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“LIGHTS OUT, NO
TALKING” |
SUMMER CAMP
1939 |
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1939 was a very warm summer, with day after day of continual sunshine. Home Leave had been good, the days in between leave and Camp were pleasant, with cricket, swimming, walks, and shore leave to while away the time. Most of all, was the prospect of two weeks under canvas in or near Budleigh Salterton in Devon. Most of the boys had been there last year, and the years preceding that. However, there was a few of us for whom it was all going to be a new experience. About a week before we actually went, the 'Advance Party' left. The Advance Party was a group of older boys - probably from the Seamanship classes - who went ahead of the rest of the boys in order to prepare the camping site. To accommodate two hundred boys for two weeks in the middle of nowhere required quite a bit of organising and logistics. We used bell tents, which slept seven boys to a tent. With four divisions of approximately fifty boys in each, this meant something like 28 tents in all. There was also a large marquee for use as a dining hall, another, slightly smaller one for cooking, several ablutions tents, plus others for storage of food, and I'm sure there would have been others for the accommodation of the officers. Overall, quite a lot of setting up to do, and this was the job of the Advance Party. Back at school, the experienced campers were regaling us younger boys with great tales of swimming at Ladram Bay, sing songs around the campfire, midnight raids on other tents, and collapsing them by slacking off the guy ropes. There was also the great culinary temptation cooked by Mr.Petley only whilst we were at camp. It was called "Tent Patches". Tent Patches were merely squares of flaky pastry with a spoonful of jam on top! Presumably, they were relatively easy to make, and so we had them on two or three occasions. Once more, when the time came for departure, the lorries came to take us to the station. The trip to the station was noisy, with boys singing all the songs they could think of, using their own lyrics! Once aboard the train, and we settled down for the ride to Bristol. Passing through the now almost familiar Gorge. The mood, though not the same as when we were going on leave, was a happy one never the less. At Temple Meads, we all stayed in groups as ordered, and moved off to our new departure platform. This was to be yet another new experience for me. The railway system we were on, was the Great Western Railway. For the journey into Devon, we would change over to the Southern Railway. From the cream and brown of the GWR, we went to the plain green of the SR. On boarding our new train, we were kept to our junior and senior divisions, but within that framework, we were allowed to sit where and with whom we liked. The ride down was quite an experience for me. I was travelling in country which was not only new to me, but miles from the countryside where I had been brought up, and quite different to that of Lancashire. At one stage, we travelled for what seemed like miles through acres of apple orchards with large 'Bulmer's Cider' hoardings set up at several places. Food was served to us in the form of a packet of sandwiches each. Cold drinks were served from the jugs we used for tea in the regular dining hall. The journey from Bristol to Budleigh Salterton was quite a long one. I'm not quite sure where we got off the train, but it was a small country station, probably one or two stops short of the main Budleigh Salterton station. We walked in very high spirits to the camp site, where we were directed to our particular tents. I can't remember exactly what we slept on. I'm sure we didn't have camp beds, it is unlikely that we transported two hundred mattresses to the camp site, so it is more than likely that we made our beds on the rubber sheets upon which our blankets and other bedding was laid. Each morning at reveille, the walls of the tent (that part of the tent between the bell, and the ground) had to be rolled up and tied. Most of us were waiting to get down to the beach. We had heard so much about it from the other boys. The beach, when we finally got there, was all and more than we had hoped for. I was brought up at the seaside in St.Annes in Lancashire. During the school holidays, I had practically lived on the beach. The water up there is brown and not very clean. We often swam in the sea, but whenever possible, we went in the baths where the water was clean. Similarly, the water we looked at day after day in the Bristol Channel was brown. The water in Ladram Bay was such as I had not seen before. Mainly, it was clean, and then it was green, rather than the brown of the sea at St.Annes. There was a huge pillar like rock arising from the water at one spot. We were told to remain in one section of the beach, and this rock was in 'our' section. We had races from the rock to the shore. As I said earlier, the weather was wonderful. The two hour sessions we were allowed in the water passed like minutes. Why on earth would we even think of war? On one or two afternoons, shore leave was granted. Some boys walked as far as Sidmouth. (I still don't know how far that would have been, but it was regarded as being a long way). I only qualified for one shore leave - I was third class with one stripe - and we only walked locally. It all made a wonderful change, and I know we all relished the difference. We did have one or two camp fires with sing songs - usually led by Mr. 'Fishy' Littlejohn who was the music teacher, and who had the sort of voice which encouraged one to sing along. Alas, this idyllic life style was brought to an abrupt end one afternoon when Captain Evans assembled us all to tell us that regretfully, all boys would have to return to Portishead tomorrow. A clean up party would remain to pack up the tents and equipment. The reason was that a declaration of war was a distinct possibility, and in such an event, all boys should be back at the school. Still, the full impact of what might be the implications of war didn't occur to us. How could it?-even at that moment it was to us, something which was going to happen 'out there'. As far as we were concerned, war was interrupting a wonderful camping holiday, the likes of which we - first time campers - had never experienced before, nor would we - as things turned out - experience it again. Our journey back was the reverse (in every sense) of the journey to camp. The weather was awful, our morale was practically zero. For good measure, when we finally reached Portishead, there were no lorries waiting for us. This in itself was no great hardship for us, we were used to walking the distance to the school, but today, it was pouring with rain! My most vivid recollection of that day, was one which sent a small chill up my spine As we walked away from the station, to our left was the Portishead dock, and the great electric power generating station. This was a massive square shaped building, with a huge chimney at one end. Along the top of the flat roof, we could see soldiers quite clearly pacing up and down. They wore capes against the rain, they also had on steel helmets, and rifles shouldered as they paced. It was our first sight of soldiers doing their job in earnest. We found out later they were 'Territorials', a sort of volunteer reserve army. As far as we were concerned, it was the first sign that someone, somewhere, really meant business. The rain was forgotten, we speculated on the reason for such an overt show of arms. Some thought that war had already been declared. We even asked the officers if such was the case - they thought it unlikely. Despite this assurance, we continued to speculate, using the wild imagination of boys. One of our more fanciful speculations being that the power station was of such importance, that we would probably be invaded at this point. The fact that there were dozens of really important targets in much more accessible geographical locations for the Germans to invade, completely escaped us. Our collective imagination, irrational as it may have been, could not stretch beyond the evidence of our eyes, and that was the power station in a state of siege! After our sudden and dramatic return from camp, taking place as it did, in the last week of August 1939, we did not have long to wait before the reality of the rumours occurred, namely, war being declared. |