It will soon be 75 yers since the Sheffield Blitz part 2

[westmoors]

I think this will be the final part.

 

My thanks to all who have commented on the earlier post I have made about the 75th anniversary of the Sheffield Blitz. I am quite flattered that so many should appreciate what little I can pass on and my thanks to them all, and of course thanks to Jim Hardies and others about the name of the gunsite, with time inaccuracies do creep in, even so I should have checked.

 

Urged on by all your comments I hope to be forgiven by adding some more snippets, but please bear in mind these are the recollections of a 9 year old and not necessarily one hundred percent accurate as you have already noticed but I can’t check many of them after so long.

 

Inter city travel was very difficult and scarce, for example we used to go to relatives in Huddfersfield for some holidays and there was one only single decker bus that left from Castlegate about 9am on Saturdays as far as I can recollect and that was that, although there may have been one later in the day, it would most likely be same bus probably because busses could not be plucked out of stock and into service they did not have enough as it was or drivers. An inspector would arrive, count heads and then sadly tell the remainder sorry you may as well go home. When loaded the conductress would not even try to collect fares due to the crush she could hardly get aboard herself, no maximum standing rules in those days, the money was passed down hand to hand and the tickets passed back the same way.

 

But even then the traveler had more inconvenience at times, due to area operating contracts and a mixed array of busses used, some were joint owned with the railways and some wholly owned by either Huddersfield or Sheffield councils so the passengers often had to transfer to a bus that had traveled from Huddersfield but depending on bus ownership had to exchange it’s load of passengers with the Sheffield bus in Penistone because they were not allowed to operate in the other’s territory, both busses turning round and returning with the other’s passengers inorder for them to complete their journeys . On changing over passengers this could lead to a certain amount of confusion if nothing else with standing passengers getting a seat and vice versa and the ever present question, why on earth was this allowed to continue ? !

 

Still on transport a great many of the trams were destroyed but many local towns rallied to help and we had the loan of a wide variety from other cities, many I am sure came out of their museums if the design and color schemes were anything to go by. Wire caged front and rear bays upstairs open to the weather, full open toped, two rows of slatted wooden seats facing one another, open rear staircases etc. single bogie ( Sheffield’s preference ) but some of the longer double bogied cars came from afar afield as Glasgow but at least they got us about.

 

When I started work in a garage in 1945 I used the tram and the war time practices were still in force, standing outside the siding bay near the Town Hall where the peace garden was/is you would queue in a long tram shelter 2or 3 separate queues although you hardly tell, I had noticed that when boarding one queue was always the first to move, it was only when I got to the tram and was neatly lifted to one side by the inspector did I realize that the queue I was in was strictly for ‘the essential war time workers’ and a kid in overalls covered in grease was not in that category.

 

Due to the shortages the trams were almost always crammed at peak times, so much so that workers who travelled at regular times would be given armbands which allowed them to stand on the rear platform to control stopping and starting, and collect the fares handed over by honest passengers alighting because they could not get to the conductress who was bravely struggling her way along somewhere inside or on the top deck, the helpers would normally be able to hand over to another helper when he or she got off. Travelling in the blackout was another problem, in trams and busses the lighting was very dim and the side windows with the exception of a very small clear area to see through had been covered with a glued on fine mesh type netting to stop flying glass in case of a bomb blast. With no street lighting worth the mention ( mostly gas lamps ) only faintly lighting about one square yard around the base of the lamp standard and vehicles headlamps severely covered even if you could see out it was difficult to identify anywhere.

The clear viewing area in the window was so small and the crush of people so much that few could manage to lean over the seated passengers to peer out and relied in the main on the conductor calling out the stop they were at and the next one due so those not near the exit could struggle their way to the door to stop being taken further along the road !

 

Let’s not forget train travel, everywhere there were posters and adverts in every magazine and newspaper showing an English soldier complete with rifle and steel helmet standing in front of a small usual type ticket window pointing at you and asking “Is your Journey really necessary” to emphasize the need to keep the trains clear for essential use. I can’t remember the year exactly but certainly in the 1940’s my Mother took me to Blackpool in the holiday weeks, the demand was so high that apart from buying the tickets which were not dated for travel she had to go to another office to get regulation tickets to specify the date, the time, and the platform as several trains would be leaving almost at the same time from the same station to the same destination, the return process was the same.

 

And signs, they were everywhere, again it’s hard to comprehend today but you could not get timber, all was reserved for essential work, building etc and like most other raw material you had to apply for a permit in order to buy anything, you could not make up a sign without the necessary so signs were painted on walls, a large black square with a white letter on it. For eg. W for warden on the wall of the house where he lived, most streets had a warden, he or she looked after all the households rather like a shepherd, but they had the responsibility of making sure that people had taken cover if a raid warning had sounded, and woe betide anyone who ignored their instructions.

 

If you had been issued with the possibly one and only stirrup pump in the street you had a large SP painted on your house wall so your equipment could be found in a hurry, I believe this all became co-ordinated by the civil defense very quickly., there were FAP’s ( first aid post) and fire watching posts, and assembly points painted in the most unlikely of places. Public shelters faired better by having a metal plate, black with a white s on it and illuminated, and plenty of street signs showing the direction of the nearest one.

 

Static water tanks had been erected all over the place to supplement water supplies for the firefighters, they all had signs painted on them with their capacity and like the shelters there were direction signs to their location in the streets round about I think..

Fire watching had to be carried out by the firm’s own workers in their own time on a rota basis through the night as this was the first line of defence. When a raid started they could tackle the small fire bombs that fell long before a probably fully stressed fire brigade got to them.

If a man did not fire watch he was probably in the home guard, again he still did his full work shift first.

 

And steel helmets, in different colors with letters on them, for eg. black for the police with a white P on the front , Black for rescue workers with R, VWS and of course VAD were mainly light grey and a different shape I can’t remember what the last one was for. A for the ambulance service which may have been a black letter on a white helmet and the fire brigade where the regulars still retained the traditional coal scuttle helmet but the A F B ( auxillary fire brigade) used a traditional steel helmet I think in grey with a dark red band round it with I think the letters FB on it or perhaps FIRE, and there were many more so all services could be identified quickly in a very noisy environment, Doctor, Nurse etc.

Also a lot of white paint was used, every street lamp had white rings painted around them, curbstones on corners of the street, corners of buildings, car wings and front and rear bumpers in fact everything that could be run into or tripped over were all painted. Personal clothing also came in for attention with the slogan ‘where something white at night’ being stressed by advertisement posters and the radio, as it was the fatalities caused by the blackout due to people being run down in the dark were considerable apart from vehicles simply running off the road so all sorts of reflective patches, strips etc were used on your outer coat and even on buildings .

 

You had to carry your gas mask at all times, and there was quite an industry created by this instruction. Originally issued in a small square cardboard box with string just long enough to carry on your shoulder it was obvious the container would not last long, purpose made covers soon came on the market made from a thin cheap rexine (plastic had not got round to the public) but many made their own from anything they had. Later people left the gas mask behind as they found the covers made good lunch containers.

But in the early days no one knew for sure if there was a chance gas may be used by the Luftwaffe so at school you always had your gas mask in it’s box hanging from the back of your chair, at any time and frequently in the early years the classroom door would suddenly burst open, a teacher would pop his or her head round and shout GAS..and you would be timed on how many seconds it took to deploy your mask, and put it on, there was a recommended maximum time but I forget what it was, I know it wasn’t long !

Then the same drill evolved where we would be told AIR RAID WARNING, this time in a more orderly fashion with senior pupils being used as marshals the teachers would get us by classes into our reserved areas in the shelters outside.

 

There was one other sign which had no letters at all that I remember, a 18 inch square of yellow paint, mostly painted on the walls of official buildings but also on military vehicles, on the bonnet where the driver could see it or on a protruding shelf under the windscreen in his vision, this was a gas warning panel, if this yellow changed color there was a chance it was due to gas so you put your gas mask on.

 

More concerning for the youngster was the lack of sweets or soft drinks, I remember that no manufacturers were allowed to have their names on the wrapper or on the drinks, chocolate was in a dull brown wrapper, no silver paper and it was just called ‘Blended Chocolate’ dark or milk chocolate had ‘gone for the duration’, ( and how often we heard that when someone needed an excuse ) the drinks were called ‘Sparking Special’ and you had to open it and taste it to decide what the flavor was and that was not always easy.. But I think the idea of anonymity had gone a bit O T T, all signposts throughout the land had been removed, even the names of towns had been painted out on any vehicle, so you could have a lorry owned by T W Ward Scrap Metal, Attercliffe rd the word Sheffield was painted out, not exactly keeping it secret ! WE must have thought invading troops would get lost if they couldn’t identify where they were by our signs, little did the authorities know at the time how much detailed information our enemies already possessed .

 

My personal involvement of the war created mixed feelings delight and dismay , I had been picked to appear in the Christmas school play, I had not learnt one word and I was dreading going back to school next week and confessing, but deliverance for me came with the Luftwaffe who with admirable precision put a bomb right through my classroom, the play details went sky high.

On the morning after the first raid like many other boys I was eager to see what had happened and after climbing out of our front window less window it struck me how much earth was covering our short road, or course it must have been all the earth thrown up by the nearby bombs.

Helping some like minded spectators I helped return goods spread across the pavement from a shattered shop before the police arrived and we were all ordered home, it was too dangerous to wander around, I finally heard about the fate of our school from another pupil but never saw it for myself because fate took another hand as we had to move house to another area and a different school.

 

Sweets were not rationed until 1942 but like most popular items they had gone ‘under the counter’ very quickly. I remember even in 1945 a packet of Woodbines or Park Drive would rarely be on sale, the norm was for us boys working in the motor repair garage to go for our fitter’s newspaper to the same news agent each morning and we would be surreptitiously passed the newspaper with the cigarettes inside. The only word spoken in advance would be my fitter’s name which would magically produce the correct paper and brand of cigarettes, come back empty handed or with substitute cigs such as Nosegay, Rosemary or Turf would ensure you had a very miserable day.

 

Shopkeepers could be god like and often took advantage, I saw many with a sign in the window saying ‘only regular customers will be served’, in other words support them fully or get nothing.

 

As I said before there was a shortage of everything, you could only buy ceramic log shaped hot water bottles because rubber was needed for tires, batteries for torches were an essential in wartime and for everyone in the blackout an absolute necessity, they were hard to come by, old ones were warmed in the oven to coax a little more life from them, and many everyday items often were bought on the Black Market as the only way to get it.

 

Finally for those with any sort of outside air raid shelter the box or case containing essentials in case of an air raid was prepared and placed on top of a pile of blankets by the door. Always checked before each evening to ensure the contents contained the insurance policies, birth/marriage certificates, ration books, identity cards, what first aid supplies you could manage, a flask filled at the last moment, sandwiches and a torch of course because you never knew if you would have a house to come back to.

Few complained, and to those that did often received the usual comment jokingly or accusingly which was “ Don’t you know there’s a war on ? “ which seemed the answer to everything.

[bullerboY]

Fantastic,that brought back a few forgotten memories ,thankyou.

[Janner]

Thanks for the memories. I was 8 yrs old , sat in the shelter next to my Uncle, just back from Dunkerque, I remember him shaking at the sound of the planes & bombs.

[Texas]

I was 7years old on that night and spent it in an Anderson in my granddad's back garden.

The two things I remember mostly when I could manage a peek outside were the night sky burning red, and the sparks floating around from the fires all around. I also remember the condensation on the inside of the shelter, and the smell of candles used for light. If I smell a candle burning, even today, it takes me back to that night.

When you made your way across a bombed building, years later, you could smell the smashed brick and plaster. We had no water the day after, and the powers that be sent water tankers around and everyone got in line with buckets and washbowls to get as much water as they could. My mom and dad lived on Woodside Lane, they had a shop and got washed in Tizer and Lemonade because they didn't send any tankers down there. My dad had a couple of Bull terriers, and at the height of the blitz one of them managed to get outside and disappear. The morning after my dad went looking for her and he found her sat on the pavement looking at the fires burning at the top of Rugby Street.

[sined15712]

I have just finished reading a book about the Sheffield Blitz .

Its call Raiders over Sheffield by Mary Walton and J P Lamb.

As I was interested in the blitz as my mam and dad told me the story that where thay had planed to site the anderson shelter is where a bomb landed in the back garden.

So by the grace of God go I .

[Boginspro]

I think this will be the final part.

.

 

I hope there will be more, these memories need to be passed on and the young people who play war games on computers need to be told what war is really like.

 

Thank You.

[westmoors]

Thanks for the memories. I was 8 yrs old , sat in the shelter next to my Uncle, just back from Dunkerque, I remember him shaking at the sound of the planes & bombs.

 

Hi Texas and Janner You are so right, smells are very evocative and those from an Anderson Shelter were unforgettable, what unhealthy places they were.

It didn't help when as they were so often left to poor old dad to assemble it as best he could with the help perhaps of a neighbour he found after the first rain it had filled with water, oops wrong place or no drainage !

 

---------- Post added 10-12-2014 at 19:35 ----------

 

I hope there will be more, these memories need to be passed on and the young people who play war games on computers need to be told what war is really like.

 

Thank You.

 

 

Hi Boginspro, I thought that I had finished my narrative, but you make a very important point about passing on an experience of the blitz for future generations. My experience was quite minor in the true scene of the night, and I am sure there are more vivid accounts somewhere in the archives and perhaps more are still locked away in someone’s memory still waiting to be written, let’s hope they will unlock them before it is too late.

 

My apologies for the length of this article and also for any historical inaccuracies.

 

Again the historical details are far better documented by Wickepedia and others..................

 

The raid Dec 12th started around 7pm, and lasted until 4 am, it was not continuous over any one district but the planes would come over in attacking waves with their very distinctive heavy, low, throbbing sound their( I think) diesel engines made, but under cover you never knew where they were heading until you heard the bombs whistling probably better describes a screaming sound to fall near you, and they did this because they had some sort of device fitted to them designed to cause panic , they were dropped in short salvos ( sticks) . Meanwhile the Anti Aircraft defenses . Ack Ack as we called them would be firing skywards in the hope of hitting a plane , the sound the guns made probably altered with the type but mostly they sounded to me rather like a large plank of wood being dropped flatly onto a hard surface with a short sharp and very loud ringing crack, and that was my memorable sound that brings it all back to me , I still hear it occasionally today if in a builders or timber merchants yard !

 

But the gunfire did make people feel someone was hitting back and it was ordered to be kept up as a morale booster, in truth I don’t think they hit a thing all night, one or two planes were shot down but I have no detail of how, but from the amount of ammunition used we ought to have shot down half the total German air force

Our household comprised my Mother and myself and 3 lodgers, a salesman, a cobbler and a soldiers wife with two small boys, and we only had one candle lit cellar for shelter.

Sheffield had received many alerts in the past months which often turned out to be false alarms as the raiders passed by, there were occasional small raids but certainly we were getting complacent about them expecting an alert to only last perhaps one hour as usual, so we prepared very little in advance. . “They can’t find Sheffield” was a frequent comment you often heard when people discussed our previous lack of attention from the Luftwaffe, “we’re surrounded by hills” was the reason always trotted out, well this time they did find Sheffield on a cold clear moonlight night.

With our only substantial protected being the small triangular space under the stone cellar steps the women and two boys were crammed in there while the ‘men’ which included me just stood around or sat on what few bits of furniture had been put in the cellar as unwanted or unusable.

 

The raid would come near and then fade as it seemed the planes were roaming over the City at will and as the drones of the planes lessened we would wait until fairly sure things were quiet and one of the men would nip upstairs and make some tea and of course everyone would make use of the other facilities while they had the chance, later the men had to rig up loo at the far end of the cellar as it became too dangerous for anyone to venture upstairs. It did not seem long before they were heard coming over again and the noise and explosions and the guns firing started once more. During the quieter times you hear the sounds of the emergency services outside struggling to cope and you could the hear shouts, vehicle engines revving and lots of bumps and thumps. Other thumps and bumps came from inside the house when the bombs fell much nearer which was more alarming and Carol the younger of the men would joke after a particular crash with glass shattering, ‘there goes Alice’s radio’ and even offered to investigate but Mum forbade such a foolish offer.

The process seemed to be never ending, a wave of bombers, the drone of engines, whistling bombs, explosions and crashes from upstairs, it sounded as our house was being slowly demolished about our ears, then another short lull would occur before starting all over again, I did get upstairs and view outside just once when all seemed quite as one of the men called me to have a quick look, there was a huge silent fire ball in the sky which I could not understand, it’s OK he said it’s a barrage balloon on fire, I’m just watching to make sure it doesn’t drift this way..

 

About halfway through the raid we realized all the services had ceased, no electricity and no more hot drinks as the gas had also failed, we could hear water gushing outside in the street so the water mains must have been hit but we could not smell any escaping gas which was a blessing.

 

Now calmly retelling the facts years later I cannot convey the sheer terror we all felt at the time, the overcoming urge was to get away, get out and just run to escape this seemingly never ending hell but of course you knew you could not, and I think most of us suffered periodical uncontrollable shaking caused by our nerves giving way if only temporarily. And terror was what the enemy intended, hence the screaming devices on many bombs, an old well-used ploy by the enemy tried I believe with success in Spain, the intention was to demoralize the public and smash their will to resist or to work causing a breakdown of the infrastructure.

 

Two incidents stick firmly in my memory even after so many years. At the height of one wave we heard a bomb falling with the attendant screaming sound which was much closer than any previously dropped and after it had exploded a second screamer was heard immediately behind it and then a third with each explosion getting nearer. Now if you have ever played any ball game you can always judge distance after a couple of throws and can judge your distance to get on target next throw, well we seemed to tell the distance from these explosions. First the sound of the bomb screaming down then Boom, (count one two ) next screamer then boom, ( count one two )then boom again, they were all in very quick succession, we waited for the next screamer, the sounds were so exactly spaced we were certain a fourth was for us and Carol did shout something like ‘we’re next get down’ and the ‘men’ fell to the floor… the fourth bomb never came, the men thought we had been a gonner and even admitted that for a time they could not regain the strength in your legs to stand up because of the shock it gave one.

 

The other incident was again at the height of an attack, I had been trying to sleep and had wedged myself partly under the stairs and was napping sat upright with my head on my Mother’s lap when there was the most loudest explosion we experienced of the night. I never heard the bomb falling and I don’t recall the explosion but it felt as though the whole house had been lifted up and turned on it’s side, shaken violently and dropped back to the ground and then pushed sideways. Our solitary candle had gone out ( we had been conserving candles because again they were in very short supply ) and with ears ringing we waited until someone struck a match, it hardly penetrated the fog which we soon realized was coal dust suspended in the air, and the house had not fallen in on us, but bomb blast had been known to cause the strangest phenomenon, and must have done a lot of damage upstairs, but that was a close one !

 

At one stage the planes seemed much further away and the bombing more sporadic when we heard I think two planes coming over again, now I never checked this before but I was convinced that I heard machinegun fire which was accompanied by what sounded like small objects rolling down the roof slates, I suspect these were bullets but there may have been slates sliding as well, it seems these two aircraft were strafing the area with their machineguns.

It is a fact that firefighters had been targeted by bombers before in order to hamper their efforts to put out fires, this may have been the case, but we did have searchlight and gun batteries nearby but also barrage balloons. The link below gives a more overall account of the whole raid and does outline that they did start the raid by shooting down the balloons in order to have a clear run to their targets, I suspect that this attack I heard was made on either the poor souls in the streets trying to do something or flying down the searchlight beams to shoot out the light and kill the personnel operating them, (it seems the RAF also did that)

 

( The link was removed as it was incorrect, in Google search put "BBC The peoples war WW"2 Sheffield Blitz ) this will bring up lots of individual stories of that night.

 

Finally the raid ended the all clear sounded and we slowly scrambled up to ground level, I won’t detail the destruction but doors were jammed shut or open as the frames had moved, all the window frames and glass had gone, plaster had come down from walls and ceilings and most loose items had been thrown every which way in all the rooms.

 

I had a single bed under the window which was covered in a variety of plaster, bricks, glass and general dirt, we simply took all corners of the cover and threw the lot out of the window which was lucky because I heard our names being called from somewhere out there in the dark.

‘Here’ I shouted after we had been called a second time, it seemed the authorities were at least checking to see who was still alive !

 

In daylight the mess was everywhere, I mentioned before there the small road was full of earth no doubt thrown up by bombs exploding in soft ground, my lasting impression was that the short road of no more than 8 houses, 4 on each side had received direct hits on all 4 corners, certainly when I passed each one their upstairs rooms were open to the elements as at least part of the front walls had been blown away.

Well I was wrong, visiting by Google Earth I see that all the original solid Victorian detatched two bay houses still stand as they have always stood with a few little extensions, so the damage to mthe corner houses although extensive could not have been as severe as my young and excited person thought but I am certain at least two bombs dropped into the front lawns of two of the corner houses.

I tried looking at the bomb plot for that night but it is not too detailed and I am sure many bombs may not have been plotted because what I think may turn out to be the very biggest bomb we heard was actually dropped in Wostenholm road, very near to us as the crow flies. I stood at the side of the crater so I can vouch for it. The huge crater took out three quarters of the road, all the front gardens and the front of at least two of a row of houses leaving just enough for a vehicle to squeeze by on the pavement on the other side of the road, and that is not marked on the bomb plot. Of the arsenal used by the Luftwaffe the range of bombs was quite limited, 250, 500 and 1000 lb bombs were most common with the very small but deadly incendiary bomb used in their thousands which were dropped in canisters that spilled them out while descending, the German bombing premise was that the larger the bomb did not give a proportional increase in damage, and as they never developed a heavy 4 engined bomber, ( except the Condor reconnaissance plane) they were limited by the lifting capacity of their twin engined planes’

 

They did manage to carry one 2.200 lb (Herman) in the Heinkel 111 but you needed a lot of aircraft to make up an attack that way.

 

The other bomb used frequently was the much feared land mine, this was another terror weapon, derived from the sea mine it was of a simple drum shape, with no need for streamlining as it descended slowly on a parachute and contained a huge amount of explosives, designed to explode at about 500 ft above the ground or at ground level it would obliterate 3 or 4 houses by it’s blowing or sucking explosive action and damage dozens of others.

 

A half smile ending, Mrs S the soldier’s wife decided that things were too dangerous in the City for her and her two sons and decide to move out to the suburbs and stay with her mother, a few nights late a land mine, (parachute mine) was dropped by a raider in a nearby street and damaged or destroyed two rows of houses, she hurriedly moved back to the city centre working out that as they ( the enemy) had done the damage there already they would be unlikely to return.

Edited December 11, 2014 by westmoors
incorrect link information

[Boginspro]

Thanks again westmoors a graphic and frightening description.

[PeterR]

My thanks too westmoors for sharing your compelling personal experiences.

Edited December 11, 2014 by PeterR

[willybite]

hiya,i remember the blitz i lived on bath st at the time, i was going on 3 years old at the time, we were huddled on my nan's cellar steps, and still remember them saying at the time,that was close or that was a big one, i still remember the gas mask's,styrrrup pump's and ladders i case of fire,also remember the blackout curtains,we had shutters made by my mum.wooden frame with oil clothe tacked on.my other nan lived on the manor estate, they had an anderson shelter in the back garden, i remember their windows were criss crossed with brown tape.