars against the evil Icelanders from 1958-1976 . It had begun its career as a completely ordinary C1 but in 1958 was converted for RAF Bomber Command, acquiring a ventral radome to train V-bomber crews on the Navigation Bombing System (NBS). Top speed : 348 mph

The DH.104 Dove was a short-haul airliner manufactured by de Havilland. The aircraft was the monoplane successor to the pre-war Dragon Rapide biplane and was intended as a short-haul feeder for large airlines and airports. The Dove carried eight passengers and two crew, and overall, it was very popular, sales being in excess of five hundred.  Top speed : 210 mph

Now we reach a few nasty foreigners, beginning with the Russkies whose simple plan was to enslave us all. To do that, they might well have used the Mikoyan-Gurevich Mig-27, codenamed “Flogger”. This was a swing wing ground attack fighter based on the basic airframe of the MiG-23, but with a revised nose, hence its Russian nickname of “Platypus”. The “Flogger” was also used by Sri Lanka and later it was licence-produced in India by Hindustan Aeronautics as the Bahadur (“Valiant”).      Top speed : 1,171 mph.

This next aircraft is French. It is a Dassault MD.454 Mystère IV and was used primarily in the 1950s and 60s as a fighter-bomber. It was the first French aircraft to break the sound barrier, and the first transonic aircraft to enter service with the French Air Force. It saw action with both the French and Israeli air forces in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and then again with the Israeli Air Force during the 1967 Six Day War, fighting Mig-17s and Mig-19s.

The Newark Air Museum also has a good many objects connected with the Dambusters’ Raid of May 17th 1943. They have a propeller from the crashed “S-Sugar” of 617 Squadron:

There is the relevant page from the logbook of Guy Gibson:

There is a piece of fuselage from a Lancaster:

And a man inside it demonstrates how many garments he has to wear:

There is a mid-upper turret from a Lancaster:

And finally, you can see the weight and distinctive shape of one of Barnes Wallis’ “Bouncing Bombs”, codenamed “Upkeep”. This particular bomb was built for testing purposes and was recovered from the waters off Reculver in Kent by Andrew Hemsley and the personnel of 101 Field Regiment TA, and 22 and 223 Squadrons.

All photographs courtesy of Lauren Knifton Fainberg

 

 

 

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by | May 17, 2023 · 6:17 am

Hendon objects 3

In my last blog post about the non-flying exhibits in the museum at Hendon in north London, we were looking at some of the objects and various pieces of metal which had been rescued from aircraft as they awaited their turn in the scrapyard. These treasures were all housed in the RAF Museum which my family and I visited as long ago as 2010.

In my first two blog posts, I made an effort to include mostly things that were associated with the ground, such as a battleship, medals and the metal cross from a dog’s collar. This time, though, the objects are supposed to be connected more closely with the air.

We have therefore, some examples of the nose art on RAF Lancasters and other Bomber Command bombers.

This one comes from an aircraft in one of the Polish squadrons of the RAF:

This aircraft has all of its missions marked carefully, although I do not know whether the white or yellow colouration has any significance:

This is the artwork on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. In general, American artwork tended to be less inhibited than in the RAF:

Here’s what looks like a wasp type creature on a B-24 Liberator of the Indian Air Force:

These bombing raid symbols are just about the neatest that you could ever get. Note the quotation from Herman Goering underneath them:

“No enemy plane will fly over the Reich Territory.”     Herman Goering

The bombing raid symbols also contain three medal ribbons for the Distinguished Flying Crosses or Distinguished Flying Medals won by members of the crew. The one with blue and red in the medal I do not know. The name of the medal recipient was painted underneath the engine nacelles. Here is Pilot Officer Tottenham:

And Pilot Officer McManus:

This aircraft was “S-Sugar” within the squadron. As well as on the side of the fuselage, the single letter appears on the nose:

And also on the tailfins:

I don’t know what the little aircraft is. Possibly, it is a training aircraft. If you know its identity, please indicate in the Comments Section.

The museum has a couple of bombs on show.

This appears to me to be a standard 4,000lb “cookie” which carried the maximum bombload inside a very thin skin so as to create the biggest blast possible. That would blow the roofs off and allow the incendiaries to get inside the buildings and start their work:

This is a “Grand Slam” ten ton bomb, designed to penetrate the ground at more than the speed of sound and then to explode, creating a vast empty space deep in the ground. The technical term for this is a camouflet, an artificial cavern created by an explosion. Whatever is above it, buildings, railways, bridges, whatever, can then collapse into the void.

It was an incredible sight, my Dad always said, to see a Lancaster getting off the runway carrying this enormous weight. The aircraft would invariably struggle and he always described its wings as “being like a huge crescent”, although somehow, the gallant aircraft always managed to get into the sky:

It was when he was with 617 Squadron in late 1944 and 1945 that Fred had seen Lancasters staggering into the air armed with these gigantic bombs. I did ask him in the latter stages of his life if he remembered any of the places he had bombed, but, alas, he was too old by then. He added that from his point of view, so many of the targets were names he had never heard before. And I suppose with “Mimoyecques” he does have a point!  The only target he did in fact remember were the U-boat pens in Brest. The crews were all told to make sure that they dropped their bombs well in the middle of each protective concrete roof. Otherwise, they would stand little chance of doing very much damage.

These extraordinary ten ton weapons were used operationally by 617 Squadron from March 14th 1945 onwards.

And finally, here’s one of those hypnotic spinner patterns beloved of the Luftwaffe. They always seem to appear in the newsreels from the early part of the war:

PS :  Forgive the weird colours in the previous photographs, but this entire floor was lit with special lighting to preserve the original Bomber Command matt black.

Here is some modern nose art from the 1970s. This was on the nose of a Handley Page Victor V-Bomber which had been preserved without the rest of the aircraft:

And finally, here is an English Electric Lightning fighter of the early sixties, proudly displaying its tiger badges. Firstly, on the nose itself, there are the two stylised versions either side of the RAF roundel:

And here is the  animal proper on the aircraft’s tail:

This Mach-2 fighter was operated by 74 Squadron and this is the Tiger scheme from the days when they were the RAF display team in 1962.

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by | January 23, 2023 · 6:17 am

Why I am what I am (3)

 

I have always had a soft spot for the RAF because Fred was in the RAF and he talked about it a lot.

I have alway been fascinated by aircraft because Fred liked aircraft, ever since one of Sir Alan Cobham’s finest landed in Startin’s Field at the back of his house.

Fred always admired the Spitfire as the aircraft that saved England……

And he always said that the Wellington was “a reliable old crate”……

But he always reserved his most emotional words for the Avro Lancaster. “It would always get you back home, no matter what”, which wasn’t strictly 100% true, but it gave him sufficient faith to get into the aircraft in the first place……

 

I have always tried to do my duty and to carry out all of my obligations. This is probably connected with Fred’s belief that there were two types of men in the world. One kind was the fighter pilot who was mercurial and brilliant, but occasionally capable of great inconsistency.

In contrast, the bomber pilot was always dependable like some kind of stolid, courageous bus driver, who could always be relied on to deliver the goods, in considerable quantity, to the right place at the right time.

When I was young, I as always very upset when I was told  that I was the bomber pilot type. I always felt that Fred was saying that I lacked flair and imagination, that I was boring and that I was incapable of the type of success which is spectacular and excites people. Only in later years did I realise how from Fred’s point of view the bomber pilot was exactly what you needed. As one author has put it, the relationship between the bomber pilot and the wireless operator was that “his fate was my fate”. At least nineteen times, therefore, Fred entrusted his very life to a bomber pilot, and then had this faith rewarded by not becoming one of the 55,573 Bomber Command casualties…..

As a negative, I have always been partial to a drink, because Fred always used to have a drink when he wanted to. With his PTSD, though, he had a much better excuse than me.

Another negative related to this is my own great anxiety in the face of any future event or, especially, a journey to somewhere unfamiliar. Fred had exactly the same problems. In his case, I suspect that he still had that old fear of getting into his bomber and facing the possibility of an imminent and violent death.

I always felt great anxiety about being sacked from my job because Fred  always had the exact same fear. That was because he worked for a clay mining company before the war, and they did not hesitate to sack people. “One strike, and you’re out!” as you might say. Here’s Fred at Ensor’s, with the rest of the workforce. It’s around 1937…..

I have very little self-confidence because Fred was always very keen that I should never stand out from the common herd. He therefore prevented me from getting big headed by criticising whatever I did and at best giving it minimal praise. He would say “Never stand out. Never be different” because that was what the upper echelons of the RAF hierarchy wanted to happen. Unfortunately, to succeed, you need to stand out, and you will have to be different to do that.

Fred always used to watch out for me coming home if ever I was late. He would lean over the front gate as if by accident or coincidence. I absolutely hated it, and I could cheerfully have shot him. I hated the idea of being controlled. Now I have my own daughter, and although my methods have always been, I hope, a little bit more subtle, I have always done pretty much the same thing. Still, worrying about your child is better than just not bothering where they get to.

When I was a little boy, Fred took me to a local medieval church where I could see where Robin Hood used to sharpen the tips of his arrows on the stones of the back wall. I now live in Sherwood in Nottingham. Less than half a mile away is an ancient ford over a stream. This site has been seriously suggested in at least one book as the location of Robin Hood’s camp.

The local medieval church was St Michael with St Mary’s in Melbourne, Derbyshire. ……….

Some of the grooves for Robin Hood and his Merry Men’s arrowheads are visible in the bottom right of the picture. The church is Norman as is shown by the shape of the arch and the many concentric rings of decoration around the top of the door……..

The columns are stout and broad, just like Durham Cathedral, and the arches similarly rounded, not pointed. Notice the Australian flag which commemorates the links between Melbourne in England and Melbourne in Australia……

And finslly, as I slowly but surely morph into my own father, I have started telling the same old stories over and over again, just like Fred did.

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by | January 11, 2023 · 6:17 am

Why I am what I am (2)

Last time I mentioned a number of things that linked me to my Dad insofar as interests, hobbies and sports were concerned. I soon discovered that that was really only the beginning of the story.

I rather think that I studied Russian because Fred used to speak so frequently of the Russians during the Second World War. In the bookcase at his parents’ house, he had a pamphlet borrowed from an RAF library. It was entitled “Our Soviet Friends”, and it had pictures of the dam at Dnepropetrovsk:

He told me how, in the RAF, anybody wth knowledge of Russian could name their own price for helping to liaise with our new surprise allies, once the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Towards the end of the war, Lancasters, on rare occasions, used to bomb the Germans and then carry on to Russia to land. When they came back they brought more bombs and often, one or two souvenirs.  On one occasion, my Dad had had a drink from a flask of coffee made up for the aircraft’s crew in Leningrad. I had to satisfy myself with my early attempts to learn the language, with the woman of my dreams…..

I may like French because, in 1940, Fred had wanted Britain and France to merge into one country just like Churchill had said. Fred was a keen European and, like Churchill,  he wanted a “United States of Europe”. As members of Bomber Command he told me, though, that the French could often be difficult to work with. Here is a Bristol Blenheim of the Free French Air Force in North Africa…..

I have always had great regard for the Poles because Fred said they were great blokes, and that he had joined up so that Poland could be freed from the invading Germans. A few years ago, I was in hospital for a operation, and there was a Polish van driver there that nobody would talk to because he was Polish. Except me, and if Fred had been there, he would have spoken to him, too. Racism can be amazingly petty.

I try to like poetry, because I know that Fred had claimed so often that poetry was an integral part of his life. He liked to read peoms out loud to his classes at school, his favourite being “Flannan Isle”.

I did a series of five blog posts about the mystery of Flannan Isle, as portrayed in the poem, and the first one is here. The rest can be found by merely searching for  “Flannan”. And when you’ve done that, don’t forget to watch this film with its own, made-up, explanation of the three men’s disappearance….

I’m sure that I became a teacher because Fred was a teacher and I felt that a teacher was a good thing to be. In the mid-1970s, the money was excellent and I didn’t automatically have to live in London.

I always worked hard as a teacher because Fred told me that at the end of each day, you should always ask yourself the question, “Were you just given your wages, or have you earned them ?”

I worked all my life at the High School, 38 years, because when he took me there for a job interview in 1975, I could see that Fred was enormously impressed by the school. To him, and to me, it looked like something out of a film, such as, perhaps, the old version of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”…….

In actual fact, after his death, I found that, when he was a boy in the 1930s, Fred’s Uncle George  had bought him a present, the book of the film “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”.  They didn’t shoot this film at The High School, but if they had wished to, it would have been entirely appropriate from the architectural point of view….

Fred read a lot about the Second World War, and one of his favourite books was a German doctor’s story of Operation Barbarossa, a book called “Moscow Tram Stop”. The High School has its own tram stop, called “High School”. That fact has always reassured me that I had made the right decision to work there for so long.

 

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by | September 17, 2022 · 6:16 am

Stories about my Dad (3)

In 1946, my Dad, Fred,  gave up his exciting job as a Brylcreem Boy of Bomber Command and signed up to be for what was called at the time “emergency training” as a teacher. It has always intrigued me as to how many veterans of Bomber Command became teachers. And I have my own ideas about that! Fred finished up getting a job quite near to his home, at a school in Hastings Road in Church Gresley. The school was built in 1898 for 420 children. Fred taught there until the mid-1950s.

Here’s a modern map of the area. The Orange Arrow points to where Hastings Road School used to stand before it had to be demolished in the late 1950s, lest the subsidence problems made it collapse completely with the teachers and children inside :

When my Dad, Fred, worked there, the vast majority of the children were the sons and daughters of miners, both of coal and of clay. They were all what you would call “rough diamonds”.

Most of them, therefore, were far from sophisticated, either in their knowledge or their behaviour or, indeed, their hygiene. Fred used to tell the story of having a boy in his class called “Stinky Roberts” . At the beginning of the school year, Fred was given the helpful advice by his colleagues never to let this particular boy sit next to a hot radiator under any circumstances. If he sits next to a radiator, then make him move!

Whether it was because Fred did not believe the other teachers, or whether it was because, in the absence of any particularly obvious hygiene problem, he quite simply forgot their advice, remains unclear.  But on one unfortunate day, when “Stinky” did get to sit by that scorching radiator, the wisdom of his colleagues became manifest, as the unbelievable stench of long unwashed filth and ancient, uncontrolled urine wafted inescapably around the room. In this way, Fred learnt one of the most important basics of teaching, namely that no boy is ever given a nickname without very good reason.

At one point, Fred had a bet with another teacher that he could leave his class working quietly while he went down to Lloyds Bank in Swadlincote to draw out some money. The pupils were told to behave themselves properly while he was away, and to continue with their work. This they duly did, and Fred won the bet.

In another variation of what was obviously the same story, Fred did not go down to the bank in Swadlincote, but instead, went to post a letter at the Church Gresley Post Office, a destination considerably nearer to Hastings Road School, and, from the point of view of unsupervised children, a much shorter, and therefore, perhaps, a more plausible time to be away.

One of Fred’s more pleasant jobs was the fact that he ran the school football team. He was partnered in this by his young friend, Vernon Langford. We do actually have a misty photograph of the staff at Hastings Road. Here it is :

The teachers are (back row), Mr Morris, Mr Roberts, Mr Baker, Mr Picker, Mr Goodall and Mr Knifton. The front row comprises Miss Rowe, Miss Smith, Mr Handford, Mrs Errington and Mrs P Middleton.

Fred’s teaching career at Hastings Road reached its pinnacle when he was conducting a lesson in Physics. At this time all secondary school teachers, even those who were trained to teach Geography, were expected to be able to turn their hand to more or less anything.

Fred’s brief was to demonstrate the effects of air pressure, so he took a pint glass, filled it with water, and then put a sheet of card over the top. He then explained that in a moment, when he turned the glass upside down, the contents would not spill out, because the air pressure on the card, which was equal to hundreds of pounds, was pressing down and keeping it in place. This news was received by the children, of course, with immense scepticism.

When Fred turned the glass over, however, perhaps as much to his surprise as anybody else’s, the rather unlikely result was that the card did actually stay in place, and the water did not spill out. The children’s reaction was astonishing. They were all totally amazed. One boy stood up, and shouted at the top of his voice, “A miracle ! A miracle ! Mester Knifton’s worked a miracle ! ” And then he ran out of the room and around the school, still shouting

“A miracle ! A miracle ! Mester Knifton’s worked a miracle ! ”

I believe that this incident was the closest that Fred ever came to being regarded as divine. Here’s a video of a mere mortal man trying out this trick:

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by | August 2, 2022 · 6:16 am

Stories about my Dad (2)

In 1946, my Dad, Fred,  left the Brylcreem Boys of the RAF and Bomber Command, and signed up to be trained as a teacher. He finished up getting a job quite near to his home in Hartshorne Road, Woodville. It was at the school in Hastings Road in Church Gresley. He taught there until the mid-1950s. In the 1990s, when I used to go and watch the local football/soccer team, Gresley Rovers, I met one or two of his erstwhile pupils who all remembered him, as a very strict teacher who brooked no nonsense. That might well have been because the teenage sons of coalminers at Hastings Road would have been a tough proposition to keep under control in classes of more than forty, especially for a first time teacher. I can quite well imagine that Fred would have had to employ what DH Lawrence, faced also with teaching the teenage sons of coalminers, called “three years’ savage teaching of collier lads”.

Here’s Hastings Road School. I have used one of the reprinted Victorian maps of England sold by Alan Godfrey . Hastings Road is in the middle of the eastern edge:

Notice how many “Old coal shafts” there are, even in this small area. Just after the war, there were up to 17 coal mines active in the area, as well as numerous vast open cast clay mines. Just try to imagine how small a human figure would be on this postcard, if those are full sized factory buildings in the background. Open cast clay mines were really gigantic…….

All of these activities, of course, left the entire area prey to subsidence. I found a very short article about this particular area on the internet. It said that

“…….the subsidence here was so severe the town’s plight became a national embarrassment. Schools, libraries and even entire streets were either propped up or knocked down as the town sank at an alarming rate.”

As a little boy in the late 1950s, we often used to drive up to Church Gresley to see the houses which had been damaged by the subsidence, which was produced by a 150-odd years of intensive coal mining. These houses were easily recognisable, being  propped up with huge beams of wood or extra long railway sleepers. Here are some of the less serious supports in a picture from a 1949 newspaper. I can remember enormously thick beams of wood when I saw them in the late 1950s. The houses must have been in an even worse state by then. Most of them had, in fact, been evacuated.:

The caption reads:

“SOME OF THE HOUSES IN CORONATION STREET” Built between the two great wars, and therefore comparatively new, as age is assessed in terms of bricks and mortar. There are nearly 50, supported by great baulks of timber, like those shown above and bound together with iron rods. Two are empty, being quite uninhabitable, and in others ceilings are falling, windows cracking and doors refusing to function.”

If the the houses were built in a coronation year, “between the two great wars” they can only date from 1936 and were thus only thirteen years old at  the time of the newpaper photograph. There is a very short video available.  The title refers to “Swadlincote” which is the name of the local area:

Thirty, forty years after my Dad had left Hastings Road School. I went to Hastings Road to take some photographs of the school. Alas, the buildings were no longer there, and had clearly fallen victim to the subsidence that I knew had claimed so many local houses. I began to investigate but I couldn’t find anybody who knew for certain the true detailed story of the demise of Hastings Road  School. Perhaps one day, the beams arrived, and the next day, before they could be put into position, the whole school fell down. That must have cheered up all those “collier lads”. Here’s the school today. Today’s pavement would have been directly in front of the school’s front wall:

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by | September 12, 2021 · 6:17 am

POST NUMBER 600: Two brothers fighting fascism (5)

This is my 600th post. Enjoy !!!

On Saturday, February 13th 1943,  Robert Renwick Jackson was flying his Boston III Intruder, serial number AL766, towards Nantes in western France:

His mission was to drop propaganda leaflets for the occupied French, so they could read the real truth about the war for themselves.

Alas, Robert Renwick Jackson died that night along with his navigator. The upper and rear-gunner, Sergeant TS McNeil, survived and became Prisoner of War No 27276 at Lamsdorf, then in German Silesia but now in south-western Poland. Here’s a typical POW camp:

And here’s a hut nowadays:

The second casualty in the Boston was Peter John LeBoldus, the navigator, who would have been sitting in the nose of the aircraft. His name is virtually unknown in England, but he is better known in Canada. His parents were John LeBoldus and Regina LeBoldus née Weisberg, German Catholic immigrants who had six sons and six daughters. John was a hardware and implement dealer. The family lived in Vibank in Saskatchewan. One of the highlights of Peter’s very short life must have been taking tea with the Queen Mother and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret at Windsor Castle with a group of newly arrived Canadian Airmen in England.

On this particular night, Peter John was preparing for the mission and his brother Martin, also a member of 418 Squadron, but working as a mechanic, had helped him put on his flying clothes and his parachute harness. This was the last time the brothers ever saw each other. This is Peter LeBoldus:

Peter John LeBoldus is buried next to his friend, Robert Renwick Jackson, in Grandcourt War Cemetery.

Sadly, Peter John was not the only member of the LeBoldus family to die in the war. John Anthony “Johnny” LeBoldus was a member of 142 (RAF) Squadron, where he was an air gunner in a Vickers Wellington Mk X, serial number LN566, squadron letters QT-D, “D-Dog”. They took off from RAF Oudna in Tunisia on November 24th 1943 to bomb a ball bearing factory at Villar Perosa near Turin, at the very limit of their range. Extreme weather with wind, cloud, fog, rain, and ice caused the loss of 17 aircraft and 73 men were killed. “Johnny” LeBoldus was one of them:

The third LeBoldus brother to die was Martin Benedict LeBoldus, the same man who had helped his brother, Peter John, with his flying clothes and his parachute harness before his death in Boston AL766. Martin Benedict was killed on February 20, 1944 at the age of 31. He was the flight engineer in a Handley Page Halifax Mark II of the Canadian 419 ‘Moose’ Squadron in Bomber Command, serial number JD114, squadron letters VR-V, “V-Victor”. On February 20, 1944 he and his colleagues took off at 23:12 from RAF Middleton St George near Darlington to bomb Leipzig and they were never seen again. Six other men, with an average age of twenty four, were also killed. John Leslie Beattie, Thomas Gettings, Alfred Harvey Hackbart, Donald Clifford Lewthwaite, Douglas Keith MacLeod and John Ralph Piper.  A total of 79 bombers were lost that night. Here’s Martin Benedict LeBoldus:

Mr Leboldus wrote a very bitter letter to the Secretary of the Department of National Defence for Air about the death of his sons:

“Other boys spending their time of war in Canada, yes hundreds and thousands walking the streets of Canada for years, and all our three boys were in the front line of attack. I have my doubts whether this is right and just. Plenty of those who offered three four years ago never seen any fighting nor smelled any powder, why all mine have to do it?”

Certain other Canadian families no doubt felt the same way. They included the Cantin family, the Colville family, the Forestell family, the Griffiths family, the Kimmel family, the Lanteigne family, the Milner family, the Reynolds family, the Rich family, the Rivait family, the Stodgell family, the Wagner family and the Westlake family, all of whom sacrificed three sons to the cause.

Nowadays the LeBoldus brothers are not totally forgotten. Canada is a vast land so it is comparatively easy to give names to hitherto unnamed geographical features. They are called “geo-memorials” and there are now more than four thousand of them. Leboldus Lake in north-western Saskatchewan is named after Peter John Leboldus. The Leboldus Islands there are named after Martin Benedict Leboldus. The link between Leboldus Lake and Frobisher Lake is called the Leboldus Channel after John Anthony Leboldus. What a pity that we don’t do that over here in England.  What a pity there are no streets in either Nottingham or Solihull named after Robert Jackson, killed at the age of 22, fighting for his country.

(Picture of the black Boston borrowed from wp.scn.ru.)

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by | July 17, 2021 · 6:17 am

Poems in “The Nottinghamian” 1922-1946 (2)

Last time I showed you some of the poems which were published in the school magazine, the Nottinghamian, during the period of 1922-1946, although, to be honest, most of them were about the Second World War. Many of the poems are of a remarkably high standard, and give us quite an accurate snapshot of how boys saw events unfolding in an increasingly terrifying adult world.

During the war, countless thousands of children from British cities were evacuated to the peaceful countryside. Frank Alan Underwood of 51 Charnock Avenue, Wollaton Park, wrote this first poem, “Evacuated”, which appeared in April 1942. Frank was the son of a lecturer at the University of Nottingham. He left the High School in July 1943. He went to university with a State Bursary for Science:

EVACUATED

O for the City Smells once more,

For the asphalt under the rain,

For the harsh, unceasing, clanging roar

Of city streets again.

 

I am tired of cows and senseless sheep :

All is too quiet to let me sleep ;

But think of the harsh-hushed city din

That comforts me as sleep steals in.

I don’t know whatever happened to Frank, although I did find that a paper entitled “Textures in Metal Sheets” was issued in 1962 by Dr FA Underwood. Further googling yielded further results in the same field.

As the war dragged on, the shops seemed to have very little to sell. This is reflected in a poem entitled “Triolet” by Frederick Brian Perkins, a member of the Second Form A who lived at “Kingsley” in Egerton Road in Woodthorpe. His father was a timber merchant

What is a “Triolet”? Well, it’s an eight-line poem (or stanza) with a rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB. It is apparently very similar to a rondeau. Here’s one:

TRIOLET

In the shops nowadays,

There’s little to buy ;

We alter our ways ;

In the shops nowadays.

They have empty trays ;

And we all stand and sigh,

In the shops nowadays,

There’s little to buy.

The same tale of woe had been told by Donald Arthur Gospel of the Upper Fifth Form Classical in April 1942. Donald was the son of a departmental manager and lived at 70 Whitemoor Road in Old Basford:

VARIATIONS ON A WELL KNOWN THEME

Sing a song of chocolate:

The shoppers formed a queue,

Four and twenty people—

Soon everybody knew ;

When the shop was opened

The folk began to push ;

Now wasn’t that a silly thing,

To start another crush.

 

The profiteer was in his house,

Counting out his money ;

His friend was in the Black Market,

Selling jars of honey.

The folk were paying double

To have some extra cheese,

When off they went in a “Black Maria,”

Despite all their pleas.

 

In case you were unaware, this poem is a beautiful re-telling of the old nursery rhyme, “Sing a Song of Sixpence”:

You can find the lyrics and a link to the video with the tune, HERE

Donald Gospel, our author, seems to have fought in the Indian Army in World War Two, moving from there in 1945 to be in the Sherwood Foresters and then the Queen’s Regiment in 1949. Donald passed away in 1995.

There was very little faith that there would be anything in the shops, or indeed, any end to the black marketeers, even eighteen months after the war’s end.

This poem was written by James Derrick Ward, born on December 19th 1933, who lived at 22 Windermere Road in Beeston. His father was the Chief Chemist in a Works Laboratory, possibly connected with one of the military depots at nearby Chilwell. The poem appeared in the Nottinghamian of December 1946. James left the High School in August 1950.

NOVEMBER 5TH, 1946

No squibs, no rockets,

Money in pockets

No fireworks in shop,

My spirits drop.

November.

 

No clothes for “Guys,”

Oh, hear my sighs !

No crackers leap,

My sorrow’s deep.

November.

 

No fiery wheels,

Nor thundery peals,

No happy night,

No bonfire bright.

November.

Fortunately, when victory had come almost eighteen months previously, there had been no shortage of fireworks in Moscow. Or people, if you look closely :

A lot of the High School boys had brothers or fathers in the forces. A rather pessimistic ditty occurs quite frequently in the Nottinghamian, with variations, regarding which particular branch of the forces and whether the location was the High School or a college at Oxford or Cambridge. Here we go. The first two refer to an Oxford or Cambridge college, where the main entrance is permanently manned by the college porters :

Nine little Undergrads, at the Porters’ Gate,

One is a sailor so now there are eight.”

And, a very similar poem:

 

Nine little Undergrads, at the Porters’ Gate,

One joined Bomber Command so now there are eight.”

But there is definitely one little poem which refers specifically to the actual High School in Nottingham:

“Nine Nottinghamians,

At the Forest Road gate,

One went to Bomber Command,

And then there were eight.”

And so on. And sadly, so true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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by | July 7, 2021 · 6:17 am

Two Old Nottinghamian brothers fighting fascism (1)

There is an interesting letter in the School Archives which begins:

“On December 10th 1988, my son, daughter and myself were visiting Nottingham to see my granddaughter who is at Trent University. We arrived on the Saturday morning, and found my old school, opposite the Forest but with locked gates. Then we suddenly noticed the gates opening. It was one of the teachers preparing to drive out before locking up. We were warm in our anoraks but although he was only wearing light clothes, this kind teacher offered to show us around the outside of the school buildings. The site of the former “Fives” court was, he told us, blocked by a newer building. Memories began flooding back.”

The writer was John T Jackson who left school in 1935 at the age of twelve. His father’s job was transferred to Birmingham and he and his brother transferred to Solihull Grammar School. Here are the school gates on Forest Road in 1932:

Here are the two fives courts, now replaced by the Sports Hall:

When young John Jackson attended the junior school, Mr Day was the headmaster. One day the boys were all taken outside to see the flight overhead of the new airship, the R101.

The buildings had not changed much as the little group all walked towards the front of the school. Mr Jackson remembered that the steps at the front of the school led to the Headmaster’s room. Then they saw the War Memorial. Mr Jackson had not realised that it would contain so many names. Over two hundred had died to halt fascism. He scanned the names, picking out his brother “Jackson RR”. He was very grateful to see this tribute to the courage and sacrifice that he and his fellow pupils had made.

Robert Renwick Jackson served in the RAF as a pilot in No 40 Squadron based at Chelmsford and flew on low level night intruder missions against enemy targets. In 1943 he was shot down in the coastal area of northern France. He and his observer are buried at Grandcourt in France:

After taking a few photos, John Jackson returned to his car, thanking the teacher for his kindness. When they found the gates locked they had been ready to accept that the best they could manage was to look from outside.

John Jackson had a far luckier war than his brother. He trained as a navigator in the RAF and was stationed at Kinloss in Scotland. His captain was Mac Hamilton, and they survived two tours in Bomber Command. After ten trips to Berlin with 619 Squadron, the whole crew volunteered to join 617 Squadron after Gibson’s successful raid on the dams. 617 was then commanded by Leonard Cheshire who had a precision way of marking targets with special bomb sights. They carried the Tallboy bomb weighing 12000 lbs and attacked special targets such as the U-boat pens, certain tunnels and canals, and rocket sites. Their last two operations were against the Tirpitz battleship. It took a total of three attacks to sink the Tirpitz.”

To be continued………..

 

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