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As part of the 80th Anniversary celebrations held at the Village Institute on Monday, I had the pleasure of reading extracts from my Grandfather’s war diaries. Several people have asked if I could post a copy of them to read again, so here they are.

I’d like to thank Liz Roodhouse and the organisers of the event for inviting me to share these treasured family memories. (The italics throughout are my notes)

The following tales are a few short extracts from my Grandad’s war diaries. He collated them in a 450 page handwritten book for his only child, Ann, my Mum, and it begins with:

When you ask me the questions “How did you win the war?” and likewise “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” I find the first question almost impossible to answer, whereas the second is simple enough. Having read the answer to the second question, you will see why I am reluctant to answer the first.

Ernest Kennington lived in North Somercotes on the Lincolnshire coast in the house where I was later born. A woodwork teacher, he joined the Territorial Army in 1924 and was called up for artillery training in 1939, although he lacked the physique for an Anti-Tank Regiment. He wrote:

For this role you were tested by having to jump from a lorry travelling at 10, then 20, and finally 30 miles an hour. Those who passed this test left the Field Artillery to join the Anti-Tank units, and those who failed went to hospital till their broken limbs healed.

With some sense of ignominy he was posted as a Captain in the Pioneer Corps and remained in the UK for the duration. As it happened this was helpful only in that his wife, Kate, became ill with cancer and died when my mum was 8 in 1944 before the war ended.

Assigned to 118 Co. he first oversaw the smoke screens that helped obscure the large factories around Coventry – the Daimler and  Humber Hillman factories, the Alfred Herbert machine-tool works, and multiple aircraft factories and then later  to Portsmouth Docks to protect the submarine base and the “X-Craft” mini-submarines based there which played a crucial role in guiding the Allied fleet towards the beaches during the D-Day landings. This work was top secret at the time and to this day there isn’t much information available regarding this aspect of home defence. Without much warning the company were later transferred to London and put in charge of 4000 German prisoners at Beckton Marshes POW Camp.

Luckily my Mum (a natural hoarder) kept and typed up the handwritten version, it’s a trove of tiny details of that extraordinary time and the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic daily work carried out to help defend the country in its hour of need.

Here are a few snippets from both roles:

Smoke screens
These consisted of a large circuit of diesel oil smoke generators with a metre high chimney. If there was a moonlit night with German bombers en route they would be lit to obscure specific targets. 118 Co. were based at Warwick Racecourse and consisted of a great many Scots.

Smoke Generators – Photos: IWFBF

It is interesting to note that of the men drafted into the smoke companies, a large proportion of them were C3 category because of what they called pulmonary disorders and locomotory defects. Not the ideal types to do all the necessary foot-slogging, and to thrive in Diesel oil fumes! Servicing the units during the day after a ‘burn’ meant the men going round the circuit in pairs, armed with a flue brush and a wire brush. One would sweep the chimney with the flue brush, while the other cleaned the cowl and the upper part of the oil container. The oil men would come along in their lorry and dump 4 five-gallon cans of Diesel oil at each pair of pots, and the containers would be filled to the required level. For lighting up, one man carried a can containing lighter mixture, the other was armed with a flint gun like you use for lighting a gas stove. Lighter fluid was a mixture of Diesel and petrol – neat petrol had the disadvantage of causing the pot to explode, covering the operator with blazing oil and petrol.

Of the Scots he writes:
They were little fellows from the poorer part of Glasgow, the Gorbels. Their average height was about 5 ft 3 ins. I hadn’t noticed it so much the first week, for although they were so small, they looked otherwise normal on drill parade in their clean uniforms. But for the smoke parade they wore old greatcoats, sooty and soaked in oil. Where normally the hem of the coat is about a foot from the ground, these old coats had not been tailored to fit their unfortunate owners and generally trailed only half an inch or two from the ground. To make matters worse, they carried their only weapons, a six-foot pike. There were not enough rifles to go round, only a dozen for guard duty, so a kindly War Office had provided them with pikes. These were five-foot lengths of gas pipe, with a bayonet welded on the end. The men hated them and would not be seen in public with them. Wouldn’t Lord Haw-Haw have relished this, if he had known?

First day…
We set off for Coventry in the late afternoon to arrive at the circuit just as it was getting dark. Then there was nothing whatever to do but wait until the enemy bombers were reported crossing the coast, and heading in our direction, when the order would be given to stand to. Later, if the planes were approaching the neighbourhood, we were told to light up. Nothing happened on my first night, there was not much moonlight, and the tedium was only relieved by the welcome appearance of a truck from the cookhouse with mugs of steaming cocoa and huge Cornish pasties.

One part of the circuit ran through some streets of terraced houses on the outskirts of the city. Here we found the men being regaled with cups of tea and cakes by some local women, but as soon as we appeared it was a different story. They thought we were responsible for the stink and mess in their homes and told us so in no uncertain terms. We told them that we were only doing our job just as the men were and told them who to complain to about the smoke. After the blitz on Coventry, they were even more annoyed and wanted to know what use the smoke screen was if it didn’t stop the houses from being bombed. Well you can’t argue over Government policy with people in the street, though we were as sorry for them as they were for us. It was no use explaining to them that to screen the whole city was an impossible task, and useless too, since you can bomb a town indiscriminately by map reference alone, whereas you have to see an individual target to hit it.

The Blitz
When the men returned from Coventry in the early morning they told us what had happened to the city, but said there had been nothing at all on the circuit, and the Standard works had not been hit. When I went to the circuit later, we were unable to enter any of the streets we usually used, they were just piles of rubble, and hardly a building was left standing in the city centre. This was when we got the cold shoulder from the inhabitants, who seemed to think it was all our fault. They never forgave us, at least while I was with 811 Company. On the second night of the blitz, they flattened more houses, air raid shelters, and what was left of the main buildings. This time I was again out on the Racecourse at Warwick with the little groups of men, when the local searchlights opened up, and caught in their beams a parachute sailing in our direction.  Ah! The invasion had begun – the first of the paratroops! As it passed over us, I sent a couple of sergeants with parties of men on each flank, and I followed in the centre with my bonny lads, breathing fire. All I hoped was that we could get underneath the airman before he landed and had time to draw his revolver, as I had only my cane, and the Scotsmen’s pikes would be no match for a firearm. I wondered what the poor German would think when he was surrounded by a fearsome looking gang of Highlanders bearing six-foot pikes and uttering fiendish cries which the Scots do when they are excited. I wondered also how I was going to restrain this horde from running him through with their pikes, out of sheer enthusiasm. These idle considerations were rudely interrupted by a cry from one of the sergeants: “Get doon, all of ye, it’s a LANDMINE!” Needless to say, we all got doon, and waited breathlessly for it to land. After a couple of minutes, it went off in open country about a quarter of a mile away from us. When it was daylight, we went to have a look, and all that remained of this parachutist was a whacking great crater some thirty feet in diameter. If the plane had released this mine a few minutes earlier, it would have made a nasty mess in the town of Warwick.

He moved to Compton Verney to train other UK pioneer units how to use the new mobile Haslar smoke machines. It was situated in woodland next door to an RAF bomber airfield.
We were sitting in the common room one evening about 9.00 o’clock, our night burn having been cancelled, and we could hear the Wellingtons going over the house.
Suddenly there was an almighty crash, and we thought one had fallen on the house. We rushed outside and saw flames in the sky in the direction of our training ground.
Everyone dashed up the hill, but when we reached the crashed plane, it was a mass of flame. Bullets were exploding, and we expected any minute that the bombs would go off too. Harry Woods was there first, and with the orderly room odd-job man, Pte. Nightingale, had seized the axe which was hanging inside the door, hacked his way through the fuselage and the pair of them dragged the crew out one by one, handing them to the helpers outside. In a few minutes, nothing was left of the plane but a heap of tangled metal.
Strange to say, we found a couple of airmen about a quarter of a mile from the plane, near the horse dealer’s cottage, and we never found out how they came to fall out. Of course the crew were badly burned, though the only one who died was one of those who fell out. Harry Woods and Nightingale had their hands burned and their hair badly singed, but were otherwise O.K.. They both deserved a medal, and we were surprised that they did not get one, but at a special parade a few weeks later, they received a parchment thanking them and commending them for their bravery. A few weeks later another plane crashed on the other side of the house, but this time they were not so lucky, as it was in a wood, and the plane itself got jammed in the top of some trees, all the crew being killed.

Arrested
One Saturday afternoon I was wandering about the old part of Warwick, and settled down to sketch an old archway across the road, not far from the castle. I had about half finished, when a policeman who appeared to be loitering about, came up to me and asked me what I thought I was a doing. I told him, and showed him my other sketches of the castle and similar scenes. So he said: “Well, Sir, I’m afraid you are breaking the law. I shall have to ask you to come along with me to the police station.” So off we went, and he explained to the sergeant at the desk what my crime was. The sergeant didn’t say much, but took me to the interview room – one table and two chairs, and said I would have to wait there. This I did for some time, and occasionally a constable would come in and have a few words, but not about my crime. Eventually a plain clothes man appeared, and told me that sketching in the street was not allowed in war time, which I couldn’t believe, and said he would have to confiscate my sketch book. I pointed out that none of my sketches had any military significance and that you could buy similar sketches and photos of the same things at any stationer’s shop. Fortunately I had my identity card with me, so he let me go with a warning not to do it again. So I lost all of my drawings, and I never bothered to get another sketch book.

The following extracts are from his time at the POW Camp at Beckton Marshes from 1944 which was next door to what at the time was the world’s biggest gas works. Apparently, the smell was horrendous.

The Lion Tamer
The first job the men had to do when they arrived was to erect their own tents, there being no other accommodation for them. They managed without a great deal of difficulty although putting up a bell tent can be as frustrating in its own way as some people find erecting a deck-chair – it’s easy when you know how. There were enough among them who had experience with cantankerous canvasses to show the others how to do it, and we soon became aware of a particular corporal, who rushed along the lines, correcting mistakes and teaching those who knew nothing of the mysterious guy-ropes how to do the job. He had a voice like a fog-horn, and when the job was finished, I called him over and asked him why he was so knowledgeable and keen on this particular activity. “Well, Sir, I was a lion-tamer in Civvy St. I was born in Chipperfield’s Circus, and I’ve spent all my life erecting all kinds of tents. Me and my mates hold the record for putting up the Big Top.” I made a mental note of the lion-tamer, who was to prove his worth when the prisoners arrived.

Incidentally the lion tamer also later recovered a large bath from the fourth floor of a nearby bombed out house in the East end – as the officers in camp didn’t have the use of one.

Doodle Bug
Thinking about tents, I am reminded of an incident that occurred earlier on, before the rains came, and before we got covered in with double canvas. One morning I was standing shaving in the open doorway of my tent. One could not see to shave inside a tent, and everyone used to hang a mirror on the tent flap, and shave in the doorway. Straight ahead, I had a good view of the prison compound and its early morning activities. Presently I heard the unmistakable sound of a V-bomb, and its engines stopped just as it crossed the main road, behind my tent. To my right, I could see the mess and the offices, and beyond them, the company lines. As the bomb glided down to the ground, I saw our men, who were outside their tents, fling themselves down to the ground. However, the bomb sailed over them, making a bee-line for the compound.

I watched with interest the antics of the prisoners, who obviously thought their end had come, with the compliments of the Fuhrer. In contrast to our chaps, who stayed put, the POW’s ran hither and thither, those who ran thither wished They’d ran hither, and rushed back again, with much waving of arms and screams of alarm. At the height of the panic, when the bomb was scarcely at roof height, the engine restarted, the bomb picked up, sailed over the rest of the compound, and crashed into a row of council houses, next to the camp. Loud cheers from the Germans who were overcome with joy and relief. Neres (the company interpreter) told me later on that it had killed a woman and her young family, but they just shrugged their shoulders. “It’s a pity the bloody thing didn’t fall on you lot!” he told them.

Doodle bugs are infamous for the terror they caused when they went silent before landing. The V2 also came with a nasty calling card…
When moving the POW’s it was felt expedient not to march them through the streets of the East end for fear of reprisals. For some reason or other, the Londoners were not very well disposed towards them, having been well bombed throughout the war, and even now suffering from several doodle-bugs a day, and their latest secret weapon, the V-2. This was much more powerful than the V-1, and the first thing you knew about it was to see a whole row of houses go down in ruins. Only after that, you would hear the whistling sound it had made a few seconds before……as it had got there faster than the speed of sound.

V1 Flying Bomb and V2 Rocket Photos: IWM

The POW’s
Despite all the guards and patrols, the prisoners managed to get out. When they’d been there a few weeks, Bragg came to see me with some theatre ticket counterfoils in his hand.
“What do you think?” he said, “Günter Schwartz and Helmet Schmidt gave me these, and said it was a jolly good show, and had I seen it?”
They told him that, with others, it was their habit to get through the wire and go for a bus ride round London – they produced bus tickets – and last night they were more adventurous and went to a show. Of course, I reported this to the C.O., and there was a rare old enquiry. Where they had got the money from, how did they get out, and how could two men in German uniform get into a theatre? We never found the answer to these problems, and though Bragg kept a special watch on Schmidt and Schwartz, others would come to him with their tickets, and boast of their achievements.

What concerned the C.O. was that he knew that men had got out, and got back again undetected, and he blamed me for it. I protested that I had examined every inch of the wire, and at no point had it been interfered with. Weeds grew profusely among the coils of Damaert wire, and there were no signs of disturbance. The only way they could get out was by a tunnel, which was impossible in that marshy ground, or by throwing blankets or a tent over the wire. But the spread of the wire was so great that they would have needed dozens of blankets, and these could not be hastily removed or hidden. We tried this operation ourselves, and found that some of the blankets got caught, and you couldn’t pull them up behind you. It took a long time too, and the searchlights and patrols should have detected this. Besides that, it was obvious when we’d finished, that an attempt had been made to cross the wire, as the coils were flattened in places. We installed extra searchlights, so that the whole perimeter could be lit up at once. We also doubled the patrols, so that someone was round every few minutes but without catching anyone.

The biggest headache of all for the C.O. was when Neres reported to him one morning, smiling, that we had got one too many!
“I don’t believe it, Neres! If it’s true, it’s no laughing matter.”
“Oh, it’s true enough. I’ve got him here in the other office. We had three counts, and a roll-call. When the roll-call was over, there he was, standing all alone. I have questioned him, and I can’t find out where he came from, how long he’s been here, or how he got here. This is his name, rank and number, and there’s no doubt he’s a genuine German soldier.”
They searched the records, but there was no trace of him, so he couldn’t have been left behind when a batch P.O.W.’s had been transferred. The War Office checked every P.O.W camp in the country, and every list of prisoners sent to this country, but there was no trace of him. They finally disowned him – but here he was, as large as life. Another of the great unsolved mysteries of the war.

Gun Training
The Sten gun, which half of the men were armed with, is a different thing altogether, the most fearful weapon ever invented. Made of a few bits of gas piping and bent iron welded together, it looks like something out of Woolworths, and is far from accurate. The R.S.M. was an expert with it, and would put all his shots on target, firing from the hip. This gun had no great range, and was intended for spraying an enemy with bullets at close quarters, as in house-to-house fighting. Being so small, it was quite possible to spray yourself with bullets, and the times we spent teaching the fellows on the range with the Sten gun were the most dangerous I ever had during the war, not excluding the air-raids I was in.

Bombed Out
I’m reminded of a curious incident with the Daily Mirror. One day they published a full page aerial photograph of “the devastation wrought at the Krupps works at Essen on a recent bomber raid. On the right can be seen the great cloud of smoke from the burning buildings” and so on. Looking at this picture in the mess, someone said: “Did you know we had a 1000 bomber raid the other night? Here’s a picture of our camp, showing the devastation wrought. Look, here’s the cookhouse, with its Soya stoves giving off clouds of smoke – there’s the mess, here’s Smithy’s stores, and so on.” We could identify every detail, except most of the compound which was shrouded over by the daily cloud of steam and smoke by Beckton Gasworks. We had a good laugh about this, and the colonel got on to the editor, and said: “Someone’s been pulling your leg. That photo of bomb damage at Essen in today’s paper is a picture of our P.O.W. camp, at Beckton.” “Oh, no, you’re mistaken. It is a genuine photo taken by a reconnaissance plane, and released to us by the Ministry of Information.” “Well, then, somebody’s been pulling their leg. We live here, you don’t, but if you’d like to come round, I can show you every building that’s on the picture. Those oil-storage tanks that you point out are the tents in which we sleep, and you can see that great cloud of smoke any day if you walk past Beckton Gasworks.” “I wish I had kept that picture, but you don’t think about such things at the time. If I lived near London, I would love to go and have a look at the back copies of the Daily Mirror, to have another look at one of the best spoofs of the war.”

VE-Day itself only gets a fleeting mention…
Incidentally, it was V.E. day, and I got as far as Lincoln on my way home, where I had to change stations. The streets were crowded with people all celebrating, and when I eventually reached the other station, they told me there would be no more trains that day – the railway workers had decided to take the rest of the day off to celebrate. Fortunately, I was eventually able to complete my journey by bus, but it did not endear me to the railwaymen.

Last diary entry – his final journey home
When I got to Lincoln and changed, I got into a compartment, first class, which soon filled up with a lot of grizzled veterans also going home with their cardboard boxes of civilian clothes. They were obviously Desert Rats, with faces almost blackened by the desert sun, and their chests freshly covered in campaign ribbons, the Burma star, the African star, and the two others given to those who served abroad, contrasting with my paler face, and my tunic innocent of decorations. When the ticket collector remonstrated with them for occupying first class seats with third class tickets they told him to xxxx off, they had been fighting for xxxx such as you, and they had as much right to first class seats as chair-borne officers who had never seen a shot fired. If it wasn’t for them, Hitler would now be running this xxxxxxx railway.

Now, at last, I had found out who won the war, if not how.

As I listened to their lurid tales of desert warfare and their scathing references to those who had wangled their way into cushy jobs at home, I reflected on the fortunes of war, and how our roles could have quite easily been reversed.
After all, we were just names and numbers to those in authority, and some giant finger moved us about, willy-nilly, like pawns on a chessboard.

So, Ann, now you know what I did in World War 2, but whether you are any the wiser as to HOW we won the war, I should not like to say.

Ernest, Kate and Ann – Photos: Paul Peppiate

A letter from Beckton Camp to Ann. This was after my Grandmother had passed away with her sister Ismay (a mid-wife) now taking care of Ann, aged 8.

Paul Peppiate – Editor, The Embsay and Eastby Post