Made In Hull By Maurice Fairfield Part Six - The War Part 2 (5/6)

(1/6), (2/6), (3/6), (4/6), (5/6), (6/6). Part One - Arundel Street Days Part Two - Our Terrace Part Three - The Calm before, (The Storm) Part Four - Schooldays Part Five - The War 1

I woke one morning to do my paper round and from the nearby Timber Dock a boiling column of grey/white smoke climbed to an impossible looking height in the sky, towering over the city like a newly formed mountain range. A nasty feature of the later raids were the parachute mines often miscalled land mines by most people. These were very big bombs. Their descent was slowed by a parachute and they exploded at or above ground level. Their explosive force spread more widely than that of thee primitive bombs. These burrowed deep before going off and much of their destructive force was directed upwards. The mines destroyed many times larger an area.

They supplied a new kind of souvenir: the green artificial silk parachutes were blown around the streets in drifting tufts of fluff and the nesting sparrows darted about gathering them to line their nests. I suppose it must have been Spring. In the years between 1939 and 1943 I reached the school-leaving age of fourteen and we moved a little farther out and a few miles East to the Sutton Trust Estate and a house with a bathroom (a first) backing onto Preston Road Cemetery.

We were still close to the docks although on the edge of the countryside. This didn't make us any safer and one winter night we took to the cupboard under the stairs as the sirens wailed, expecting another false alarm.

On this night however we heard a stick of approaching bombs as they marched towards us, each one nearer and louder with a second or two between them. The last concussion shook the house, blowing the back door open and lifting the tiles off the roof. But ours, falling over the fence in a so far unused area of the cemetery was the last in the line which had started near Hedon Road. Apart from one of the small incendiary bombs at the bottom of the garden this was our closest brush with the enemy.

In the next couple of years I was apprenticed to the plumbing trade. That is another story and worth telling in its own right, but my wartime memories encompass the times I spent in the company of tradesman repairing the thousands of windows broken by bombs. And working on the ships in the docks since I worked for a ships' plumbing firm which enjoying the benefit of Government work in ship repairing and building.

Their workshops were in makeshift premises in the old town. In Vicar Lane near Holy Trinity Church and in a building in Finkle Street which had been a slaughterhouse until it closed. It was still floored with granite sets formed into channels for the draining away of blood from the carcasses, when we moved in the pipe-screwing machinery, the drilling machines, and the bending block and furnace for heating and bending steel pipes for the ships we worked on. This was an interesting life for a young boy, boarding ships and taking measurements and patterns for pipes.

Continued on www.thisisull.com...... Next Page (6/6).

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