| Following on from my first offering I thought I should explain the photograph that was included. Although the picture was taken after the war, it does depict Boscombe pier as it was in wartime with the centre section missing, this was done to prevent the enemy from using it as a landing stage. It s difficult at this distance in time to visualise just what the sea front was like in wartime, the whole bay from Hengistbury Head to Sandbanks, from the low-tide line seawards was what appeared to be scaffolding slanted so as to prevent easy access to the beach. The beach itself was certainly mined and the promenade was covered in barbed-wire entanglements, as they were termed in those days. All the beach huts had been removed and the cliff lifts had also been taken away, there were concrete pill boxes both at the back of the promenade and along the cliff tops. Anti-aircraft guns were also situated along the cliffs and in some places coastal batteries and the whole took on a pretty drab appearance, it was in stark contrast to the view I had known pre-war. Even our beautiful Yellow Trolley Buses had their tops painted in a dull brown colour, I often thought then as now, did the people responsible think the German air-crew always had a perfectly vertical view of them? Sandbags were the order of the day; even the public toilets were sandbagged! As far as we kids were concerned, one of our favorite pastimes on the right days was to stand on the pavement and watch the guns fire as a Westland Lysander aircraft towed a target drogue along the sea front for gunnery practice. The only thing I didn’t like about that was the awful stench of burnt cordite and I must say they didn’t seem to hit the target very often!
Another fact that has made me wonder many times is where the search-lights were sited, I knew the area like the back of my hand but I’ve never discovered where they were? That was something we found fascinating in the early days of the war when there were night Alerts , watching long fingers of light sweeping across the sky, we used to stand by the front gate watching this spectacle until the Air raid warden came along shouting, Get inside!
We in Bournemouth were very lucky, we rarely had a sustained raid and if we did only a comparatively small number of bombs were dropped, Poole suffered much more than we did and a great deal of damage was done to the old parts of the town. We did have some memorable moments, such as when a stick of high explosives were dropped along Seabourne road, about half a mile from where we lived, and the main shopping area of Southbourne, the shock of which tipped me out of bed, but living as we did at the bottom of a hill, we escaped most of the blast damage that traveled a considerable way.
When the Battle of Britain commenced we saw tremendous increase in the amount of aerial activity as we had fighter airfields fairly close, Ibsley near Ringwood and its satellite at Sopley near Christchurch, as well as Warmwell further down the coast towards Weymouth. These were all actively engaged in the battle, my memories of that time were of the skies being full of contrails, so it was difficult to tell who was defending and who was attacking. Occasionally an aircraft would start to come down with smoke trailing from it but they always seemed to crash miles away and a couple of times I can remember seeing a parachute descending but we kids automatically thought they were Germans but it all seemed very high and far away. I can also recall seeing a Spitfire coming in quite low with undercarriage down and the cockpit canopy open, obviously in trouble, heading towards Hurn but I can t remember what time of the war that it was, I don t even know if Hurn was completed by then. Despite the current posters of the time e.g., Careless talk costs lives which were displayed on hoardings everywhere, rumour was rife and we soon learned what was happening in our own locality.
 Something that today’s generations seem not to appreciate, and this applies to the time before the threat of invasion had disappeared, that was the extent the information services went to in the name of security, and this related to hoardings that were common both in town and country. Pre-war they carried huge advertisements such as you’re in the Strong country depicting a large frothy pint of beer, this eluded to Strongs of Romsey the large Hampshire brewers and these hoardings were sited near the railway lines all the way from the Hampshire/Surrey border to Bournemouth where at Westbourne the Dorset county boundary started.
Having been used seeing these huge posters just around the corner from where we lived, I asked why they were gone and was told they had been removed so as not to give any invaders confirmation of where they were. I m also surprised to find many people today never realised all the road signs and mileage post were also removed for the same reason, so if you wanted to go to London or Southampton, you had to know the way or use a map. This of course made many rural places hard to find, if for instance you needed to find somewhere like Wimborne St Giles it was a tricky job to find it without sign-posts! Add to this the fact that in such places you probably would need an interpreter if you stopped to ask the way, because it would almost certainly met by the retort, ‘Where’s thee gwane? ‘
Translated that means ‘Where are you going?’ and that’s only a simple statement!
Returning to the subject of signs, some indications of the anxiety of the times can be appreciated when you consider some ideas put forward; removing all the destination blinds from the buses, painting out the word Bournemouth, from Bournemouth Corporation Transport on the sides of buses to name but two of many! It seemed to have escaped their notice that many things such as lamp standards, drain covers and other pieces of street furniture had the name forged in them when manufactured! In any case the Germans no doubt, had carefully prepared maps of everywhere in the country.
At around the same time there was considerable concern about the possible use of gas and so we had to carry those cursed cardboard gas-mask boxes with string to go around the neck, I didn’t mind the gas-mask, I didn’t mind gas-mask drill, but I hated carrying the cardboard box around everywhere you went, and yes to the toilet as well!! Some mothers made their children shoulder-bags to carry them in, which most of the boys thought very sissy and wouldn’t carry one. I think this was because some mothers embroidered their children s names on them in pretty colours. Yuk!
As the threat of invasion gradually diminished so did the need to carry gas masks and the war took on a more long term aspect, we were becoming more accustomed to the constraints of rationing and then the mothers of this country came into their own. I have always felt in spite of all the victory parades, all the heroics that were talked and shouted about, it was the Mums of this country who never received the recognition they deserved. They performed literally miracles in keeping us fed, clothed, warm and reasonably healthy with the minimum things to do it with. The dreaded word substitute had crept into the language and in the main they turned it into something that was more or less edible, usable, wearable and comfortable, they were the real heroes of World War Two.
Part 1
Submitted by Mussels
Location: Bournemouth
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