WW2

War Damage And Rebuilding: Prefabs In London

~ beetleypete ~ 40 Comments

Prefabricated homes were seen as the quick answer to the housing shortage caused by German bombing in WW2. Built on top of pre-plumbed ­concrete slabs, these homes could be erected in a day by teams of German and Italian prisoners-of-war who were in no hurry to return home, come the peace. Londoners soon gave them the shortened name, Prefabs.

For more than 150,000 homeless, bombed-out families across Britain, these two-bedroom prefabs were meant to be a merely temporary solution at the end of the war. But they were a godsend, too — detached houses with the then astonishing luxury of a garden, a bathroom, and a separate indoor toilet. They soon became the envy of those still living in pre-war accommodation nearby, and were one of the most desirable options for social housing.

As a child in the 1950s, I remember them near where we lived, and how much everyone was jealous of being able to live in one.

They were designed to last only ten years, just long enough to allow post-war Britain to build all those wonderful new council blocks for homecoming heroes like Hector Murdoch and his family.

As the Sixties unfolded, multi-storey concrete utopias were popping up all over Britain’s ­metropolitan skylines and most of the prefabs came down. But as the years went on, the script went badly wrong. Many people found that they hated living in high-rise blocks, no matter how much the architects and the councils told them how lucky they were. In the end, the tower blocks started coming down again. Yet, the remaining prefabs — and their grateful residents — stayed put.

Even the local church was prefabricated.

Sadly, most have since been demolished by different authorities around Britain. In total, 156,623 prefab bungalows were built between 1945 and 1949. According to the Pre-fab Museum, around 8,000 are left in the UK with around 30 listed for presevation. They are still lived in today.

Random Photos To Bring A Smile

~ beetleypete ~ 50 Comments

This selection of feel-good photos (mostly staged for the camera) made me smile. I hope they work for you too.

A young man with his pet Owls.

Taking your dog to the hairdresser’s.

A skateboarding nun.

The fisherman’s cat lives in his beard.

This old lady is using a puppet of an old lady to feed squirrels in the park.

Police Dog Response Unit.

Using WW2 gas hoods to combat smog in Philadelphia. (1953)

Obviously a slow day at their shop.

An Edwardian-era postman takes his dog on the round to guard the mail.

A Roaring Twenties lady with her pet piglet.

This pram seen in London is designed to resemble a horse and carriage.

No dog biscuits for sale, WW2. During the war, pet food and treats became scarce because of food rationing.

Taking her duck for a walk.

Wearing masks against infectious diseases is nothing new.

A young girl and her pet sheep walking along an English High Street.

A small girl with her tiny cat.

Taking her snake for a walk.

Random Historical Photos From Britain: 1900-1970

~ beetleypete ~ 31 Comments

No real theme in these, I just found each one interesting.

Female mill workers, 1900. (Partially colourised.)

Young mill girls with their bobbins, 1901.

City boys evacuated to the countryside during WW2, 1940.

WW2 rescue workers at the scene of German bombing of Cardiff, 1941.

Children in front of their bonfire for Guy Fawke’s Night, 1957.

A pub in Wales, 1960.

Slum conditions in Northern England, 1960.

Welsh miners help each other in the shower after their shift. 1960s

A teenage boy after his first full shift down a mine. Wales, early 1960s.

Welsh miners attend a union meeting outside the pit, late 1960s.

A man with his beloved racing pigeons, 1970.

Women At War: Britain 1939-1945

~ beetleypete ~ 53 Comments

As well as working in many traditional male jobs during WW2, women also joined the armed forces.

Members of The Women’s Guerrilla Corps being instructed in how to carry and use a rifle, 1941. All the women are aged between 40 and 60, so too old to join the regular armed forces at the time. They were training to resist any German invasion of Britain.

A female pilot of the Air Transport Auxiliary, 1944. They ferried planes from aircraft factories to airfields across the UK. This lady is about to fly a Spitfire.

A group of West Indian army recruits at a training camp in 1943.

Two plotters for an anti-aircraft battery, waiting for enemy aircraft to arrive over the coast.

Volunteers of The Home Defence Corps learning hand to hand combat. London, 1942.

A civiilan war worker fixing tracks onto a tank, 1940.

Polish volunteers in the British army undergo combat training, 1943.

A member of The Observer Corps stands ready with her binoculars to spot German aircraft, 1943.

A group of women from The British Mechanised Transport Corps push an ambulance out of soft ground, 1940.

Holocaust Reminder

~ beetleypete ~ 55 Comments

In 2023, there are still many deniers of the mass killing of millions of Jews and other prisoners by Germany during WW2. Even faced with overwhelming evidence and personal testimony, some still refuse to believe the events ever happened.

So I am posting this short film clip to remind the rest of us, the sane ones, that it did.

An Alphabet Of My Life: I

~ beetleypete ~ 69 Comments

I=India

I have never been to India, but that country featured significantly during two very different periods in my life.

My father was a regular soldier. He had joined the British Army in 1936, and served in the Royal Artillery. When war broke out in 1939, he spent some time with coastal defence artillery. Then when Japan entered the war in late 1941, he was transferred to India. It was believed that Japan would try to invade India, and my dad’s job was to train Indian Army soldiers to use combat artillery weapons.

As we know, India was not invaded. As a result, my dad enjoyed a happy war. With the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major, he lived a comfortable life as a Warrant Officer. He travelled around many parts of India, living in style in his own bungalow with servants looking after him. He played Cricket and Football for the Army teams there, and went on many hunting trips, shooting almost every known animal in that country.

When Japan surrendered, he stayed on in India becuase he was a regular, not returning to England until after the partition of India in 1947.

Once I was old enough to understand, he would talk to me about India constantly. He taught me about the different cultures and religions, gave me his opinions on the soldierly qualities of Sikhs, Punjabis, and other ethnic groups. He spoke about the wonders of the ancient temples, the extremes of weather, and also the poverty and caste system. Using the big map in my atlas of the world, he traced his travels around India, describing each different region to me in great detail. He also spoke highly of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and how he would dearly loved to have settled down there.

To accompany his talks, he used four albums of black and white photos he had taken whilst living there. They were small prints, carefully attached into the albums using ‘photo-corners’. They showed snake charmers, temples, dancers, festivals, numerous animals, and photos of my dad and his comrades doing all kinds of things. He also gave me some of his souvenirs, including a Gurkha Kukri battle knife in its leather case. Other souvenirs were animal skins from Antelopes of some kind, and a deerskin. They served as rugs for many years.

Pride of place was for a stuffed leopard’s head, and its full skin. That trophy was in front of the fireplace. I am talking about the 1950s here, so at the time such things were admired, and there was no talk of how bad hunting was or how cruel it was.

Because of those years being enthralled by his descriptions of this exotic land, I resolved to visit India as soon as I was able.

Fast forward to late 1984. I had been married for 7 years, and I was living in Wimbledon. I was an EMT in London, and my wife was a University Lecturer in Biology and Ecological Sciences. She came home from work one day and told me she had been asked to go on a trip for the British Council For Overseas Aid, leaving in a few months. She would spend six months in India as part of a group of lecturers, taking along a large amount of used school scientific equipment, including microscopes and soil analysers. The team would tour India helping trainee teachers learn how to use the equipment in schools, later donating it to them. She added that she had accepted.

I was excited. The destinations reminded me of many places my dad had told me about. Bangalore, Lucknow, Kashmir, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur.

For the next few weeks, I spent all my free time doing research. I bought detailed maps of India, checked on necessary vaccinations, purchased travel guides for each region,and even bought a large zoom lens for my camera. I went to my Area Headquarters and asked my Ambulance Service manager for time off. I was told I could use all my paid leave, then be unpaid for the remainder. But I could come back to my job as long as I was not away for longer than six months.

My wife was aware of all of my research, and she also knew about my dad spending all those years in India, and my lifelong anticipation of visiting that country. We were quite well-off financially, and a few months unpaid leave would not affect our situation. Besides, she would be getting paid by the British Council, in addition to her University pay. It was considered to be something of an honour that she had been asked to go.

One evening as I sat surrounded by maps of India, she told me that it was not considered to be ‘appropriate’ for spouses or partners to go. Hotel accommodation and flights had already been arranged, and she would be working up to 10 hours a day. I saw no problem in that. Hotels were cheap, we could easily afford my return flight, and I would not need much money while I was there. I could get a hotel nearby, and meet up with her when she was free. Meanwhile, I could explore the area, and take photos.

When I explained that, she seemed exasperated. She said she did not want me to go, adding that it would be ’embarrassing’ for her husband to keep appearing. I was surprised that she had not mentioned that from the start, saving me the preparation and anticipation. I felt incredibly deflated, and her best answer was “I knew you wanted to go there, and didn’t know how to tell you that you couldn’t come”.

So I never made it to India, and we split up in 1985 just before she was due to leave England.

I suppose I could have gone on my own later in life, but my heart was no longer in it.

Slum London: My Mum’s Youth

~ beetleypete ~ 48 Comments

The districts of South London where my parents grew up were once considered to be little better than slums. Dwellings not really suitable for the large families that lived in them, lacking most facilities we would take for granted by the 1960s.

They had outside toilets, hot water heated on a stove or cooker, and were back-to-back small terraced houses with poor ventilation and little light getting into them.

In 1924, the year my mum was born, a national newspaper published an article about the lack of living space in those houses.

Two nearby streets, Sultan Street and Sultan Terrace, are shown here in 1939, the year WW2 broke out. Nothing had changed in those fifteen years.

Ironically, despite the loss of life caused by the German bombing of London, it was the devastation left behind that created the space for the gradual rebuilding. This allowed for much better living conditions in working class areas after 1960.

Some More London Nostalgia In Photos

~ beetleypete ~ 35 Comments

Alma School, Bermondsey. This photo was taken near the end of WW2. A bomb-damaged area is being cleared. On the left you can see some new prefabricated asbestos-sheet houses. We called them ‘Prefabs’, and they were supposed to be temporary. But the people loved them, and over 100 still exist in London today.
I went to that school from 1957 until 1963.

Children playing in a bombed-out building in Bermondsey, 1953. By the time I was old enough to be out playing in 1958, I was playing in the same building.

A young couple sheltering from the Blitz in an underground station, 1940. My mum was doing the same thing at the time.

Choosing an engagement ring, 1953.

Taking tea in a Lyons Corner House, late 1950s. Despite the elegant surroundings, anyone could afford to have tea there.

Making the most of a hot summer in London. Sunbathing in a basement ‘area’, 1954.

A Skiffle Club in Soho, 1960.

Cards advertising the services of prostitutes in Soho, 1960.

Tales of a Polish Woman – from the History archive

~ beetleypete ~ 9 Comments

Frank has brought us the thrilling wartime story of an incredibly brave woman. Great reading!

toritto

Christine Granville, nee Krystyna Skarbek, O.B.E., GM, Croix de Guerre, died tragically on June 15, 1952. She was a Special Operations Executive Agent during the war, celebrated for her daring and resourcefulness in intelligence and irregular warfare in Nazi occupied Poland and France. She was one of the longest serving of Britain’s wartime agents and was decorated by the King after the war.  In 1941 she began using the nom de guerre Christine Granville and adopted it with her naturalization as a British citizen in February 1947. She was 37 years old when she died.

Krystyna Skarbek, “Vesper” to her father, was born in 1908. the second child of Count Jerzy Skarbek and Stephania Goldfeder, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker. The Skarbeks had influenced Polish history for a thousand years, saving the country from medieval invaders and serving its royal courts’ “Krystyna inherited the self‐assuredness, patriotism and fearlessness…

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December The 7th, 1941

~ beetleypete ~ 43 Comments

Eighty years ago today, Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbour, and brought the United States into WW2.

As a result, a bitter war was fought in the Pacific, and so many soldiers and civilians died. Some years later, American troops and equipment made D-Day possible, and Germany was finally defeated.

Becuase of Japan’s entry into the war, the allies finally had to invent a super-weapon to defeat that country, and the world went into the terrifying nuclear age.

Let us never forget those who died on that day, and always remember the significance of the date in world history.