War of the Shoreside Sailor

The War Of The Shoreside Sailor ?

My Granddad. The self-appointed war aficionado in our area took charge
of the shelter during air raids. His assuming of command was because as
he said. "After all I did serve my king and country as an officer in
the great war." Never specifying that his commission was as a mate on a
clipper.
The air raid shelter stretched across the back of four dwellings
including our house and shop. It provided a sanctuary for six families
plus my parent's employees, in the event of an air raid.
Building these concrete and brick refuges provided all the old, exempt
and aspiring builders with a bonanza of wartime jobs. Those edifices
were not a pretty sight, the condition of the structure showed that
they had been built in haste. It was obvious to all that they'd been
constructed by people who'd not laid a brick for a long time, or for
that matter if ever at all.
Inside the shelters you could taste as well as feel and smell the dank
roughness of the mortar and brick structures. This raw atmosphere to my
immature way of thinking represented the ambience of war. Along with
the smell, taste, feel and sight the whole blended with, and was added
to by a cavernous echoing clamour. This din was caused by the least
sound, that being amplified and reverberated by the rough bare brick
bulwarks and the reinforced concrete ceiling.
When people realised just how much time they and their families would
be spending in these unsightly havens their British ingenuity knew no
bounds in customising the ugly sanctuaries.
Bunks, stoves tables, chairs, radios, pictures of loved ones attired in
a variety of uniforms, and other knickknacks all became essential
equipment, for the siren suited temporary refugees in the brick and
concrete asylums. Curtains draped on make believe windows and
tablecloths covered rude wooden benches. On special occasions such as
Christmas they were decorated with streamers and tinsel. Neighbours
bragged about how well fitted out their shelter's were.
Never the less, no matter how an air raid shelter was tarted up, there
was still that built in dankness that was crudely camouflaged by soft
furnishings. Also the re-echoing sepulchral tinnitus clamour still
prevailed like a mumbling indistinct phantom. All the added frippery
may have been good for civilian morale, but one was always aware that
this was still very much a bomb shelter. Even the addition of photos of
uniformed kin did not alter that fact.
Granddad would stand fearlessly on the shelter roof, his clipped, waxed
military style moustache bristling. Erect, he would pose there in his
command post above our shared air-raid shelters' doorway. Wearing an
old German spiked tin hat, binoculars slung round his neck and carrying
a swagger stick. From this risky dominant position he would give out a
shouted, and invariably over pessimistic commentary, on how the current
blitz was going. Mum said, "Granddad enjoys being a cynic, a cynic
whose negative opinions should be taken with a large pinch of salt. If
he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, he would say it was an
express coming."
On hearing the sound of an aeroplane's engine or engines Granddad would
designate them as either "a Hun," or "one o'ours." He claimed to be
able to recognise which type of aircraft was producing the engine noise
and even whether or not it was carrying bombs.
On one occasion he wrongly predicted that a hurricane (one o'ours) was
a Hun carrying Nazi paratroopers. When broached about this error later,
he claimed, "Herman was a sneaky bugger. Who'd sometimes tune his
engines so that they would sound British to fool the Aircraft Observer
Corps."
How he could have developed his uncanny skill to identify aircraft I
have subsequently questioned. Although at that time I believed all of
Granddads' words to be the gospel truth. I have come to my present
conclusion by considering that in his 'great war', the state of the art
flying fighting vehicle was the Sopwith Camel on the British side.
While the Red Barons' red tri-plane, in which he wreaked havoc against
the allies, was the German's.
One night when the sirens sounded, but no planes of either side
materialised. Granddad took time out from his command post duties. He
shone his masked torch on my silver siren suit, which had been made
from part of a barrage balloon that had been brought down in a gale.
The old man rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he quoted an old adage.
"It's an ill wind that doesn't blow someone some good." At the time his
quotation had gone way over my head, but now myself being older,
possibly even wiser, I know what the old man meant.
During the hostilities, and in fact for several years after them, food,
clothing, petrol and utility furniture were all rationed, and hence
they were in short supply. To overcome the shortages of these
commodities, ingenuity on a grand scale was therefore the order of the
day.
Old clothing that would have normally been discarded was recycled into
all manner of things. Clippy-mats were made by cutting clothing into
strips and with the use of a needle or progger were threaded through
hessian or sackcloth to make rugs. Jumpers or cardigans were carefully
un-picked and re-knit into scarves, socks and balaclava-helmets.
These reconstituted jumpers and cardigans were predestined to be sent
to 'our boys overseas'. When my Mam sent one such parcel off I wondered
what a soldier in the far eastern rain forests wanted with heavy woolly
socks and a balaclava. Still it could have been even more absurd, if
she'd included a proggy-mat.
Nearly every piece of open land was turned over to agriculture. Metal
garden railings were sequestrated, and burnt off by teams of workmen.
These railings were said to be metal for the war effort. In later years
I learned however, that the reason the metal fences were confiscated,
was to bring the war home to an overly complacent nation. Some people
tried to hang on to their flower gardens until persuaded otherwise by
peer pressure.
One such a person, a determined horticulturist in our street hung on to
the bitter end with his prize dahlias and tea roses. Granddad accused
him of being little short of a nazi sympathiser in not aiding the war
effort. The gardener took stock of his situation. No doubt due to
Granddads' not so gentle coercion, the predisposed flower grower
eventually relented and began to raise prize vegetables instead of
blooms.
With meat in extremely short supply the government's newly created
Ministry of Food bombarded the perplexed wartime housewife with a
variety of ways of how to make vegetable dishes taste like meat.
Those menus were broadcast over the radio and printed in precise detail
in the press. None of the menus ever seemed to work; the reconstituted
vegetables never tasted remotely like meat. If my memory and my taste
buds serve me right, I would say that they had discovered several new
ways of making synthetic cardboard with garden vegetables. Possibly the
newsprint that the menus were written on would have proved a better
meat alternative.
In their efforts to promote surrogate animal flesh the government
introduced 'British Restaurants'. If ever the misnomer restaurant was
used, this was it. Maybe the word British was also an inappropriate
label too. Had the war cabinet been able to somehow ship these
food-processing eateries, along with their menus over to Adolf, to
accompany his ersatz coffee. There is no doubt that they would have
shortened the war by two years.
Granddad was not always fatalistic. At times he proved quite the
opposite "Meat from the sea, that's what we need here." he declared one
day, "And I don't mean that whale meat rubbish." Taking up his beach
caster rod his Scarborough Reel and tackle bag, and accompanied by
Lassie his Cocker Spaniel he headed for North Shields on foot. It
didn't seem to bother him that the beaches were fenced off with barbed
wire, backed up with land mines. Neither did it seem to trouble him
that the route he would have to walk was a good twenty plus miles round
trip.
The old man had set off at around seven in the morning and returned
slightly tipsy, at about eight that night. Over his left shoulder he
carried his rod, reel and tackle bag. Tied to his rod was a sack, which
contained upward of two stone of crabs and fresh fish. On his right
shoulder Granddad carried the sleeping, snoring Lassie. That night all
of our neighbours, and us had a good feed of 'meat from the sea'.
To the best of my knowledge that fishing trip to the coast was repeated
at least twice a month throughout the war years. Relatives, friends and
people in our street used to plan their menus around my Grandfather's
marathon fishing trips.
Everyone used to beam when Granddad set out with his fishing tackle,
that is all apart from Lassie. However even she took pleasure from the
second leg of the fishing expeditions. It was never revealed to me how
he and the dog sidestepped the mines and the barbed wire.
During the war alcoholic beverages were hard to come by, but my
Grandfather never seemed to go short. He was never a roaring drunk,
rather he was a happy soul, when as he said, "Had my whistle
wet."
I enjoyed his tales of life before the mast and his later experiences
on the poop as a mate. I learned about the Roaring Forties, the Cape of
Good Hope and the Horn. Chinese and Malay Pirates were all part of the
rich cast in a variety of his stories.
My Mam often said to my Dad "Your Father is filling that lads' head
with a load of rubbish." The old mans' yarns gave me the taste for salt
spray on my lips and the tangle of the trade winds in my hair.
I think Granddad's tales persuaded me to choose a maritime career when
I was older. However my career at sea was as an engineer on passenger
ships. I never came across any pirates, Chinese, Malay or otherwise.
Who knows maybe the ship did but I was down below on watch at the time
the corsairs hailed into view?
My not meeting with pirates is not strictly true, since during the
fancy dress balls and gala nights on the passenger vessels I mingled
with many Caribbean Buccaneers. These however were usually accompanied
by stuffed parrots, Charlie Chaplins, Henry the VIIIs, Hula-hula
dancers. Plus numerous Arab Sheikhs draped in company bed linen and
towels, which in most cases were never returned to their bunks or the
ship's linen cupboards.
Now I know from experience that sailors' tales become more embellished
and polished with the frequency of the telling of them. Nevertheless I
would like to believe that my Granddads' yarns were true.
One thing that I am absolutely certain of is that there was no doubt in
my nine-year-old mind. That certainty was, that the allies owed their
first and Second World War victories in no small way due to the heroism
and leadership of one James Passmore, my Granddad.

by Don Passmore ?