by HARRY PERCY HOWARD

Castle Howard stands in the great county of Yorkshire. It is a magnificent building where visitors and sightseers from all over the world go to look and admire the whole structure and gardens: have picnics, take photographs and stay a few hours, just dreaming about it's history and what happened here years ago. To go through the great open doors turn and lookup at the large painting, hanging therein all it's splendor, is of my father. Well, it isn't my father, but the resemblance is amazing. It must be his twin brother or his dad had a bike! But that's where the dreaming ends. My father came from working class people in Beverley, Yorkshire. His father, my grandfather, whom I never knew, worked as a stone mason, mostly on the Beverley Minster and my father earned a few shillings looking after cattle and doing odd jobs around the town.

Later on, as the landlord began to increase the rent on his cottage and the work steadied down a little, my grandfather brought his family to Hull to start anew life. Then came the great war and like thousands of other eager young lads dad joined the army, his pay about a shilling a day. During a wild night out in his new army uniform, he met my mother, a young lass by the name of Olive Read and they fell madly in love. But dad had a war to fight and he and his battalion were ordered to France to fight the dreaded 'Hun ; though something else had happened. Olive had become pregnant and in those days, not like now, if a girl was having a baby the most honourable thing to do was to get married. So dad was granted leave and George Percy Howard and Olive Read became Mr and Mrs Howard and after a short Honeymoon dad sailed back to France.

On the battle fields my father became a bombardier with a field gun and a limber full of ammunition and two or four powerful horses to pull his weapon of death around the killing fields of France and Belgium. As the war dragged on, this was known as a 'war to end all wars'. Thousands of young men had flocked to the colours, some as young as sixteen, eager for the conflict, to fight for their country, to be given a rifle, to win a medal. "We'll show them German Bastards where to get off'' "It's in our blood!" "The British people have never been known to runaway from any fight!" "We must have ago!" So what do we do? .... We have a go! But after four years of bitter fighting, four years of trying to kill each other, four years of achieving nothing, it came to a sudden stop! Someone blew the last whistle! It became quiet. A truce was called .... and the cost? A million of our finest young men lay dead or maimed on the Battle Fields of France! The Flower of Our Country! Thousands of soldiers blinded and lungs burnt out by mustard gas!

NOVEMBER THE ELEVENTH: THE CEASE FIRE! Men crept out of their rat infested trenches and looked around at the terrible carnage they had brought upon themselves! Soldiers cried on each others' shoulders; friends and enemy alike! "What had we done?" .... "Why had we done it?" .... "Who had won?" .... "What had we won?" .... "What had it been for?" .... Nobody could answer the questions .... Unless it was for the whiskey drinking and cigars smoking, fat bastard politicians and the gun making industrialists who had made millions out of the misery of war!!!!!!

My father was one of the lucky ones to come out of this war, but he did get a scratch! A German sniper took a dislike to him, but the bullet went through his bayonet, clean as a whistle through his tin mug and smacked him in the thigh. I bet that made him jump a bit He also won the Military Medal for bravery in the face of the enemy for rescuing his horses out of a burning barn while German gunners were blasting the hell out of it! He must have loved his horses .... but there again, he loved all animals!

After the war, dad was billeted with a homely German family for a while; even winning a silver medal playing football for the army. Then he was demobbed and he sailed home to his darling Olive, leaving behind him memories of the battles he had fought in, his fallen comrades and his beloved horses.

Back to England with his medals he had so proudly won, his bayonet with it's 'drilled hole'. Back to a land " .... fit for Heroes!" the Government told the returning soldiers .... but it wasn't! It was a land of depression and dole. There was very little work! Men begging for a job .... any job.... a hand out.... anything; standing at street corners, sharing a fag between two or three mates, till the police came along and moved them on for loitering; so it was back home to sit in a chair. He looks at a cold fire and his wife puts her arm around him for comfort, his children ask, "What's wrong with daddy, main?" He looks at them with sagging shoulders and weary eyes .... "What have I done to deserve this? I've sweated blood and tears for this country I love and it's let me down! Would it have been better to have laid with my army pals on the battlefields of France or brought my rifle home with me and shot my bloody head Off"

My father was rather fortunate. He was reinstated in his job again at the tin works, earning two pounds ten shillings a week and two shillings extra for going in on a Sunday night to light the fires, under the lead pans, for a quick start on the Monday mornings.

My parents rented a house down a terrace in Waterloo Street and there our family grew up. Our first sister, Florie, had died and is buried in Hedon Road Cemetery. Then came Olive, George, May, Marie, Enid, Me and hen; and if that wasn't enough, we had a dog as well. As children we were always hungry and a thick slice of bread and jam always went down well, though we often looked at the dog, wondering what it would taste like in one of main's large cooking pots! Probably eat the lot: dog, fur, fleas .... the lot!

Our table cloth was the Hull Daily Mail and after the day's meal, we would take it off, tear it into strips and hang it on a nail on the inside of the toilet door in the back yard. There we could sit and read about what happened to Hull or Rovers rugby teams and Hull City Tigers and sing or whistle as there was no lock on the toilet door.

'Uncle's' were opening all over now. In those days 'Uncle's were pawnshops with three brass balls hanging over the door way. Women, taking their husband's suits, if they had one, or anything which would get them a few shillings to buy the family a loaf of bread and some potatoes to feed them on, till they received their dole money the next day. It would cost them extra money, maybe two or three pence more to redeem the article, other wise it would be gone for good. These were very hard times: father's Works tried to go on strike for more money, but with no union to back them, it was hopeless. The owner of the Tin Works met them outside, in his hand he held a list of names, he read them out. Dad's name was on the paper. He told them to start work in the morning and the rest to "bugger off home and don't comeback!" It must have hurt deeply, for dad was a very proud man .... but what could he do? He must work! He had a family to keep, rent to pay and .... a "'bloody' dog!"

Grandma and Granddad, and Aunt Doll and Uncle Tom lived in the next terrace, in small houses, Waterloo Street. Uncle Tom worked on the railways with long hours but it wasn't a good paying job; they had no family.

Granddad had fixed along rope in the ceiling at the top of the stairs, it helped to pull them up when they went to bed. It was always dark in the house!

A night out for mam and dad to meet some of their friends, was 'The Salutation Inn' in Cannon Street. To get ready for the evening and instead of boiling a kettle of water to wash in, the water came out of the Yorkist Stove which was attached to the coal fire and always grimy. Once washed, the evening tea pots went in the same water, mam putting in a lump of soda, as washing up liquid hadn't been heard of.

Dad once took me in the pub when I was about fourteen. I hadn't been very well and had been in bed for a few days; he maybe thought I was about to 'fall off my twig'! So he sat me in a dark corner and bought me half a pint of 'Moores and Robsons' beer for three pence, told me to keep quiet and then went back to join his mates in the bar, to talk about the rugby match they had all been to see the day before.

All of us children went to Blundell Street School, but we never had any decent clothes to wear! We all wore 'hand-me-down' clothes or second-hand stuff. I went to school in cut down shorts but I'm sure they didn't look right as the belt fastened around my chest!

Some of the lads I knew, who had no parents and lived in council run homes, didn't even have shoes to go to school in and had to borrow some to wear for the school lessons and they were issued a dinner ticket for a meal at midday. We ran home and stuffed our face with anything that was stuffable.

Dad made sure we had shoes to wear for school: he hammered studs through the soles to make them last longer. When we left our house in a morning it sounded like a military tattoo! All we needed for a show were the Grenadier Guards!

When I first began school, in infants, I often fell asleep over my desk in the afternoons. The teachers asked my sister, Marie, if there was something wrong with me. She explained it was because I always fell asleep in my mother's arms after dinner: It felt safe and warm between my mothers ample breasts.

A young female teacher joined the school staff and on a Friday afternoon came to our class to read us stories. She sat on a front desk, facing us, legs open, showing us her long blue bloomers fastened with elastic just above her knees, amongst a few quiet titters from us, which didn't seem to bother her one little bit. I thought later on, it may have been different reading a story the same way in front of some of the thirteen and fourteen randy young lads I knew. They would have attacked like swimmers off a high diving board or a flight of German Stuka dive bombers.

I don't think my school days were very happy. I didn't seem to learn a lot and the teachers being eager to smack us, across the head or use the cane on our hands, on the least provocation. Most of them were grown up bullies. Our headmaster was the biggest bully. To be sent to him for punishment meant three strokes of the cane on each hand. He was a big man and he brought the stick of torture from over his back. This really hurt and made us sob as we sat down in our seat holding our hands under our arms. I often wondered why he didn't put in for a hangman's job; he was probably a relative of Attila The hun!

Our house had two small bedrooms, mam and dad in the front one and all of us in the back one in two beds: four girls in one and us three boys in the other, with a pot under each bed which we called a 'guzunder', mam bringing a bucket up in the morning to empty them and make the beds. The kitchen had clotheslines stretched from wall to wall .... always damp washing hanging down from them and a sticky fly paper full of dead flies hanging from the ceiling by a drawing pin. And when the dust men called to take the bins out through the kitchen, on their shoulders, mam would scream at them, "Mind my washing! Mind my washing!" like a 'bloody' parrot. Tea-time was probably bread and jam, or bread and dripping, or bread and 'if it': if it goes round, we got a bit! If mam and dad had a boiled egg for tea, two of us would get the top in a big hunk of bread but missed out the next time around. The only time we had a full egg was at Easter and we drew funny faces on them before boiling; we also had a hot-cross bun!

Saturday tea-time and Sunday breakfast were our best meals. Mam making bread in a big earthen bowl, (I have that bowl today) for hot cakes and loaves of bread on a Saturday afternoon, while dad went to see Hull, his favourite rugby team. Mam pounding at the dough with her strong arms, sweat gathering at her brow, a lighted 'Park Drive' cigarette in her mouth, the fag ash getting longer and longer .... and all of a sudden .... the fag ash wasn't there, and she never took her hands out of that bread once! But the taste of those hot cakes was out of this world dipped in sausage and meat gravy. We just couldn't wait to get at them, as she brought the finished product out of the oven and stood them in lines on the table top, with a knowing look at us, "Don't Touch!". My sister, Marie, makes hot cakes now but she doesn't smoke .... there must be something to say about those 'Park Drives'.

Mam had a big pot for making stew and once a week she would give one of us sixpence to go to the butchers after school, to buy a sheep's head, and she would shout after us, "And tell him to leave the eyes in to see us through the rest of the week!" But bringing that head down Charles Street, to our house, would make us shudder, rubbing against our legs like a bloody great football. It was a relief to get back home and put the head on the kitchen table; mam unwrapping it and beginning to take the hairy wool off, washing it and putting it in the pot with potatoes, carrots, peas and anything else what's laid over from the weekend! "Let's find the dog and sling that in as well! It must have run out the door, probably gone down to the drain to find a rat or two!" Mam made the 'twenty-minutes floaters' then. These were rolled up lumps of dough as big as snowballs, all put in the pot and mam stirring the contents of the pot; the puddings doing a wild dance and the sheep's skull bobbing up and down and grinning at us with its sightless eyes; boiling it all up on the fire like in a witch's cauldron. Is that a cackling sound or is she trying to sing? I wonder. When she was satisfied it was all cooked, mam took the head out of the pot, cut the tongue out and laid it on a big plate, all steaming hot! What a size that sheep's tongue was hanging over the side of the plate. Im sure I could have gone down the cresta run on it with my younger brother on the back!

Saturday night was bath night! We had a tin bath hanging on a nail in the backyard. We boiled water up in a bucket but most of the hot water came out of the Yorkist stove: warmish but a bit grimy. The girls getting bathed first in private then mam taking them in the front room to find if their hair was nice and clean, as most children's hair at school was a breeding ground for nits. We went in the bath next, then the dog. I often wondered why granddad didn't come that night .... would have gone in the bath before or after the dog? The finished bath water looked as if it had an oil slick on the top. I'm sure if we had put a match to it, it would have kept us warm for three or four days! Our hair, the boy's, didn't need a lot of looking at: it was always cut bald with a little quiff in the front, just like a coconut and cost three-half-pence at the barbers!

Our house, like all other houses I knew, had fleas and bugs running amok. The reason was because in those days 'Solvite' hadn't been put on the market and people hanging wallpaper mixed flour and water as a paste for the walls and these pests clapped their hands, got behind and chomped their way through miles of food. Some house wallpaper would ripple like a Mexican wave as they charged from one feast to the next .... and they got in our beds and clothes and they bit and caused a rash! Some young lads, I went to school with, had faces looking like a well used second hand dart board!

Our family was grown up now, but how the hell we survived those early years I'll never know! Three of them had started work for a few shillings a week; George had gone to work with dad at the Tin Works, which had moved to Southcoates Lane. Before he started work, George used to take the rent money for four or five houses down the terrace to a land owner in his office in 'The Land of Green Ginger' (a couple of streets away in the centre of town and now I carried on the job. These tenants gave me a penny each, which was a lot of money for me. Some of the houses' rents were three shillings a week. Aunt Doll and Grandma were two of these. Grandma always told me, "One day I'll remember you in my will." One evening she laid on her couch after a meal and died. The poor old lass never had two pennies to scratch her bum with .... sad, very sad

I collected all the rent money on a Saturday morning and made my way to the office, up the dark squeaky stairs. I knock on the door. "Come in," some one says in a deep voice; I go in. Two men, dressed in long black coats, peer at me from over their nose glasses, their desk covered in thick books. They look like Boris Karlof and Peter Lorre reading the scripts for their next horror movie. One is seated, the other is standing behind him. "I've come to pay the rent, sir." I say as I hand it over to the one seated. "Very well," he says as he takes it from me; the other one is smiling at me and rubbing his hands. I wonder if he fancies me .... the dirty old sod! Is my body worth more than five pence? I pay up, say goodbye and get down them stairs fast into the cool fresh air .... safe again.... and my pennies jingling in my pocket.

Saturday afternoon is a big day for us. We go to the Waterloo Picture House, which costs us a penny or five jam jars, in return we maybe given a small stick of rock or a little bag of sweets. The big picture is generally a cowboy film: maybe Tom Mix and his horse Tony, and we yell and scream and shout at the bad guys as they creep up behind Tom. We stand on the seats and yell, "Look behind you! Look behind YOU!!" "If we could only get our hands on those nasty villains, we would tear their bloody heads off" and I go out of that picture house always with a splitting headache and go home to lay on the couch to recover! And mother calls me a silly little sod forgetting all worked up over a 'bloody' cowboy .... but I just can't wait for next Saturday to come!

In Winter our house is always cold! The yard tap freezes. We pour hot water over it to thaw it so we can have a wash. The warmest place is around the kitchen fire. We snuggle round it, mostly reading; the dog lays in the middle .... I think, 'Let's sling it on the fire and get a little closer! I wonder what dog burgers taste like. There won't be much meat on this one it's all skin and bone though!'

We put bricks in the oven to warm and wrap them and the oven shelves in old jerseys and take them up stairs for our beds, to warm our feet for a while, till during the night we forget the brick is there and we jab our big toe on it. The oven shelves aren't much better, they get colder than a 'witch's tit!' The warmest place is in the middle of the bed, but the oldest gets that position! The youngest? .... just forget it! We fall asleep with our teeth chattering and wake up in the morning with our jaws aching because our teeth are still chattering!!

Sunday was always a lay in for mam; dad getting up to make our breakfast of sausage and gravy with hot cakes warmed up from Saturday night, then telling us to go and play outside while he takes mam a cup of tea up stairs with the 'News of the World'. Mother and Father slept in abed with a brass bed head.

We were outside one Sunday morning, playing marbles, skipping or making models out of lumps of clay from the drains, when Mister Watson from next door came out and said to me. "When your dad's finished playing his castanets on the wall, ask him if I can borrow them!" I thought, 'Strange dad hasn't got any castanets ! He's got a pack of cards and some dominoes .... Maybe some one had bought him some for his birthday .... Wonder if I could play with them one day!

Our lighting was gas jets from out of the wall, with a very delicate mantel which looked like an oversized porous egg, lit with a match and covered with a glass glove. It didn't give a lot of light but if the gas was turned too high, it burnt the mantel and blackened the globe, Our wireless set worked by a large battery and a glass accumulator containing acid for the energy to work the whole contraption. A shop in Brunswick Avenue recharged the accumulator for sixpence.

My Father had a stroke of luck: he and nine others at the tin works all won a share in the ' ' lrish Sweep Stake '. They all received five hundred pounds each, a small fortune in those days! They called themselves 'The Ten Loonies'. He bought a house in Holmes Street for three hundred pounds. Life was a bit easier from then on, but there was no escaping going for that sheep's head or mother giving one of us sixpence to go to the bakery in Charles Street for a bag of stale pastry! And her parting words where "And don't forget to tell them to put a loaf of bread in as well!" We never argue .... she is too handy with a backhand or a walking stick near her chair!

The house we moved into was bigger with three bedrooms, a little garden, a big back yard and a back way out, and we moved all our bits and pieces on a hand cart with the dog acting as captain sitting on the top. As the old saying goes: 'Anew house, another baby!' Mam had another daughter, Sheila, but we didn't see much of her face, it was always sucking on a dummy or one of mam's ample breasts!

Our usual place we went for a swim was a wide drain named 'Barmston Drain'; the electricity works releasing tons of hot water into it and we enjoyed swimming and splashing about in the warm water. The only thing that was unpleasant was the rubbish people threw into the drain! The Baths would have been more hygienic but most of us couldn't afford to go and besides, we would have had to wear a swimming costume and here no one bothered us. Some of us didn't wear anything, but Mother could smell the 'Drain' when we arrived home and would scream at us. "HAVE YOU BEEN DOWN THAT DRAIN AGAIN, YOU LITTLE SODS?!!!!"

At the top of the street was a fish shop we would go to early in the morning and ask if he had any cold fish from the night before. Sometimes we were lucky to get two or three pieces for a penny and warm them up for dinner.

I was nearly fourteen now, almost ready for leaving school. Enid had left and had got a job working with Marie in a chocolate factory. I was roaming around every night with a crowd of lads and lasses being silly and getting into trouble, which atone time cost me two shillings and sixpence for causing a disturbance down the street. I can see it now: five of us boys standing in front of a bench in the juvenile court, our Mothers sat behind us, arms folded with a kind of, "Wait till I get you home, you little sod!" on their faces .... end I’ve still got my Father to face when he comes home tonight from work! I can see my Mother pulling me down the street by my ear, kicking me into the house and belting me with that bloody' sheep's head! Could l have her up for cruelty I wonder. The Magistrate is giving us a pep-talk. I aren't taking a lot of notice what he's saying. It's something like "Next time you are in trouble you will be shipped out to Australia in chains!" Is he serious or is he trying to frighten us?

Those young days are good memories: not a lot of money but we had our friendship, our comradeship and our laughter! I liked to take a walk to the Hull Pier on a Sunday morning to see the ferry boats plying between Hull and New Holland, and the cargo ships sailing on the tide to foreign shores, little realising that in a few years I would be on one of the ships going past the same pier. There were always plenty of barges on the river in those days with red sails, always seeming to have a full load with water washing along the decks.

There was an incline, which sloped along side the pier, that was known as 'The Hoss Wash', which entered the Humber where the Dray Men of Hull Brewery and 'Moores and Robsons' beer wagons, brought their horses to wash and brush them down. These magnificent beasts, looking as big as a house, every day pulled thousands of gallons of beer in wooden barrels on big drays around Hull and the outskirts of the city, bedecked in leathers and brass medallions around their necks and shoulders. Beautiful animals, shaking and nodding their heads and stamping the watery ground while the drivers gave them their usual Sunday morning wash and scrub down and made their coats gloss and shine. These men, proud of their charges and the horses knowing it and loving every moment. Will we ever see the likes of that again? But memories like that will remain with me forever!

CHAPTER TWO * ADOLESCENCE

I left school in November, when I became fourteen years old, to the very day! I can't say I was very happy there, we never learned much and the teachers were far too clever with their smacks and the cane. It was just a matter of going from 'nine -o-clock' to 'four-o-clock' and trying to survive for another day. 1t must have been worse for the girls and boys who had no homes and lived in these council run places, probably got smacked there as well as being smacked at school.

So the day after I left I was out looking round Hull for a job, any job, to earn a few shillings for my keep; besides .... I was having a crafty fag with my mates now! I suppose we thought it was the 'done thing' at our age. We could buy two cigarettes and two matches for a penny or three cigarettes and no matches. 'SOS' or 'Crail' in a packet at a wall machine. If we had no money we took the cork out of the top of a lemonade bottle, knocked the edges down and slipped those in just like a penny, the same with chocolate machines at the sea-side. If my mam had found out 1 would have been in the doghouse and the dog would have been in my bed, not only that but we knew it was a silly and risky thing to do. It was flouting the law and the law was very severe in those days.

I managed to get a job in a fire-wood making firm in Wincolm Lee earning seven shillings a week. The first night I went home after work my Mother had put a whole kipper on a plate at the table where I usually sit. I said, "Mam is this mine?"

She looked at me and said, "You are working aren't you?" with her hand hovering over the plate. I said, "Yes, I started this morning!"

She replied, "Well, eat it then, it's yours!" Otherwise, it would have been snatched away and I would have been back to bread and jam or dripping.

I was paid my first week's wages: seven shillings. Iran home. "Look Mam! Look, I've been paid! Isn't it great!" "Good lad," she said and gave me my first pocket money: a shilling. This shilling took me to the 'Cleveland Picture House' on the Saturday night for two pence; I bought myself ten 'Park Drive' for four pence; and on the way home, fish and chips for two pence, which left me four pence to play cards with my pals. This was certainly living!

I didn't stay long at the wood-yard, only a few months. The owner and I simply couldn't see eye to eye. He didn't think I was any good and I told him he wasn't any 'bloody' good, " ....and shove your job, you 'bloody Ratbag'!" and he pointed to the door and I took the hint and found myself out in the street! I had a walk to another wood-yard in Lincoln Street and asked the manager if he could do with " ....an experienced bungler", which gave him a laugh. Maybe I said it wrong, but he said, "OK. Let's see what you can do." He seemed pleased with my efforts after a while. "Right," he said. "Start in the morning."

This work was a bit different: bundling firewood one day then loading it on a hand cart the next day and pulling it all over Hull to stores and iron mongers. I've walked miles over the city, in all kinds of weather, pulling that bloody' hand cart. One hot day I was even offered a hand full of oats, a bucket of water to drink and a scrub down! But I was earning more money now, about ten shillings and sixpence; and being in the fresh air and all this walking, it was doing my body a lot of good!

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I was sixteen now and 'storm clouds' were gathering over Europe. The German leader, by the name of Hitler, with a Charlie Chaplin Moustache, was rattling his sabre, demanding more land for his country and people, but quietly re-arming. Countries not taking a lot of notice of his rantings, were hoping he would quieten down, but the German leader wouldn't be silent. Shouting and screaming and banging his fist on the podium, he made his first move. With arm out-stretched in the Nazi Salute, he ordered his Elite Troops into Austria and the Austrian Government and people welcomed them. Other countries became alarmed and afraid, but turned a blind eye, hoping they wouldn't be next to be taken over.

Mr Chamberlain, Britain's Prime Minister, flew to Berlin wearing his usual long black coat, to appease the German Dictator and came back waving a white paper, which both leaders had signed and shouted, "PEACE IN OUR TIME!" But we began to re-arm quietly.

Came the day the Storm Troopers marched into Poland, Britain reintroduced conscription and announced help from Britain and France, demanding the withdrawal of troops from Poland. Both countries received no reply. So on the THIRD OF SEPTEMBER NINETEEN THIRTY NINE Britain and France declared war on Germany!

We were issued gas masks in cardboard boxes with string to hangover our shoulders. Air-raid shelters were quickly built, windows were blacked out, air-raid precaution (ARP) wardens took to the streets screaming at houses showing a light or lighting a fag outside .... All street lights were put out!

British troops landed in France, mostly territorials or weekend soldiers, the same as their fathers did in the Nineteen Fourteen War. Enemy planes began to fly over the country now, dropping their bombs on towns and cities most nights. This was an all out war, not only against the armed forces but against the whole population. The air raid siren would sound and we could hear the drone of the heavy bombers, the search light would probe the sky, hoping to pick out a raider and hold it in its light while the anti-aircraft guns opened fire trying to blast it out of the night sky. Night after night, getting out of bed, to huddle in a cold smelly wet shelter where some drunken lout had probably used it as a urinal, whilst the guns roared and bombs blasted the houses to rubble. Men, women and children, shouting and screaming. Dogs howling. It went on for hours. Then it became quieter. The enemy bombers flew away to get ready for another raid. The muzzles of the guns cooled off: their job done for the night. The all clear sounded. People stumbled out of the shelters, still afraid, still trembling, to go home, if they had a home to go to. Some homes had all their windows smashed, doors hanging off', slates off roofs, fires still raging, devouring everything they possessed, which had taken years to build up for a home. Women cried. Men swore, gritted their teeth, clenched their fists. "We carry on! We will never give in ....!" And still we went to work in the morning, past bombed out buildings and bomb craters, shattered homes. ARP wardens, police, rescue workers and ambulance teams still digging to get to people trapped by tons of rubble. The dead and the dying. Gas escaping. Fires raging. Water mains ruptured. Unexploded bombs. Then our food became rationed. Even cigarettes were in short supply. This was a new kind of living .... or dying. We cursed. We cried. We swore. But we carried on. Would it be our turn tonight? .... we wondered. Clear night skies and a full moon were our worst nights for an air-raid .... 'Bomber's Moon' we called it! The sirens would be certain to wail these nights. The barrage balloons, run out on their taut wires, would look silvery in the moon-lit skies. Some families already going to the shelters with blankets and something to drink during the night. It was just a matter of waiting and hoping it wasn't their turn tonight!

After a while we moved our bits and pieces to a house next to Waterloo Street Picture House. It was a smaller place with two bedrooms and an attic, where George, Ken and I slept. The stairs were too steep for mam to climb and bring a bucket up and make the beds, so George opened the attic window and threw the contents of the pot out, probably catching anyone hurrying to work and wondering why piss was running off the end of their noses! But it wasn't only urine coming out of the night sky, it was still the bombs coming down night after night. The drone of heavy enemy bombers, a different noise than our own war planes; the wailing of the air-raid sirens, the search lights probing the night sky hoping to hold a plane in its beam. The guns roaring angrily as they try to blast the intruder out of the sky or make it disabled to force it to land, so that the home guard could take the crews prisoner before the angry people could get their hands on them. And the shards of shrapnel from the burst shells hitting roofs and pavements and if hitting a human body making that human body permanently dead! Ken and I stayed in bed hoping it would all go away so we could get some sleep; mam going frantic, yelling at us to, "Get up and take cover under the stairs, you little sods!" Good job she couldn't climb the stairs to get to us. Dad shouting, "The bomb will hit you first!" and I muttering, "Sod Hitler! Sod his air force and sod the lot of you! Just let me lay in my warm bed and die!" But I didn't want to lay there and I didn't want to get out of bed. I couldn't sleep, I was too frightened, but I was trying to be brave. I could imagine a bomb, with Harry Howard chalked on its side, heading for the attic roof and I lay therewith a pillow over my head wide awake till the bombing and gunfire had ceased and I dozed off thinking, "Ali! Missed me again!"

Granddad came to live with us now; he couldn't really manage on his own so mam made a bed up for him in the front room. He had to get rid of all his belongings which wasn't much; probably sold the lot for a couple of quid. He didn't stay with us very long, poor old lad. I went in the front room one day as mam and aunt Kate were holding him in their arms. He whispered, "Am I dying?" Mam said, "No, no. You will be all right." But he just sighed and passed away. In those days there were very few funeral parlours, so granddad laid in his coffin in the front room till the funeral. Both my sisters wouldn't go in the room. Later on they said it felt he was still in there.

A few months later dad got me a job at the tin works where he worked. I was sorry to leave my friends in the wood yard but I had to move onto earn more money. It would be over sixteen shillings a week, but I wouldn't have the freedom I had been used to. Clocking on seven thirty to five fifteen in a big factory with too many chiefs. This firm employed more than three hundred people, mostly young girls and women, as most of the men were serving their country. I was put to work with a gang of young women .... and there my education began! I thought 1 was used to the words of the streets, after going around with my own crowd of lads and lasses, but this was something totally different! The things they said to each other and to me and what they was going to do to me made me blush and want to run away from them. But I had to learn and I learnt fast! I spoke to them as they spoke to me till I was accepted as one of their own and they took me under their wing. I became one of their crowd. I became Jack as my father was known as Jack (as my brother George would become Jack); but to see them and speak to them, probably out shopping, in town all dressed up and lady like, different again. I don't think butter would have melted in their mouths .... but Monday morning they would be the usual horrible, loveable female friends of mine!

I met my darling wife at the tin works .... but it wasn't love at first sight. I don't know why, but we just didn't like each other, in fact I could say .... we hated the sight of each other! I worked on a paint sprayer painting canisters, Ethel taking them away on a trolley. We didn't speak .... we didn't want to talk. Eight hours a day with each other was like eight days . Thank Christ it's weekend so we can get away from each other! This hostility went on for awhile, but one Friday, as we were washing our hands, ready for going home, I looked at her and said, "Would you come out with me Saturday night?" Stepping back a couple of feet, in case I was in line with the bucket of hot water, and she looked at me and said, "Yes, all right." It's strange how the heart and the mind works, one moment hating each other then sanity takes over, I offering the 'Olive Branch' and she accepting. Our war was over. "Peace in our time" as Chamberlain told us .... but he was wrong, we are right!

I met her on the Saturday night at the Dorchester Cinema. She was dressed in a blue two piece suit with a gas mask over her shoulder. She looked lovely! How could I have been such a prat towards her?! It was a sheer delight to watch the film for a couple of hours, holding her hand. Later, I walked her home to her house in Hedon Road. Holding her hand in the blackout, we kissed at the door. And that's how our courting days began! Going to work in a morning to meet her was no longer an agony, it was a heart thumping pleasure! I took her home to meet my parents and have tea. Mam had laid a tablecloth .... I didn't know we had a tablecloth! It was always the Hull Daily Mail. Now, what....? I had nothing to read! But I was grateful she didn't put that pan of sheep's head on the table with its sightless eyes and those bloody twenty minute floaters' bobbing up and down!

Ethel asked me if I would like to meet her father as he was home on leave. I said, "Yes of course I would. Which service is he in?" She replied, "The Merchant Navy."

I met him in a hotel lounge with his wife Ada, Ethel's Mother. He was dressed in his captain's uniform with the four gold rings on his jacket sleeves and scrambled egg on his cap, as it is known (gold). Later I said to Ethel, "You didn't tell me your Father was a captain." Her reply was, "I told you he was in the Merchant Navy." (Oh, yer!).

My cousin Frank was in the Merchant Navy now, after leaving the barges, coming home on leave after each voyage with a good pay-off and telling me of the foreign countries he had visited and life aboard ships he had served on, which made me very envious. I knew I wanted some of this. I was just seventeen now. A few more months and I would apply to join the Royal Navy. I felt I had to get away. A lot of my friends had gone, probably serving their country all over the world! There wasn't much excitement in the tin works. It was just a matter of clocking-on and clocking-off. Same thing day after day. How can people work in places like this till they retire at sixty five then get kicked out with a clock to keep them company. No, no that wasn't for me! I would have jumped off the Humber Bridge first! There is some talk of one being built, I hear.

All my sisters were married and all their husbands were away in the army or navy. My brother George had been invalided out of the 'Fourth East Yorks' over wounds and was now working back at the tin works.

Ethel and I were still courting strongly, being together everyday at work and at the weekends, going to the pictures or the club. We hadn't much money but our love for each other was very strong; but she knew I wanted to getaway. I wanted to join up. This was passing me by but I didn't want to leave her. What a bloody predicament to be in!