The Signalman and the Land Girl

From March 1943 to February 1946 Irene Fred nee  Jayes, my late mother in law, was in the Womens Land Army and stationed in Hertfordshire. In the picture above she is sixth from the right. During that time my father in law, Will Fred was in the Royal Signals and stationed in India,Burma and after the war in Yorkshire.

I have recently been going through  a big box of photos and papers that were left after they died in more recent years.

There were two shoe boxes full of letters from Will to Irene, and it looks like he wrote every day. Some letters are addressed to Irene's home address in Bethnal Green , but many are addressed to the WLA Hostel, Verulam Golf House, London Road, St Albans where she was based. The early letters are addressed to Irene Jayes, her maiden name, but at one point when Will was on leave Irene proposed to Will and they got married. There is one letter that I would like to reproduce in full, as ironically it speculates what people will think of an enclosed photo "in 50 years time". Well it has taken 67 years, but it seems very apt

The letter is dated 29/1/46 so it is the last letter Irene received while in the Land Army.

2377367 Signalman Fred,W.H.
M.T Section
"Stoneybrough"
Royal Signals
Thirsk,Yorks

My Dearest Irene

I'm a little later than usual, with usual daily letter darling, I was rather busy this afternoon sorting the pieces of my motor-cycle out so had to leave this job until this evening. I've missed the 6.30pm post so the letter won't go until tomorrow morning at 8.30. It means you will receive it a little later than usual. Anyway my darling I know you will understand. Had two very welcome letters from you today darling, one dated the 25th which has obviously been touring round somewhere and the other which had the photograph enclosed. I didn't know you were going to send it Irene, so I'm sincerely glad it has arrived safely. I think it's extremely nice darling, we all seem to have come out rather well, especially you, yes, I like it very much. It rather pleases me because I didn't expect them to turn out so well. When we are old and grey Rene we will have something to look back on, although in about 50 years time I expect the photograph will look old fashioned, at least our clothes will. I'll keep the photograph here until I come home on my next weekend leave, you may rest assured that I will look after it it in the meantime.

Glad to hear that you enjoyed the pantomime, it certainly made a change for you to have a few hours out. I havn't seen one for donkey's years. I'm not sure whether they would appeal to me now although I really used to enjoy them when I was young. So you're one of five chosen for exhibition work, they must certainly think you are an excellent worker to favour you so, what with having your photo taken for the farmer's magazine you will be a celebrity before long, you know Rene. "I always use Lux soap" or something like that. I'll have to watch my step or you will be running off to Hollywood.

Sorry to hear that Peg hasn't been keeping too well lately. John has certainly had a rough time of it since being married. I'm inclined to agree with you Rene in saying that Peg likes a great deal of fuss made of her, but still she has been really queer in the past, I wouldn't doubt that in the least.

Went to the flicks last night Rene, and saw Lana Turner in "Keep Your Powder Dry" *, quite a good film. I didn't intend going last night as a matter of  fact. I intended having an evening in and was going to retire to bed early, but my Scotch friend paid me a visit and pestered me to go, so I gave in to him. He wanted me to go to a dance tonight, but I firmly refused. So I'm having my restful evening after all. I'm sure you wouldn't have liked me going to the dance, would you Rene? and besides I can't dance anyway.

Well Sweetheart will bring these few lines to a close now, sincerely trusting that you are keepng OK and well, likewise myself at present. So for the present Rene I'll say cheerio, back again tomorrow.

I love you more than ever sweet.

your Loving Husband

Will

xxxxxxxxxxxx


* and if you were wondering about that film? Click the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWDjIGC9D4

I don't think you could get all that in email these days.

Will Fred in jungle uniform


Presumably the photo of the Land Girls above is one of those taken for the farmers's magazine.

After completing her spell in the WLA Irene (or Rene as most of us knew her) received this certificate from the Queen

This final picture of Will and Irene probably isn't the one mentioned in the letter, but far from looking old fashioned, I think they look rather stylish!

Holiday Knitting

In the late 40's and early 50's we were pretty much only taking photos in black and white. However looking through old family photographs I have noticed that some had been artificially coloured by hand. The picture of my mother on the beach was in black and white, but I have added the hand colouring effect digitally, and this is pretty much how they looked. When I was a child we didn't go far for our holidays. On one occasion we stayed in a caravan at Shoeburyness, which was only about 20-25 miles from where we lived at West Horndon. If we were feeling really adventurous we would go to Clacton or Walton on the Naze. These days we would regard these as day trip destinations. I suspect from the look of the sand that the picture was taken at Walton.

We didn't take much in the way of entertainment, and as you can see my mother was spending her time knitting. I am not sure what the jug was for, but guess that in the days before paper and plastic cups, that if you went to a beach side cafe you were provided with a tray proper china cups and presumably a jug of milk. How very civilized!

My mother was a keen knitter, as were most women after the war. My mother , however, took it one step further and bought a Rapidex knitting machine. She made knitted items for many people in our village, and I remember that woollen bobble hats were very popular. There was a drawback however! Normal knitting was nice and quiet, but a knitting machine was very noisy. They were manual, not electric, and when trying to watch TV in the early 50's my father and I had to endure the constant racket coming from my mother's machine. My sister and I both wore the woolly bobble hats and like half the village walked around looking like "Where's Wally"!

A Pet Shop Boy

This picture was taken more recently,2005 in fact. I was working in a Pet Supplies Shop called Cheep! It was a diversion that my career took that I didn't expect. I had worked in the computer games business for about 18 years when the shop owner decided that competition was too fierce and that he was changing the shop to a Pet Shop. So I had to learn all about worm tablets, fish tanks, parrot toys and dog leads. Fortunately for me we continued with a limited range of video games, and many of our customers wanted wild bird food which I was already familiar with as I had been feeding the birds for some years.

The other good thing was that many of our customers were more of my age and we had many regulars that I got to know quite well. I also got to know some of their pets who came in with them, including one dog called Molly who would arrive about 20 second before her owner and would sit and and wait by the counter gate for me to give her a treat or two.

We also had at least one feral pigeon that would wander in from Gravesend High Street and peck around on the floor looking for odd seeds. Sometimes they would venture a bit too far and have their escape route blocked by customers. They would then panic, the pigeon not the customers, and have to be rescued from awkward corners of the shop.

It was a happy and interesting time for me, and I was there up until my retirement in 2008

I meet a computer

Having worked for 3 years at Ford Tractors I applied for a transfer to the Computer Centre at Head Office at Warley in 1968. I passed the aptitude test and I was accepted. It was my first encounter with a computer. In those days a computer could fill a very large area. A printer, for example, was almost the size of a small car and was extremely noisy. We used IBM 360's which were run from tapes initially like those in the background here, but first the data often came on punch cards which were converted onto tape on a smaller computer. While I was there the disk drives made their first appearance. The disks were like a stack of LP's and were pretty heavy. I was not allowed to control the IBM 360's of course (done by a keyboard but without a screen, the data was printed on paper).      I started as a tape loader (each machine had about a dozen tape drives which had to be constantly changed) I progressed to a 1401 and then to a slightly larger system. When the photo above was taken I was working on data transmission. No internet in those days of course, but data was sent down the telephone line to the Ford Plants at Langley, Halewood, Southampton etc.

This isn't the actual one, but this is pretty much what it was like.

Eventually we had a more advanced machine to send data to Cologne. A 1 day course was arranged for myself, and some others, in Cologne. We were due to fly out on Ford's own plane from Stanstead, which was a relatively small airport in those days. Having never flown before I was quite excited.
When I got up at 5am to get ready to drive to the airport on a Winter's morning. I looked out only to discover that between my car and the road was about 2 feet of snow. I tried to dig my way out but it was soon obvious I wasn't going to make it in time. I had my doubts that the flight would be able to leave anyway. However it did leave and when I arrived at the computer centre at Warley later that morning I discovered that someone else had gone in my place.

Another course was arranged for me, but this time at Daventry, which was not quite so exciting as a flight to Cologne. We later attempted to send data to Dearborn (part of Detroit) in the USA. However that didn't work. I assume the line wasn't good enough.

I remember the photo above being taken of me in 1969, but didn't really know what it was for until I got a copy of the booklet "Ways into Ford". 42 years later I still have it, and think of it as my little claim to fame.

3D Pictures Aren't So New!

This isn't so much about the subject, which I believe is the wedding of my Uncle Walter and Aunt Madge sometime during the First World War, judging by the uniforms of the groom and my Uncle Ernie at the back. It is more about the type of photograph.

Recently the BBC have broadcast some programmes in 3D on the HD channel. I havn't got a 3D TV so what I could see were two images on the screen side by side. What it immediately reminded me of was some old pictures we used to have that looked similar. This is one of them. We had a wooden device with a double eyepiece and a place to put the picture about 12 inches away. It was called a Stereoscope Viewer





It looked pretty much like this one , featured in a picture that I have found online. It just goes to show that nothing is really new. The principal of taking two pictures from two cameras from slightly different angles was established at least 100 years ago.

Magic Moments - An Honorary Brownie

This picture shows some of the West Horndon Brownies and Guides in  August 1959. I know this as Brown Owl (Mrs Went) shown here on the far left kindly wrote on the back of the original photograph. I wish more of my old photos were marked like this, it would make identification so much easier. Among the Brownies was my sister Linda (aged 11) back Row 2nd from the right.

The memory that this always brings to mind relates to the previous year (1958). The Brownies and Guides went away to camp each summer, but it wasn't under canvas. In 1958 they stayed at a boarding school in Banstead, Surrey during the school holidays. On this occasion not only was my sister going, but also my mother (Eileen Fuller) as a helper. For me there were two alternatives, one - to stay at home and endure the perils of my Dad's cooking, or two - become an honorary Brownie for the week and go off to Banstead with them. A pretty easy decision for me really, as a thirteen year old lad the thought of going away with all those girls was the obvious choice.

At the school all the Brownies and Guides had chores to do each day, and my designated chore was putting coke on the boiler, presumably for hot water as this was the end of July and the weather was warm.

However, as easy as that task seemed I didn't always do it, and my memories of that week are of playing tennis and spending quite a bit of time listening to the England v New Zealand Test Match on the radio.

In the main hall of the school was a stage, and being a nosey so-and-so (I still am) I had to investigate a cupboard in the side of the stage. I found a wind-up gramophone and one 78 rpm record. Fortunately it was a double A-side. Perry Como singing Catch a Falling Star and Magic Moments, which we played incessantly for a week. Whenever I hear either of those songs now I still think of that holiday with the Brownies at Banstead. Magic Moments indeed!

If you would like to hear Magic Moments here is the YouTube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7V4AD9D1XQ

Beatlemania

In 1963 (I think) I was a member of The Hornets Youth Club at West Horndon. One of our group outings was to the New Musical Express Poll Winners Concert at The Empire Pool, Wembley (now Wembley Arena). We didn't know it at the time but we were watching a bit of history. On the bill were The Beatles,  Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Billy Fury, Dusty Springfield and Gerry and the Pacemakers plus other big names of the time. I don't suppose there were many occasions when such "big names" were on the same stage on the same day. This photograph was published in the Daily Mirror and shows half a dozen members of our group. The 19 year old lad you can see on the right is me, and next to me my wife-to-be Pauline.
Next to her is one of the Club Leaders with his fingers in his ears, not because he didn't like the music, but because of the deafening screams coming from most of the girls in audience. The three main subjects of the photo are girls from our party, whose faces I remember but  whose names I have mainly forgotten, although the one on the Left was named Leftley.

This link to YouTube shows the 1965 concert but will give you a good idea what it was like


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGWmofOiNJs