Dramatic wartime memories
ON the 80th anniversary of the blitz which brought two nights of destruction, these memories provide a dramatic recollection of wartime life in Hull.
They were like scenes from hell, visions of horror amid blazing homes, glass covered streets and people staggering though the ruins, many driven to madness, some naked as they fought to survive.
These were the sights that lived in the memory of Hull doctor Frank Alderson for the rest of his life.
In 1934 Dr Alderson bought a practice at 15, Holderness Road and in reminiscences written in the 1950s he told of those terrible nights when the Drypool area, because of its proximity to the docks, came under attack. His memories make chilling reading.
He told of the night raids being “wonderful openers of mouths as people looked towards the “mean streets” near Victoria Dock and the “towering masts” of the four masted barque Archibald Russell. *
“The moon rose and gave Hitler all the light he needed.
“Three land mines, the biggest bombs Hitler dropped on Britain, came flapping down on their parachutes into Old Drypool. I watched two of them and the explosion some 200ft above the house tops was enough to flatten any small town.
“Those it was my sad duty to certify insane did at least get out of the nightly terror and destruction. It is a wonder we were not all certified. No telephone, no ambulance, no elec
tricity, no bus, no taxi, nothing but broken glass, trolley wires, burst water mains and fire everywhere. The roads were impassable.”
Dr Alderson said the only ambulance in Drypool was a six or eight- wheeler from Drypool Engineering Co. It had big wheels that enabled it to make a way through the broken glass.
An injured man he said he would always remember was William Webster. “One leg was gone when we got him onto the truck, and he died.
“Men and women, mad and naked, were seen wandering over the ruins of their homes in those dreadful times. It was always docks, railways and bridges, so Drypool got the most attention.”
He also wrote of first aid activity: “When the roads in Drypool were almost impassable and there were no telephones, water supply or lights
in many streets, the St John ambulance did their work with a real will.
“There were keen women, too. One girl signal man was always to be relied upon. How the dying got to hospital is difficult to guess. All we could see was that open motor wagons were driven by volunteers. Only very large wagons had a chance because the broken glass on the roads was inches thick and tram and trolley bus wires were coiled over the rubble which had once been homes.”
Dr Alderson also recalled the treatment given to those made homeless by the bombing: “Noone seemed to want them under their roofs. They were usually cold-shouldered and spent their time singing in the country inns.
“More than one was closed for good owing to the rowdy behaviour of dockers’ wives.”
And he also hit out at local
farmers who he described as “the pampered community which was always talking about how they fed the nation but they did not consider that four out of five of us were fed by the Marchant Navy.”
*Norwegian-owned Archibald Russell had carried mixed cargo and arrived in Hull in 1939. She should have sailed to South America, but as the Germans had invaded Norway on April 9, 1940 crew members were unable to reach England to take her.
She was then detailed by the British government and taken over by the Ministry of Food to be used as a storage facility based at Goole.
AS THE bombs rained down Hull gave its own two-fingered salute to the Nazi raiders.
Despite enemy efforts to raze the city to the ground, life went on with essential services maintained and public determination not to yield.
Even local racing pigeons were mobilised as a last means of communication if all other channels of communication were cut off. Fortunately, there was never any need for them to be used even though at one point there was only a single telephone line linking Hull with Leeds.
Former Mail chief reporter Tim Underwood recalled: “The Hull pigeon service was run by the city police force from a loft adjoining the Guildhall. Local fanciers provided the nucleus, but over time the police built up a loft with about 150 locally bred pigeons which were subject to regular weekly exchanges with pigeons housed in Leeds.
On the Fish Dock the Hull trawler fleet was “called up” for Admiralty service and the port was reliant on supplies from Iceland. The largest consignment ever brought into Hull during the war was one of 960-tons carried by the Finlande.
With Hull deprived of its trawlers, the remaining members of the fishing community contributed to the national war effort in a variety of ways, including preliminary phases of shell production, the making of camouflage nets on a huge scale and, later, the washing and drying of all the blankets belonging to Northern Command.
Among personnel based in the immediate vicinity of Hull were about 1000 members of the Free French forces They had been in North Africa and stayed for a while at a camp in Anlaby prior to their participation in the D-day landings and the liberation of their own country.
Mr Underwood said the public suffered nightly black-outs and even toddlers wore gas masks. Local entertainments had a 9pm curfew. Above all, though, the authorities worried about an invasion and plans were drawn up in case this should happen in Hull.
Bridges and all vehicles were to be immobilised, action which would have seen swing bridges fixed so the turntables were in-operative and the parts taken out of Hull. If this proved there were plans to bury the vital parts in a pit somewhere in the city.