Dad’s War

Some chatters will know that I’m not always entirely charitable about my dad, but when he lays off talking about his (mostly imaginary) ailments, he can be quite entertaining. I’ve been reading Maywalk’s blogs with great interest, so thought I’d write about one of dad’s experiences.
He was only 15 when war was declared, and worked at our, (now extinct) local railway station, which was a reserved occupation, so he wasn’t called up for National Service until after the war.
This one time, he and his colleague, George, were leaning against a wall, having a smoke, when the station master, Mr Marshall, returned from making sure his elderly mother was okay, as a daylight air raid was in progress over London, about 20 miles away. He’d ridden off on his bicycle a good hour earlier, in the direction of where he lived with his mother, but returned from the opposite direction, as it was a well known fact that he regularly ‘visited’ his ‘fancy woman’ whenever the opportunity arose. (For the record, and in fairness, he was single, and she was a widow.) When he saw my dad and George, he hadn’t even got off his bike before he started ranting at them about how they had better things to do than stand around smoking. There was plenty to do in the goods yard, among other things. Dad said “We’re not allowed down there just now. Some officer bloke’s told us stay away, ‘cos…………….” At that point Mr Marshall interrupted him. “What?? What bloody army officer? I’M in charge of this station, not some stick waving toff officer.” He then stomped off along the rails, still ranting away to himself, and disappeared from view, only to return at full gallop a few minutes later. As he dashed past, he yelled: “You stupid pair! You could have told me it was the Bomb Disposal Squad.” A German bomber pilot had apparently decided, for whatever reason, to dump his bombs and head for home. One such bomb had landed on the rails in our station’s goods yard, but failed to explode. Hence the BDS being called. As Mr Marshall jumped on his bike and disappeared once again, this time at a very impressive pace, my laughing dad shouted: “Will you be back for tea?”. George said: “I doubt if he can hear you Bill, at that pace and with those ears, the wind’s probably making too much noise”.