Adolf’s bloomers and the tin-can telephone

‘Our gang’ on the concert street-party stage erected on a bomb site in Leyton, London in 1945.
‘Our gang’ on the concert street-party stage erected on a bomb site in Leyton, London in 1945.

Hitler had provided us with an exciting, though highly-danger-ous, playground in the shape of an extensive bomb site. It gaped hideously where endless rows of houses once stood, and some survivors had to be shored up with huge timbers, making them look like drunks on parade.

After the rubble and spewed bric-a-brac had been cleared away, back-street bomb sites became cauldrons, breeding grounds for gangs of school children in brick-dust and itchy-neck jerseys. It was all very emotive. And the gang-ethos seemed to breed intoxicating fear itself.

It was certainly no environment for the weak and wobbly. We thrived under strict laws, harsh punishments, obscure passwords and knee-trembling sectarianism. There were cruel prices to pay in the case of traitors, wimps, whiners, backsliders and snivellers full of powdered milk, jelly-babies, sherbet and thin blood. We hated the sight of their combed hair, clean necks and insufferable ankle socks.

They were no good to us in the gang. There was still a war on, and bomb sites were battlefields where brave, young warriors fell and shed blood. Things such as buttons, safety-pins, neck-ties and shoelaces were as rare as bananas.

The terrain was a child’s paradise through which to wage war and cut eye-teeth and shins. There were mounds and hollows and coal-cellars open to the sky. There were rows of Anderson shelters that had to be flushed of enemy snipers and sleeping tramps. There were tool sheds in which we discussed battle plans and held trials, and there were garden trees where hangings and lynchings were carried out on enemy spies and telltale-tits.

But there was a girl known as Dodgy Doris who escaped all forms of gang punishment on account of her mum having arms like prize marrows and as lethal as Popeye’s. So far as we knew, she didn’t need spinach to gain strength either. She had a weedy husband who wore a large, loose-fitt-ting cap and gaped at us like a goldfish in a bowl from a bay window.

So the tongue-poking, Dodgy Doris stayed in the gang, went on painting her toenails with black enamel, wearing her mum’s high-heel shoes and moaning on about being bored out of her brain. She was certainly not the ideal mascot for a crack unit of commandos like us.

We made a tin-can telephone for sending messages to forward battle positions. It was a simple but effective device, all the rage on bomb site battlefielfs. It was made up of two empty cocoa tins attached to the ends of a long length of string, but the string had to be pulled fiddle-taut in order to transmit the spoken message. Things were going well until Dodgy Doris appeared from nowhere and cut the string in the middle. Rags’n’tatters at one end potted his chin
with his tin can and fell backwards in the coal-horse manure, while at the other end Spotty Malone stabbed himself in the head, screamed his pimples blue and ran indoors to his mum. We shot him as a coward and sent him packing with a rude name chalked on the back of his jersey.

There was a surviving street-corner off-licence that had a high side wall. The proprietor, a sour-faced skeleton in a pin-striped waistcoat and watch and chain, had set broken glass in the top of his wall to deter thieves. This was an insult to the credibility of our gang. It was like trying to scare off an octopus with a set of bagpipes.

We decided to teach him a lesson in cool stategy. One by one we stole through his side door, pinched a couple of empty bottles each and took them round to his shop to claim the empties money. We called it ‘Operation Milk the Donkey.’

The gang proudly boasted brave warriors. One such jam-face comrade was awarded the gang’s very own Victoria Cross – an Ovaltine badge covered with silver paper.

Unarmed and single-handed, he took the entire toy-soldiers counter at Wool-worths. Before moving in to attack, he stretched an elastic band from his thumb, all the way up his coat-sleeve and tied it to his braces. His capturing of lead soldiers in this way was cunning and swift. Each one would be catapulted up his sleeve on the end of the elastic like an unsuspecting mouse into a Hoover. It was all honest warfare.

There was something about boy scouts that made us feel a bit on edge. Perhaps it was their uniform. After all, we were just as capable of seeing a faltering, elderly lady across a busy road. The difference was that if she happened to mention she was on her way to shop at the ‘German’ grocer’s, we would take her all the way back again.

We drew up a list of bizarre habits and indiscretions that were not to be tolerated in the gang under any cicumstances. They included the wearing of a vest, using a purse, comb, shoe-blacking, scented soap and the kissing of a visting auntie. And listening to Lord Haw-Haw on the wireless was an act of treason, even though he (real name William Joyce) lived much of his life in Walthamstow, down the road from us.

On the day of the VE bomb site party celebrations we built an enormous wigwam of worm-eaten floorboards, doors, burst mattresses and feather beds. It could’ve been the biggest bonfire in the East End.

We stuffed a guy that looked a bit like Hitler, to be stuck on top of it, but were short of a pair of trousers for him. A member of the gang’s lower order, eager for promotion, said he’d get a pair. The twit smuggled out a pair of his mum’s bloomers. They were kind of off white in colour and would’ve easily fitted the tail end of a barrage balloon. They looked a bit ridiculous on the Fuhrer until he curled up in flames like a burnt salami.

Our bomb site gang was the greatest. I wonder where they all are today? Probably all grandparents like us, I hope,

Frank Hardcastle

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Adolf’s bloomers and the tin-can telephone

‘Our gang’ on the concert street-party stage erected on a bomb site in Leyton, London in 1945.
‘Our gang’ on the concert street-party stage erected on a bomb site in Leyton, London in 1945.

Hitler had provided us with an exciting, though highly-danger-ous, playground in the shape of an extensive bomb site. It gaped hideously where endless rows of houses once stood, and some survivors had to be shored up with huge timbers, making them look like drunks on parade.

After the rubble and spewed bric-a-brac had been cleared away, back-street bomb sites became cauldrons, breeding grounds for gangs of school children in brick-dust and itchy-neck jerseys. It was all very emotive. And the gang-ethos seemed to breed intoxicating fear itself.

It was certainly no environment for the weak and wobbly. We thrived under strict laws, harsh punishments, obscure passwords and knee-trembling sectarianism. There were cruel prices to pay in the case of traitors, wimps, whiners, backsliders and snivellers full of powdered milk, jelly-babies, sherbet and thin blood. We hated the sight of their combed hair, clean necks and insufferable ankle socks.

They were no good to us in the gang. There was still a war on, and bomb sites were battlefields where brave, young warriors fell and shed blood. Things such as buttons, safety-pins, neck-ties and shoelaces were as rare as bananas.

The terrain was a child’s paradise through which to wage war and cut eye-teeth and shins. There were mounds and hollows and coal-cellars open to the sky. There were rows of Anderson shelters that had to be flushed of enemy snipers and sleeping tramps. There were tool sheds in which we discussed battle plans and held trials, and there were garden trees where hangings and lynchings were carried out on enemy spies and telltale-tits.

But there was a girl known as Dodgy Doris who escaped all forms of gang punishment on account of her mum having arms like prize marrows and as lethal as Popeye’s. So far as we knew, she didn’t need spinach to gain strength either. She had a weedy husband who wore a large, loose-fitt-ting cap and gaped at us like a goldfish in a bowl from a bay window.

So the tongue-poking, Dodgy Doris stayed in the gang, went on painting her toenails with black enamel, wearing her mum’s high-heel shoes and moaning on about being bored out of her brain. She was certainly not the ideal mascot for a crack unit of commandos like us.

We made a tin-can telephone for sending messages to forward battle positions. It was a simple but effective device, all the rage on bomb site battlefielfs. It was made up of two empty cocoa tins attached to the ends of a long length of string, but the string had to be pulled fiddle-taut in order to transmit the spoken message. Things were going well until Dodgy Doris appeared from nowhere and cut the string in the middle. Rags’n’tatters at one end potted his chin
with his tin can and fell backwards in the coal-horse manure, while at the other end Spotty Malone stabbed himself in the head, screamed his pimples blue and ran indoors to his mum. We shot him as a coward and sent him packing with a rude name chalked on the back of his jersey.

There was a surviving street-corner off-licence that had a high side wall. The proprietor, a sour-faced skeleton in a pin-striped waistcoat and watch and chain, had set broken glass in the top of his wall to deter thieves. This was an insult to the credibility of our gang. It was like trying to scare off an octopus with a set of bagpipes.

We decided to teach him a lesson in cool stategy. One by one we stole through his side door, pinched a couple of empty bottles each and took them round to his shop to claim the empties money. We called it ‘Operation Milk the Donkey.’

The gang proudly boasted brave warriors. One such jam-face comrade was awarded the gang’s very own Victoria Cross – an Ovaltine badge covered with silver paper.

Unarmed and single-handed, he took the entire toy-soldiers counter at Wool-worths. Before moving in to attack, he stretched an elastic band from his thumb, all the way up his coat-sleeve and tied it to his braces. His capturing of lead soldiers in this way was cunning and swift. Each one would be catapulted up his sleeve on the end of the elastic like an unsuspecting mouse into a Hoover. It was all honest warfare.

There was something about boy scouts that made us feel a bit on edge. Perhaps it was their uniform. After all, we were just as capable of seeing a faltering, elderly lady across a busy road. The difference was that if she happened to mention she was on her way to shop at the ‘German’ grocer’s, we would take her all the way back again.

We drew up a list of bizarre habits and indiscretions that were not to be tolerated in the gang under any cicumstances. They included the wearing of a vest, using a purse, comb, shoe-blacking, scented soap and the kissing of a visting auntie. And listening to Lord Haw-Haw on the wireless was an act of treason, even though he (real name William Joyce) lived much of his life in Walthamstow, down the road from us.

On the day of the VE bomb site party celebrations we built an enormous wigwam of worm-eaten floorboards, doors, burst mattresses and feather beds. It could’ve been the biggest bonfire in the East End.

We stuffed a guy that looked a bit like Hitler, to be stuck on top of it, but were short of a pair of trousers for him. A member of the gang’s lower order, eager for promotion, said he’d get a pair. The twit smuggled out a pair of his mum’s bloomers. They were kind of off white in colour and would’ve easily fitted the tail end of a barrage balloon. They looked a bit ridiculous on the Fuhrer until he curled up in flames like a burnt salami.

Our bomb site gang was the greatest. I wonder where they all are today? Probably all grandparents like us, I hope,

Frank Hardcastle

More Stories

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