READER’S WARTIME BRITAIN story
Reader Matt Mills was born in 1935 in Liverpool and lived through the Second World War. The 87-year-old, who now lives in Torbay, Devon, tells the final chapter in his story…
“One morning as the war rumbled on, a funny incident in the Mills household turned to tragedy. My fireman dad, Matt, had come home from his day shift when he asked our mum, Flo, to look at his backside as it was sore from riding his bike everywhere.
Mum sent us boys into the other room while Dad took his fireman’s tunic jacket off, including the hatchet in his holster and canvas belt, thumbed his canvas braces off, and dropped his trousers.
Mum was shocked to see a volcano of a boil on his bottom!
I was about six, and very cheeky. Looking through the gap in the door, I watched as mum got the Zam Buk and lint out of the sideboard drawer. Catching sight of the boil, I was in the middle of saying, ‘Wow!’ when Mum clouted me, and said to Dad, ‘It’s not too bad, I’ll pad it with some lint.’
Suddenly the familiar throbbing bomber noise overhead made Mum shout to me and my younger brother Frank to run to the air-raid shelter, as she helped Dad pull his uniform back on.
Dad ran to his bike in the backyard – being an engine driver he was needed right away. As he threw his leg over the bike crossbar, he heard the first bomb explosions.
Before he was able to reach the fire station there was smoke and fire coming from two rows of houses that had been demolished on both sides of a road.
He could hear ambulance bells and clanging fire engine bells. When he reached the first pile of rubble blocking the road, he swung the bike crossbar on to his shoulder and climbed the bricks and smoking timbers. There was furniture, scattered clothing, toys, shoes and a fountain of water from a burst water main.
The walking wounded were being helped by wardens, ambulance crew and neighbours, and there were hysterical screams coming from the debris.
Dad was torn between saving the injured or getting to the station to drive an engine.
Then he stopped in shock when he saw a bike lying crushed by the rubble. He gulped as he approached the bike for a closer look.
He had seen body parts many times, but he couldn’t bear to dig and find out for sure that the black serge-covered leg sticking out of the bricks was his bobby mate Ted.
Dad carried on to the fire station to get his orders from the station officer. Often “strategic material fires”, such as petrol stations or tyre stores that merchant seamen risked their lives to supply, were considered more important than people’s burning homes.
The station officer was glad to see Dad as one of his drivers had been injured and a strategic call had come in.
Dad propped his bike up against the wall and jumped in the fire engine cab, and raced to the location of the fire.
The tyre warehouse on the dock road was an old bonded warehouse with reinforced glass with metal bars over them. A leading hand fireman with his engine and crew were already there, but they couldn’t get the hoses through the bars or break the glass to reach the seat of the fire.
The raging blaze was out of control, and Dad got injured. While lying on the ground, he suffered smoke inhalation from the tyre inferno and had to be stretchered off to hospital.
At hospital, Dad’s fears were confirmed when a patient told him a policeman had been killed from falling masonry. Dad lost his friend Ted – and it was only because he was late putting his uniform back on that he lived to tell the tale.”
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