What a Mess!

 In the second of our series of posts leading up to the imminent  commemoration of the end of the Second World War I am recalling a few of the rather messy ends to hostilities.  Next month the nation will recall the date as 8th May 1945 – 9th May for those who were residents of the Channel Islands.  We will be celebrating as if on that single day our previously normal pre-war lives will return to how they had previously been.  But just like any major social event on any peacetime occasion, much work goes into the clearing up, returning borrowed items to their owners, conversing with nearby house owners to apologise for excess noise they endured during the event.

A platoon of Home Guard volunteers outside their Central Drive HQ which was hastily removed
to enable post-war housing to proceed apace. Where was this structure removed to, we wonder?

Residents of the East End of St Albans, just as everywhere else, had taken on serious or casual responsibilities if they had not fought on the front line.  So among the equipment which had been shipped to our local communities from government warehouses were basic items such as stirrup pumps.  A few years previously householders had practised the fighting of small fires with buckets, water and these simple contraptions.  So, what to do with them now?  We eventually discovered that, although belonging to the government, we were not required to physically return them to a local collecting point, so  continued to find uses for them in our gardens.

Practising at stirrup pump parties, as they were known.  Just how effective were these hand-operated devices at dowsing a blaze?

Households were supplied with one of two types of emergency shelter back in 1939 and 1940.  One, the Anderson, was for part-burying in our gardens, while the Morrison was a heavy-weight table for the living room, which we could shelter under.  These items too, "property of HM Government" were impractical to return and most of us discovered inventive ongoing uses for them.

Heavy concrete blocks can still be found in odd places, but they were useful in
blocking roads in strategic locations.  Well, they were inconvenient for us and, we
trust, would have been for an enemy invader!

For many months prior to May 1945, normalisation had taken a gradual hold on our lives.  The civilian "Dad's Army", or Home Guard, stood down and had local parties organised for their families.  The uniforms they had worn for up to four years saw further use in their owners' gardens and allotments.  The concrete blocks with their integral metal hooks, which had got in the way of normal road travel had also been removed from the roads leading to the Crown junction, and at Smallford Crossroads.  Community bins which had been set up for householders to dispose of food waste before dispatch to pig clubs, gradually disappeared, as did the piles of sand prepared for creating sand bags to guard against blast.  And while on the subject of blast may companies, schools and other public buildings continued to work round the awkward blast walls in front of external doorways until they could stand the irritation no longer!

Collecting and locally transporting useful salvage materials has always been a feature of
voluntary organisations, including the Scouts, as here at London Colney, although the passenger
seating arrangements today would not be as casual!

Underground and surface street shelters and other utilitarian buildings were locked against "improper uses" in the period ahead.  The rather untidy street scapes of white bands of paint near the bottom of street lamps and key kerb stones, may well have been obliterated but were generally left to fade naturally.  Local authorities themselves were in no hurry to switch on the lights themselves after years of darkness; labour was in short supply, as was the funding for their running costs.  The signs which were removed in 1939 in an attempt to confuse an enemy following invasion, were a challenge to return to their former locations and many never made it – some of the heavier items were simply buried near to where they had been taken down.  Street life was a dour visual experience in many places.

Air raid sirens remained in place until the sixties and continued to function for calling
firemen before the days of universal phones, and later during the Cold War.  In the war
black-out they were just another obstruction to bump into on cloudy nights – the
streets seem to be littered with all sorts of "stuff" which was deemed essential.

No houses had been built since 1940, and many of the damaged properties were repaired ineffectively, or not at all – our chimney stack, having been damaged in a 1940 bomb drop nearby – was not rebuilt until 1948.  In the rush to complete new homes before the imposed 1940 deadline, some of the detailing had been left incomplete and the road surfaces which should have been properly made up were left as the remains of former fields with the minimum of gravel, and f finally being properly completed in the mid 1950s.

In the week around Victory in Europe Day many of the streets were closed for parties; this
one was at Elm Drive.  Some groups combined, but our parents would remind us of 
advanced planning: "I'm keeping this for the street party, so no eating it before the day!"

We continued to buy our everyday requirements with the aid of ration books, sometimes including foods, such as bread, which everyone had eaten without ration throughout the war.  We children had to be patient while we waiting for ration-free sweets until the mid fifties.  Toys in the pre-plastic and battery-free era were rare and expensive.  But the benefit here was that children grew up and could pass on those play items to their younger siblings and friends.

Yes, May 8th (or 9th) was certainly a good reason to celebrate, but it was a period tinged with tiredness and emotional hurt through the loss of family members or friends, a feeling which the whole country continued to experience until that decade had been extinguished.

The 1940s was certainly a very messy decade.