Bio. 3 A Schoolboy's War

Bio. 3 A Schoolboy's War

                                                                  

Romford is a busy market town 12 miles east of the City of London and a few miles north of the River Thames. Before World War II it was urban enough to have big stores and an open air market twice weekly. In winter it was dark at 4 pm. Sometimes I went to the market after school, when the stalls were lit by flaming lanterns. At some stalls hucksters sold patent medicines, others sold huge hands of bananas and would throw us the odd ones. On Wednesdays, local farmers sold sheep and cattle there by auction.

In 1938, I passed the examination to Romford Intermediate School. The next year three important things happened. I started my first job with a newspaper round, became interested in chemistry and World War II began. I hated getting up at 5.30 each morning but loved my wages. All daily papers in England were national and four or five were popular, so after cycling to the newsagent, I marked the ones for my route to know who’d get which, bagged them and delivered them. Then I went home for breakfast before cycling to school.

For Christmas 1938, Dad bought me a big chemistry set. At that time people were worrying about Hitler and possible war. The previous year Dad bought an Anderson Air Raid Shelter and erected it in our back yard. It was 6.5 feet long by 4.5 feet wide of thick corrugated steel panels sunk in the ground, concreted outside, with a concrete floor and a right-angled entrance. He also built a frame for bunks. It was the perfect place for a chemistry laboratory. He cut a sheet of plywood so I could convert the bunks to a shelf and  a bench. Mum said, “It’s consoling to know that if he blows himself up in that thing, it won’t damage the house”.

When bombs were falling all around in 1940, Mum and Dad were too scared of my chemicals to use our shelter. Every night they walked past it, out the back gate and over the road to sleep in the shelter in Aunt Nell’s back yard. I refused to sleep in a cramped damp shelter, so I shared a bed with my cousin’s granddad, the only other person who slept in the house during heavy air raids.

Thousands of anti-aircraft guns were set up in a defensive ring round London. Romford was in this ring, so antiaircraft guns were everywhere. Some were mobile and one often set up at night near our house. The house shook when it fired, it was as loud as bombs exploding. Nearer London there were barrage balloons on steel cables to deter dive bombers but no guns, as shell shrapnel was dangerous. For night raids, German pilots often used moonlight reflected from the Thames to guide them to London. When the anti-aircraft guns opened up, some dropped their bombs on the nearest town and fled. Romford was near, so it was heavily bombed.

Daylight raids were fun at first, as our school had above-ground concrete shelters with benches to sit on but no lights, so our teachers led us in singing – I learned a lot of old songs there. They were less fun after lights were installed and we had to continue regular lessons. We all had a secret hope that the school would be bombed but only one tiny bomb fell at the edge of the grounds and destroyed the gardener’s incinerator.

Every antiaircraft shell that went up came down as jagged steel shrapnel that was dangerous to people and the slate roofs of houses. My early morning paper round had an extra benefit during the 1940 blitz. After a heavy raid I scoured the streets on my route for shell fragments. At school I traded them for other war junk like bits of fuselage of shot-down planes.

My favorite trophy was an un-burnt piece of a German magnesium incendiary bomb. I spent hours filing it to make magnesium powder. When this was mixed with sulfur and potassium nitrate it made a great flash powder. I lit some of the mixture in the boys’ lavatories before school and the flash was over a foot high but I had forgotten how much white smoke it made. Afterward, you couldn't see more than a few inches in front of you. The head boy saw it and said if it hadn’t cleared by morning break, he would have to report it to the Old Man (The principal). Lots of us took off our jackets to fan it, but it didn’t clear so I was reported to the principal.

It wasn't my first run in with the Old Man over chemistry. I bought some calcium carbide in an old bicycle shop, (it was once used to fuel bicycle lamps). In those days we dipped our pens in ink to write. One day I put some in my desk inkwell. It reacted and emitted ethyne gas in perfect smoke rings that exploded when touched with a spark. Another time I made nitrogen iodide at home and smeared wet crystals on wash-basin faucets in the boys’ lavatories. After they dried, the crystals popped when touched but were not dangerous.  Fun with chemicals was popular in those days. Boy’s magazines had ads for stink bombs, smoke bombs, sneezing and itching powder.

Good things came through chemistry. A green half penny George V stamp turned blue in bleaching powder and a farthing rubbed with mercury turned ‘silver’. These items traded like hot cakes at school. My fireworks also found a ready market. The income from this commerce and my newspaper round was spent on chemicals and apparatus for my laboratory. I enjoyed smelly things; hydrogen sulfide, like rotten eggs or farts, was a favorite. I was the chemistry teacher’s helper, cleaning up after class experiments and re-labeling stockroom chemical bottles. She even let me take a few grams of hard-to-get chemicals for experiments at home.