Middlesbrough Remembered
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Walk from North Ormesby
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Only a Short Time in History
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Football on the Roof
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Don't Mention the War?
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An Ayresome Childhood
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Newport Bombing 15 April 1942
Closing of St Paul's School
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Round and About King George Street
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Middlesbrough Welsh
Memories of Duncombe Street
Honeymans of Cannon Street
Marilyn's Memories
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Don't Mention the War?
Vic Wood
I have no personal memory of the war being only 18 months old on V.E. Day but the memory of the war was all around us. The Cannon Street area was scheduled for clearance anyway so houses destroyed by the bombing were not rebuilt. On the Laws Street block, some houses which, before the war were mid-terrace, now had exposed gable-ends as they had become the first address in the street. Our fathers and uncles had just come back. There were gas masks still just lying around in our houses. as in many, and we used to play with them. There was even a bayonet in a cupboard under the stairs which was used as a general purpose prising tool for unblocking the drain for example!. Sweets were still rationed and I can remember taking coupons to the shop. We kids would stomp down the street chanting, “We won the War in 1944!” Of course the war ended in 1945 but five doesn’t rhyme with war, does it? We also used to chant as we stomped, “We’re in the Army now” over and over again. If this was from the American WW1 song we didn’t know it because we never chanted anything but that first line.
The Respect We Owe
For the generation before mine, the one which fought the war, I have nothing but the utmost respect and am often dismayed at how badly our nation and contemporary culture treats them at times. Hospital managers scorn them as ‘bed-blockers’ because the Welfare State,( which they, after all, built! )has not made proper provision for them daring to live so long. Second rate comedians find ‘the old’ easy butts for their jokes (perhaps because now political correctness prevents them from targeting their nasty humour at ‘ethnic groups’?) There is one stock comedy stereotype which always makes me feel uneasy , the Second World War veteran who is still living in the war like ‘Daddy’ in the TV series ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ or the stereotypical character in other sitcoms forever boasting about his war time exploits. Have you ever met anyone like either of these two? I haven’t.
My Dad’s War
My father and all my uncles fought in that war as did most of their friends and not one of them went on like the sitcom characters. Indeed they were reticent or played down their experiences. I once asked my Uncle Edwin about the war and he replied. “Sometimes you see some things it’s best not to talk about not even think about..”
My Dad was a firey little loquacious Scots/Irish Glaswegian who could talk the hind legs of a whole herd of mules and had an opinion about everything and talked about anything but he talked little of the war. He was one of the troops evacuated at Dunkirk. He had been a professional soldier in the thirties and, although he had left the Army shortly before the war, he was a reservist and so was called up and sent to France in 1939 as part of the Expeditionary Force. He is the middle one standing in this pre-war photo of a 1930s army camp.
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Dunkirk
Dad talked of the retreat through Belgium amazed at the sheer numbers of Germans. Some he recalled were actually on bicycles. He occasionally talked about being on the beach at Dunkirk Remembering how terrifying the German dive bombers were, he reckoned it was the deep sand that saved them because it smothered the bomb.But mostly he made light of it. Talking about queueing up in the sea waiting for a small boat he made us laugh. The officers kept urging the queue to move further out. My Dad was quite a small man so, as he said, it was fine for the tall men but difficult for him. He said a couple of times he had to hang onto the webbing of the ‘tall bloke’ in front of him to stop from being washed away. “What the hell I’d have done if he’d been a wee man as well” Having had a good Scottish education he spoke French and did some liaison work for the Army with the local population . He painted himself like some Sergeant Bilko character running a bit of racket getting extra rations for the ‘lads’ to take home on leave. “I was having a great time ,” he reckoned . “Then the Germans came and spoilt it!”
Two fingers on his left hand were crooked. This was the only ‘war wound’ he ever talked about. In fact, it was soon after Dunkirk, safe in England ,when they were practicing storming beaches. Apparently as he dived down onto the beach ,the rim of his steel helmet hit two of his fingers and broke them. The other thing he used to laugh about was sitting on the beach at Dunkirk and hearing Churchill’s broadcast about ‘all our British Soldiers being safely within our shores’. Dad was in the Royal Engineers and they were some of the last to leave because it was their job to disable abandoned equipment. And even then he remembers fresh troops landing, really tall men going inland. Guardsmen, he thought. Brought in to cover the evacuation.
French Friends
He was befriended by a family called Longuebray. I have a broken glass letter rack with a picture of Reims Cathedral and a postcard of Rheims on which is written
Veuillez accepter de notre parte,avec ce modeste souvenir, nos meilleures amitees de toute la famille.
He often worried about what had happened to them. He tried to get in touch after the war but was unable to contact them. He liked the French and would have taken quite a dim view of all this infantile post-Iraq ‘cheese eating surrender monkey’ nonsense current in England and the U.S.A.. He didn’t glamorize or romanticize Dunkirk at all. The evacuation was a brilliant achievement he thought but it was still a retreat and for this he blamed not the ordinary squaddies, whom he reckoned fought magnificently, but the upper officer class which, he felt, once again had let them down. But then my Dad was an old fashioned, unreconstructed socialist who perhaps had a jaundiced view of the upper echelons! This is the postcard
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Three Sons:One for Each Enemy
All my mother’s three brothers were called up. My Grandmother reckoned she’d provided one son for each main enemy. Tommy was in Malta fighting off the Italians,Jimmy was in the ‘Forgotten Army’ fighting the Japanese in Burma and Edwin fought through Belgium, Holland and Germany. They all came back. This is them before the war in our backyard along with the boy next door , George Robinson. George was more than the neighbour. He married their sister Amy. George joined the R.A.F and he didn’t come back. Thus my Aunt lost her husband and my three cousins their father
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Uncle Edwin's 'War Wounds'
My Uncle Edwin was a very funny man. He seemed to have a humorous take on everything. As a young lad drinking with some friends I met in him in a Middlesbrough pub and the conversation got round to the war and he was asked about his experiences. ‘Were you ever wounded?’ he was asked. “Well. Aye!!”.Uncle Edwin then listed a variety of ‘war wounds’ pointing to parts of his body. “This one was fighting the Yanks at Southampton. That was fighting the Jocks at Catterick, this was the Canadians.. and thus he listed ‘imaginary wounds’ received in, no doubt fictitious, bar brawls.
"But what about the Germans?" asked a laughing friend. "I've nowt agenst the Germans, son. They never laid a finger on me"
Although Edwin made light of his experiences ,they were not at all 'light'. He was with the troops who liberated Belsen. No doubt this was what was in his mind when he said it was better not to remember some things. |  |
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The "Forgotten Army"
Uncle Jimmy was in the Royal Scots Fusiliers although he had no particular Scottish connections. He fought in Burma The Burmese veterans designated themselves as the ‘Forgotten Army’ The Japanese War continued for another three months after the German surrender and the troops were kept out there for many months after that. So by the time the Burma lads came home all the celebrations were over with and they returned uncelebrated and almost unnoticed. Uncelebrated they might be but their achievement was certainly no less worthy of recognition than any other Allied unit. They fought and defeated a fanatical enemy in the most hostile environment despite always being the last priority on the supplies list. Of course, to start, they suffered serious reverses but wasn't that the case in all theatres with all the Allies meeting the better prepared Axis powers for the first time?
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Defending Malta,The George Cross Island
Malta was of great strategic value to the allies keeping the Mediterranean open. Italy and Germany threw everything at it to try and dislodge its garrison. The bravery of the whole island population as well as that of the garrison was recognised when it was awarded the ‘George Cross’. Tommy was stationed there during its siege. I did not know Uncle Tommy as well as my other two maternal uncles because he lived in Essex but I remember him as a very gentle man just like his two brothers. It was hard to imagine them as soldiers sent out to fight and, if necessary kill, but then I don’t suppose they were any different from any other of the young men of the time of any of the Allied countries. I shouldn’t imagine any of them were like John Wayne or Bruce Willis
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Evening Gazette Report- 9th October 1942
 | (Front Page)AIR GUNNER GEORGE ROBINSON, of 76 Severs Street, Middlesbrough, who experienced a thrilling and successful duel with a F.W. 190---Germany’s latest fighter----during anti submarine patrol. See story in Page Four
Page 4
MIDDLESBRO’ MAN WON AIR DUEL WITH F.W.190
When war was declared , 28 year old George Robinson, bookmaker’s clerk of 76 Severs street, Middlesbrough, felt he must do a real war job. He first joined the A.F.S. (Auxiliary Fire Service) but later enlisted in the R.A.F.
Recently as the sergeant rear-gunner of a Whitley Coastal Command aircraft, George Robinson successfully fought a duel with Germany’s latest fighter,a F.W.190, over the Bay of Biscay, while on anti-submarine patrol.
His success was scored on his second trip into the Bay as rear gunner, and the F.W. ,which made six attacks on the Whitley, eventually retired with smoke pouring from its engine
Ready to Pounce
Robinson was sitting in his turret while the Whitley was being flown towards the Bay of Biscay by P.O.(Pilot Officer) K.C. Johanson of Hamilton, New Zealand in search of U-boats. In a small piece of cloud, he saw two F.W.s ready to pounce.
“The first fighter came as close as 150 yards, and did not open fire,” he said. The front-gunner gave a few bursts, and that was enough for the German Pilot. He flew off,and was not seen again”
“ The second F.W. pilot was more determined. He climbed to a thousand feet above the Whitley, which was now at sea level, zig zagging violently, and made five attacks but his aim was bad. He bullets were flashing past me into the sea. He did not appear to be hitting us at all.”
During the fifth attack Robinson’s gun’s jammed. “I grabbed the cartridge-belt of one gun with my left hand to prevent it slipping out of reach, and managed to clear the jam with my right-hand fingers.”
He added.“That was all I could do. I got the belt back into the gun again and cocked it just as the F.W. came in for his sixth attack. This time he had chosen to come in dead astern of me. It was a tricky moment but I managed to get one gun to fire”
Hit F.W.s Engine
Not only did Robinson get that one gun to fire, but he fired it so effectively that he hit the F.W’s engine when the fighter was about 300 feet away. The F.W. flung to one side,broke off the fight and disappeard into cloud with grey smoke pouring from its engine.
When the Whitley reached its base a thorough examination failed to reveal any damage.
Robinson, who had seen F.W. 190s for the first time, said that,” with their yellow colouring they looked like something out of an air circus”
Robinson was a member of the A.F.S for eight months. He surprised his wife one morning by announcing that he had ‘joined up’.
For a short time Sergeant Robinson was an aircraftman but had always wanted to fly and soon volunteered for flying duties.
An old boy of St Patrick’s School , Middlesbrough, Sergt Robinson is the father of two boys and a girl.
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Four Months Later
 | | Four months later, in February 1943, George was dead. His plane was hit on a bombing raid on northern Italy. The plane made it to Algeria which, by then, was in Allied hands. The plane crashed on landing in an American controlled zone |
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Honoring Fallen Allies
 | The Americans buried the British airman with full military honours. The American Chaplain was particularly kind and thoughtful. He wrote to my aunt and sent photographs of the ceremony to her.
George is buried in Le Petit Lac cemetery on the outskirts of Oran,Algeria. |
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Death in Thailand
| The other family loss was my mother’s cousin, another Edwin. Craftsman Edwin Hay of R.E.M.E. (Royal Mechanical & Electrical Engineers) He died in a Japanese P.o.W camp on the 16th August 1945. at the age of 36. I find this particularly sad given that the Japanese had actually surrendered two days before on the 14th August so, surely. liberation cannot have been that far away. He is buried in Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in Thailand |  |
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The Second Time Around
| I wonder what went through their minds as they went off to war. Perhaps it was a mixture of apprehension and excitement. In some ways it must have been worse for my grandparents seeing them go because they would have no illusions about what could happen. For them it was the second time round. As a child I can still remember Nana talking sadly of the loss of her brother-in-law Thomas William in the First World War. My grandad was the oldest in his family and his parents died relatively young so he and Nana had taken over the bringing up of his siblings so my grandmother felt particularly close to them. |  |
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The Big Penny
 | My sister and I used to play with a circular bronze plaque, diameter six inches. We called it the ‘big penny’ and had no idea what it was. Much much later I found it was awarded to the family honouring the sacrifice of Thomas William. Thomas had not married and my grandfather was his next-of-kin so I reckon it’s my job to cherish his memory. It’s now on my wall and every year on November 11 , I put a new poppy on it. I got this idea from my aunt Amy who used to do this on the photo of her husband George.
The Ballad of James Readman
Of course, I never knew my Great Uncle, Thomas William Fox. He died on 23rd April 1917 from wounds received in the Battle of Arras. However I am still proud of him and, on behalf of my family, cherish his memory.My grandchildren, as they become old enough, are told of him. There is a beautiful song The Ballad of James Readman written by local singer/songwriter Richard Grainger . James Readman was Richard's great uncle, in his case, his maternal grandmother's brother. Richard has kindly given me permission to print the lyric. (It can heard on his CD Town in Time)
Richard's song expresses the feelings I have about my great uncle Tom better than anything I could write.
The Ballad of James Readman
Standing smiling in his proud and manly form,
She picks the dust from off his uniform
One fond kiss and Jim is out the door
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war
Like a herd of cattle loaded on the train,
Playing death and glory’s foolish game
With his rifle, bayonet,bottle and the one stripe that he wore
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war
The boats were brought and on them soon he went,
Jim and his Yorkshire Regiment.
Never really knowing what he was fighting for.
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war.
Across the sea to Flanders they did sail,
To mucky, muddy, boody Paschendale.
It’s up and o’er the top, boys.Hear the roar!
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war.
He wore a smile to hide the grief and pain.
Like all the lads he wished for home again.
Catching barbed wire, bullets, trenchfoot and the sores,
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war
It’s up and o’er the top boys ,Don’t delay!
Is that what you did, Jim, on your last day?
For there was nothing of you found to lay below.
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war
James Readman won’t be coming home again.
He’s been blown to many pieces and no longer feels the pain.
While ,on Newport Road, his wife and son were waiting at the door.
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war.
James Readman, boy, the writing’s on the wall.
You’re a leaf among the many leaves that fall.
Your family were left in great sorrow.
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war.
James Readman, we remember you with pride,
Along with all the lads who so pitifully died.
You won’t be seen down Cannon Street or Newport anymore.
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war
James Readman’s name is written on the wall.
His name lives on in Paschendale where red, red roses fall.
“Missing. Lost in Action.” Send a message to his door.
My mother’s, mother’s brother went to war.
'Ballad of James Readman' words and music Richard Grainger (Copyright Control).
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Middlesbrough's War memorial
The names of Middlesbrough’s dead from the First World War are listed on huge bronze plaques at the entrance to the town’s Albert Park...name after name after name. Middlesbrough is only a medium sized town yet 3300 of its sons died in that war.
I think it is true that the First World War is still controversial now. The moral issues in fighting the Second World War seem more clear cut. There are those who think the First World War was just a colossal waste of life , a war fought for no purpose. I don’t like to think my great-uncle and all those other names on those plaques died for no reason It is inscribed on the medallion ,” He died for Freedom and Honour.” I believe this was the case. It wasn’t just another continental squabble from which Britain should have stayed aloof. This country was one of the guarantors of Belgium’s neutrality so once Germany invaded Belgium, on route to France, the U.K. was honour bound to go to its defence. And yes..It was a war for freedom. Britain couldn’t have stayed out of that war The Kaiser and the ruling caste of Germany were far removed from the later Nazis but, nonetheless, they despised democracy. The Kaiser was very much from the ‘divine right to rule’ school. Britain and its democracy would have had a very uncomfortable existence on the edge of a Europe united by the ideals of Prussian militarism and autocracy. |  |
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The Role of the Women
It wasn’t just the men who won those wars. My mother was very pregnant carrying me whilst she was still working in a shipyard at Thornaby. Before the war she had been in domestic service but was one of the many women conscripted into heavy industrial work in place of the men called up into the forces. Her first job was along with her sister Amy in J & G.Lowood & Co Brickworks on Marsh Rd. Then she was labouring in the chemical plant at I.C.I. Billingham before the Thornaby shipyard. Being pregnant with me whilst ‘doing war work’ was history repeating itself because my grandmother was pregnant with her whilst she was working in a munitions plant in the First World War.
Centre: My Grandmother,Lillian Fox, in her Munitions Overalls. Left: Her younger Sister Elizabeth Hay;Right: her older sister Louise Middleton |  |
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Working for Victory
I have read that Hitler believed it was beneath the dignity of German women to be made to do manual labour. The Nazis plugged the gap in their labour force with slave labour from all over the continent . Of course Germany had all the industrial resources of conquered Europe at its disposal and it was the brilliantly organised and directed American economic power which gave the Allies overwhelming material advantage. However this does not mean that either the British contribution or that of the other allies was negligible. (Forty percent of Canada's income for example,was devoted to the war effort.)
Susan Briggs writes in her book “Keep Smiling Through :The Home Front 1939 to 1945 (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1975)
“ It is now clear, in retrospect, that the British advanced further during the Second World War to total mobilization of resources than the Germans did, although few people in Britain recognised it at the time."
Much of this had to be down to ordinary women like my Mam and her sisters. I once asked my mother about the air-raid shelters. She told me she didn’t use them even though there was one almost outside her door. She complained they always smelled of cat pee even though the sand was changed everyday. “Anyway”, she said, “You heard these stories about the people in the shelter getting killed and the ones staying in the house surviving. To tell the truth you worked so very hard and you were so tired you just wanted to stay in your bed. I some times slept right through and didn’t even know there had been a raid.”
During one air raid, the slates were blown off part of the roof of our house and part of the ceiling had come down in the bedroom where my mother slept. She stayed in that room nonetheless awakening one morning to the wolf whistles of workmen peering through the roof. They’d come to cover the gaps with tarpaulin. It was her day off so she was not going to let a few cheeky workies rob her of a precious lie in . She just turned over and went back to sleep.
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Just Ordinary Folks Required to do Extraordinary Things
If some future student perhaps knowing little of the twentieth century, came across my family album he or she might conclude we were a military family because so many of my ancestors are photographed in uniform but, of course, it is probably no different from any other family. In terms of losses, as a family, we perhaps fared better than many others. It is not at all unusual for a young father to have died in the trenches not making it home to see his unborn or just born son and then that boy to have grown up just in time to be cut down in the Second World War. No they weren’t military people just ordinary folk who had to take up arms and, in some cases, lay down their lives to give us the way of life we enjoy today.
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Thanks to All the Nationalities
I respect the sacrifice of all the nationalities. In one episode of the American cartoon series ‘The Simpsons’ a toast is made to ‘Our European Allies who fought so badly and surrendered so easily.” So much for the young pilots of the R.A.F. who fought the Battle of Britain or that amazing band of Norwegians secreted back into their occupied country to destroy the heavy water plant and thus set Germany’s atomic bomb project back for months. Writing in the Guardian Newspaper 7th May 2005, the author Richard Overy comments we in the west have nothing to be 'smug about' in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. His point is (I think)that the major burden was borne by the Russians, noting that they lost 14% of their population in the struggle whereas we, the British only lost 0.6%of ours and the USA 0.3% of theirs.I'm not really sure what he is arguing. If your family is one of those whose loved ones constitute part of that 0.6% or 0.3% is the bereavement any the less than if they had been Russian? Is the pride in their sacrifice any less justified? Overy rightly draws attention to the Chinese who tied down one third of the Japanese army and whose war started six years before Hitler invaded Poland. But I cannot see why this should diminish my repect for my family members who contributed to the defeat of Japan. It's only human nature to focus on our own but that does not mean we dismiss the sacrifice of others. I honour all of them Chinese,American, Russian whatever.I would also honour those brave Germans who resisted Hitler. Think of that remarkable resolute lady Marlene Dietrich who worked tirelessly for an Allied victory whilst anguishing over the fate of her mother and family being constantly bombed in Berlin. Thanks to all of them for putting an end to the most evil idea ever concocted in the history of mankind.
We Must Never Forget
To go back to the Forgotten Army of Burma, the best epitaph for both wars I think is from the Kohima Memorial . Kohima was the battle in which the Anglo-Indian Army broke the power of the Japanese on the Burma/ India border and saved the sub-continent from invasion.
“When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For their tomorrow, we gave our today"
I think this is a compelling sentiment. It refers specifically to the dead but,in a sense, they all gave their todays. I remember being particularly struck by a comment made by Clive Dunn, the actor who played Corporal Jones in the sitcom about the Home Guard during the Second World War. The interviewer had asked Clive Dunn if he thought nostalgia for the war years accounted for the popularity of the programme. Clive Dunn responded with scorn and even anger. He spent his youth in a German prisoner-of-war camp and felt nothing at all to be nostalgic about. I thought of the good times I had enjoyed in my late teens and early twenties in the so-called ‘swinging sixties’. and realised that so many of the two preceding generations of many countries, had spent that period of their lives, when they should have been simply having fun, fighting ,suffering and simply working incredibly hard so that we, the succeeding generations, could enjoy our todays.
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