Ahoy! Welcome on board, come on in. My name is Ngaire, I work for Imperial War
Museums and you are very welcome here aboard my boat, while we've got some time
to think about some of the fascinating stories the museum has collected and
shares. Now here on board the boat it's vital that I have some equipment for the
safety and protection of the boat like this strong rope, which I can use to tie
the boat to the shore keep it where it's supposed to be and stops it and me
sailing off on unplanned adventures. One of my favorite objects inside the
galleries of Imperial War Museums is also about a home, a home which from 1939
also had to have in it vital equipment to keep it safe and the family that
lived there safe as well. Today's Adventure in History is taking us to the
Second World War home front, so-called because war affected the lives
of ordinary people - their working lives and their home lives. And the home front
to find out more about that and some of the people that experienced it, is
really well explained by this object. Let's take a closer look - it is a home in
miniature because it's a really carefully made, very precise model of a
real house that was in South London and was home to the Allpress family in the
first years of the Second World War and in which from 1939, they had to start
protecting against the threat of war. Let's look closely and see if we can
spot some of the protective measures that they took. If we look at the windows
in the house you can see that long strips of paper have been stuck to the
panes of glass. Now that was because if a bomb was to
drop the glass would shatter and stop the glass shattering into thousands of
sharp pieces this, the tape would hopefully keep the pieces together and
much larger and hopefully cause less damage. So that's one
vital area where they have the house has being prepared for the coming of war.
Just behind the front door is another preparation. A rather curious looking
object. It is a stirrup pump and it was designed to help protect against another
type of bomb. Just next to the stirrup pump are buckets that might give you a clue as to
the threat this bomb would have posed - there's buckets of sand and water, this is
all firefighting equipment and one type of bomb - an incendiary bomb - would be
burning and when it landed it would set alight to whatever it landed upon and
start really serious big fires and so the family have got the stirrup pump and
some firefighting equipment to try and tackle that bomb, so it would hopefully
contain the damage and they could protect their home. For us adventurers in
history, this is all evidence that as the 1930s progressed the threat of war was
becoming evermore real and the terrible knowledge that that war would affect
people on the home front. Other evidence of this were the plans that were drawn
up to evacuate children from the cities to places of safety into the countryside.
This also affected the youngest member of the Allpress family, John was just 10
when the Second World War started and he was one of 1.5 million children that
were evacuated in just three days from the 1st of September 1939, Now one of our
other Adventures in History, World's Best Den, we thought about the experiences of
some children who were evacuated. But we didn't think about what it was like for
the children who received the evacuees, who were the hosts, who suddenly had their
family grow with the arrival of evacuees one of these children was Henry Jamison.
Now Henry's mum was a district nurse and Henry's dad was a farmer and
1939, they agreed to have two evacuees come and stay with them on their farm
near Aberdeen. Jim and Peter arrived from their home in Glasgow at the end of
September 1939. They stayed for six years. At first,
Henry was quite jealous. Here were two strangers moving in and sharing his home
and he was also been afraid of them as well because he was six and Jim at 12
and Peter at nine were much older than him. But Jim and Peter also felt
overwhelmed too. The family were strangers to them and they had left
Glasgow for a completely different part of Scotland, They were now living on a farm
surrounded by animals that they were afraid of. Henry's mum and dad helped the
boys to settle by showing them different tasks around the farm and soon the boys
were all helping out together. So they were feeding the chickens, collecting or washing
their eggs, feeding calves and lambs and together, one of their favourite jobs was
to take the Clydesdale horses that the family used for ploughing with Mr.
Jameson to visit the blacksmith to get new shoes put on their hooves. Soon the
boys were calling each other brothers, they went to the same school and when
they grew up they even went to the same University in Aberdeen. They studied the
same course and all became engineers. Many children had their lives affected
by the Second World War so Henry whose family suddenly grew to John Allpress who
had had to leave his home John did not stay an evacuee for as long as Jim
and Peter. John Allpress actually was very homesick
and after six months he returned back to the home in South London.
Let's return with him and let's go back to that stirrup pump that we were
looking at earlier. Can you see how it would have worked? The handle at the top
there is where you would put your hands and pump up and down which would create
suction that would suck up water into the hose, that could then be pointed
directly at a fire and it's that stirrup pump that becomes vital for our next
story. Charity Bick was a little bit older than
John Allpress and when the Second World War started, she decided that she
wanted to do something. she was never an evacuee
and she looked at the role her father had and thought she could do that as
well. Charity's father was an ARP warden. ARP
stands for air raid precautions and the wardens had lots of different tasks to
help protect their communities during bombing raids. To find out more about
their tasks, let's look at this painting though it's not of Mr Bick, Charity's dad,
its of Charity herself. So if we look carefully at the painting, we can see from the
band on her arm that she fulfilled her ambition she did indeed become warden
and what she's sitting on in the painting? Being on a bicycle gives us a
clue to Charity's job. She was a despatch rider so when messages needed to be sent
very quickly, it was Charity's job to get on her bike
and to deliver these messages. No mobile phones, no sending a quick text to say
that a fire has broken out and the fire brigade are needed. Now charity was so
determined to help her city, she and her family lived in West Bromich near
Birmingham, that to get the job of ARP warden she lied about her age. It was a
dangerous job so the minimum age requirement was 16. charity was 14 and so
she did lie and say that she was old enough. Now this decision could have had
very serious consequences as we will see. One night charity is on duty with her
father and those incendiery bombs that we thought about earlier, well they were
falling and they started a very large fire. Charity and her father start to
fight the fire using the stirrup pump that we thought about earlier. The pump
jammed and so was useless, so Charity was told by dad to get on her bike and
to go back to the main central ARP post to call for help. Charity cycles
through the falling bombs, she's knocked off her bike at one point by blast, she
gets back on and she makes it to the central warden's post and there the
alarm is raised, the fiber brigade called and that building is saved, the fire is
put out. Let's take another look at that painting from the Imperial War Museums'
art collection. Can you see on the uniform that charity is wearing, a red
flash. It's the reason a painting was made. Charity was the youngest ever
recipient of the George Medal for her bravery. Charity certainly showed great
determination to become a despatch rider, great bravery in a very dangerous
situation but when her story made the newspapers, she did say that she felt
really guilty that she had lied about her age.
Charity's story made the newspapers because she had done her job, she had got
the message quickly back to the central post, that enabled the fire brigade to do
their job and our final story takes us to the role of many thousands of
firefighters who defended the home front during the Second World War.
Now I could have introduced you to George Roberts using a photograph of him
in his fire brigade uniform. However this is a photograph of George in a very
different uniform because it just makes the story even more fascinating.
I love how on our Adventures in History we can take one object and that leads us
to many different stories. We started with a stirrup pump and that took us to
John Allpress and three boys who had their lives changed by the Second World
War to the bravery of Charity and now on to
a firefighter. One object leads to a person leads to another person's story
and onwards and onwards - except I'm under really strict instructions
about how long these films are allowed to be. So let's
get back to that final photograph. I said that George Roberts is shown here not in
his firefighters uniform of the Second World War. He is in his army uniform
of the First World War. Like many men who served on the homefront in the Second
World War, George was a veteran of the First World War.
That meant he had been trained, he had served on the fighting front, he had seen
action. He'd been involved in the Battle of the Somme and so although now too old
to rejoin the army, he brought those vital skills and experience to defending
Britain on the homefront through the Second World War.
Charity and George both received medals - Charity for her quick action in
helping to put out that fire and George for his role on the homefront but also
his other community roles that he went on to perform during his lifetime. In
fact there's a plaque that marks the home of George in South London and a
second plaque on the fire station where he started work in 1939. Inspired by
these stories, join CBBC presenter Ben shires on Friday on Imperial War Museums
Twitter and Facebook to see how you can create your own volunteer portrait.
Imperial War Museums is a charity and if you would like to and feel you are able to
support our work sharing these fascinating stories please go to our
website to find out how you can support. Next time,
our Adventure in History will take us back to the home front.
Until then, farewell!