George Polley’s life history, read by George Polley. Chapter seven (4138a), 1939
Highlights in this oral history recording include:

0.00 Failed driving test as car not fit. Passed in January
01.45 Telephone installed. Marks Tey 134. Local exchange 3 women under Mr Pritchard
02.40 General registration in June. George was in reserve occupation
03.40 Drove Mr & Mrs Elcombe to see son near Bury St Edmunds
05.50 1 September arrival of Evacuees. Ellesmere technically in Aldham house – Mr and Mrs Smith the headmaster and wife from a school near Boston.
Blackout, car lights masked, 2'' paint lines on bumpers. Rising petrol prices. Father in ARP, mother in WRVS organised local identity cards. Menace from loose barrage balloons
11.40 1940 – heavy snow. Problem with ice getting to Bourchiers Hall Aldham
14.04 Fire at Copford Green
14.40 Summertime clock started 25 February
15.30 German bomber crashes at Clacton
16.30 Formation of Local Defence Force (Home Guard)
17.00 Forced leading of Wellington Bomber by Aldham Hall – and later take off
18.40 18 May dog fights above Writtle College
20.25 Parachute mines
22.15 Evacuees from Lincolnshire return – later head Mr Smith dies in Far East
25.35 War matters – wooden shutters over windows, radar pylons at Bromley, permit zones, air ship sheds at Cardington camouflaged

Some more of GEP's memories. Page seven, this will be, I think. At the end of 1938 is when we had our first car, and at the beginning of December of that year, I put in for the test for the car driver's licence, licence to cover the car driving.

The car was a bit of an oil burner, and of course I'd just started the test and one of the plugs oiled up so I couldn't make top gear because there was only three cylinders working. That automatically failed me. Didn't have to complete the test course because the vehicle wasn't in fit condition. That moved us on to 1939. The middle of January I went again for my test and passed it. No trouble at all. Obviously I'd made sure that I'd got some clean plugs in the engine.

A little later that year we had the telephone installed at Mum's, Mum and Dad's place, Ellesmere, home to me then as well. We were allocated the number Marks Tey 134 'cause of course we had our own local exchange, fully manned. 24 hour manned. Three, I think there was three girl operators and one man, a Mr. Pritchard, he lived on the site of the exchange.

The general world situation or European situation wasn't looking too good by this time. Not from any fault of mine, but a certain fella by the name of Adolf Hitler was starting to throw his weight around across the water. There was a General Registration for 20, 21's in June of that year. I came into that category, but of course the job I was doing, I came into the reserved occupation and I was more or less put on the reserved list.

As the year went on, I think it was the beginning of June, one of our thrashing customers, a Mr and Mrs Elcombe from Mulberry Farm, Copford, wanted to visit Mrs Elcombe's people at Walsham Le Willows beyond Bury St Edmunds. They hadn't got a car, so father volunteered me as a driver to take them there. They got the son, I don't know exactly how old he'd be, son Peter, not very old at that time. So of course I took the journey to Walsham Le Willows and it was around about a 50 mile journey. But the car was quite loaded but it stuck up to the trip. I spent the day after we got there about 10 o'clock in the morning, and I was to pick them up again at four in the afternoon.

I had the chance to be with them all the time, but I thought no, that was their family affair and I would go my way and so I found a comfortable spot and had a bit of a snooze and went back for them at four o'clock. I think I'd had a look down in Bury Edmunds actually. And so that was one of my trips in the early days of having passed me test and so didn't have to have a qualified driver with me.

Of course, the 1st of September of that year, the evacuation of school children began and we had a family, the school from, not a family, it was a whole school was evacuated from a village near Boston in Lincolnshire. They were allocated to the parish of Aldham as we were at that time. The headmaster and his wife were allocated to live with us. Curiously enough, her parents were in the same trade as ourselves. Thrashing contractors near Boston in Lincolnshire within sight of Boston Stump.

The war was declared a couple of days later, and of course, blackout was had to be enforced. Car lamps, headlamps had to be masked, and a white line two inches wide had to be painted along the edge of the mudguards of the cars so that they could be easily or easier to be seen in the blackout conditions.

We had the normal allocation of petrol for the car, and then, as we were using it for our work, we had an extra allocation of petrol. I think if I remember rightly, it was nine gallons a month because in our world we weren't bothered anything about litres. We were gallons as far as petrol was concerned.

Mum had been in the WVS. She had quite a bit of work to do with the registration for the identity cards for the local population. Father was busy out on his ARP set up, and of course that meant more responsibility, again, as far as I was concerned, as regards to the business.

Looking back to those days was when I began to sink into more what the cost of things were and balancing up the books and so forth. Then on the 16th of October, 1939, petrol price went up to one shilling and eight pence per gallon. On the 13th of November, the price was raised again to one shilling and ninepence-halfpenny a gallon. The 22nd of December, it was again raised to one shilling and 10 pence per gallon. That was wartime inflation.

We were beginning to get used to seeing the barrage balloons around the coastline and around the various places of military importance. The cables sometimes weren't strong enough, and if there was a lot of wind, the cable would snap and the barrage balloons would drag what was left on the cable on the balloon. They would drag that along the ground behind them. And they were a bit of a menace at times. We noticed once or twice we had damage where the steel cable had dragged over the covers of the machinery and we knew it was a steel cable because of the semi-burn mark, but that was all part of the go. Occasionally the fighter aircraft would come over and machine gun them to deflate them so that they came down and because they were a bit of a menace otherwise.

The beginning of 1940, we had a lot of snow. The roads were pretty bad, and we had the army were clearing some of the local roads where they've drifted and it become impassible.

Then I attempted to move my tackle to Bourchier's Hall at Aldham. The roads was clear a certain amount, but it was still a bit dodgy and I had taken the drum and elevator and to go to Bourchier's Hall. There was quite a nasty little hill, so I dropped the elevator off and started off on the tractor with the drum behind me. I got two thirds of the way up. My tractor wheels were still going forwards. But we were going backwards. It was icy and the drum dragged me back down the hill again. Luckily, I was able to get a slight lock on it so that it steered into the back end, into the bank, and that stopped us. Because there was quite a nasty little drop the other side of the road.

But that was how we learnt to deal with things when there was snow on the ground and we'd got a heavy load 'cause unfortunately the tractor only weighed about two and a half tons, whereas the drum weighed in the vicinity of five tons. Double my towing weight. But there, that was another experience.

As it was cold weather, of course, people where they could, they banked the fires up. One such banking up resulted in a house on Copford Green going up in flames. It was said that the chimney had caught fire and it spread into some of the timbers of the roof. And it was a house that, one of a pair, that stood next to the Alma Pub at Copford of Green. That's where the car park is now (Ed - not correct it was Trellis House to the left of the Alma).

On the 25th of February of 1940 we had to put our clocks forward to summertime. One hour. I don't know what for, because there's only 24 hours in a day. And they said it was to save the workers and the lamplight situation from the danger from the bombers. But of course, the factories producing an aircraft and war equipment, were working 24 hours anyway.

On, it was the beginning of May of that year there was a German bomber came in and he'd been hit by some of the anti-aircraft gunners and he crashed on Clacton, made a bit of a mess, two civilians dead,165 injuries at the hospital and the five members of the crew of the, I think it was a Dornier bomber, they were all killed.

Then around about that time, the LDV was formed, which meant that all the local lads that were, or the chaps that were older, formed into a, what later became the Home Guard. It was originally known as the Local Defence Volunteers.

18th of May, 1940. There was a Wellington bomber made a forced landing in what we knew as the Brook Meadows belonged to Aldham Hall, rather a restricted site, but they stripped it off weight-wise as much as ever possible. So there was just that bare plane framework and after it had been there about four days, the wind apparently was okay and wasn't likely to harm a possible take-off, because his line of take-off had got to be over the, across the main railway line. So if he hadn't made it, he could have been in a bit of a mess there. But all credit to the pilot, it was a sight well worth seeing when he took that off. He opened it up and in no time at all he'd got it airborne. Everybody gave a cheer.

That month, petrol went up again in price, one and 11 pence-halfpenny a gallon.

And in August, there was a meeting of the agricultural contractors at Writtle to meet up with the authorities so as to know what to do if we lost some of our equipment and to get replacements organised and that sort of thing. And while we were there, I didn't go into the meeting, father went in, I stopped outside in the car in the carpark. While I was there, there was 20 German bombers had to go at North Weald airfield. I got out of the car and stood in the doorway of the Writtle College buildings, so there was a certain amount of protection from falling can shells and stuff flying about when the fighters were engaging with the bombers. That was a little bit noisy. And a little bit uncomfortable for a little while.

And around about that time, they started coming in with parachute mines. They were like sea mines, but hung from a parachute. And dropped from the planes and they were set to go off, I think it was something to do with the air pressure. They went off just before they reached ground level. So that there was a terrific damage caused simply by the blast of it. There wasn't that much in the way of shrapnel. It was simply a blast, air pressure damaging effect, and there was one landed against Horkesley Church and that was damaged quite a bit and a nearby Beehive public house was practically demolished simply by the blast effect.

The same thing happened. There was one fell just wide of Messing, luckily far enough in the open so that there wasn't too much damage in the way of buildings. The blast effect had slightly more or less lost some of its power by the time it reached the houses, but, that was all part of some of these so-called wartime experiences.

Going back to the evacuees, the children, ‘cause that was the local school, was overcrowded. And it was really, they discovered that there was as much danger, if not more danger in our area than there was in their home area. I suppose they thought that from Germany, the planes would be coming across into Lincolnshire more, and therefore by evacuating from that area but bringing them here with the position of Colchester being a main military base and our main railway link between London and Harwich for the coastal things, I think they made a big mistake in bringing the children here in the first place, but they, the son stayed a couple or three months, but the majority of them went, drifted back home. The headmaster and his wife, Mr and Mrs Smith, they went back again. And we did hear that Mr Smith was called up in his age group and was killed in the Japanese affair. Whether it was on the railway building of the Japanese affair, I don't know, but we lost touch with them. So what happened I don't really know, but it was a case of one had to go day by day and expect the unexpected basically. 'cause you didn't know what was likely to happen. And we that's how we survived.

I remember we was in the workshop one Saturday morning and there was a Heinkel bomber flying right low along over the railway, and he dropped his load at what we know as Chitts Hill’s level crossing area. It made a bit of a mess, but there that was, as I say, one of those unexpected things that we had to expect.

Of course, with father being ARP warden, we had to be, set a good example and be a bit strict with our blackout situation. So to control that and also to get a certain amount of protection for the windows, we made up wooden shutters, fitted brackets. So that we could have the full window space during the daylight hours, but to put these shutters in position at dusk, that made a good blackout effect. Also to a point, it helped to keep the place warm and a little bit of a safeguard with blast effect if there was anything close, which there was occasionally.

But there's one thing I remember on a real clear day from the top of the railway bridge at Marks Tey against the station, I could see in the distance due east. I could see what looked like girder towers going up. Slowly through the weeks there was three massive tall steel towers went up into position, and as I say, on a clear day, we could see them. We eventually learned that they were at Great Bromley, known as the Bromley pylons, and they took the great part in the radar system that was being developed in the early part of the war years.

And, to get into that area of coastline, I think it was about five miles in from the coast all around, we had to have a permit to get in. Otherwise, people living there obviously had a permit, but if we had got to go in from a work point of view, we had to get clearance and get a permit. And then again, there was another zone stretching about, I suppose it would be about the 50 mile from the coast inland, because I was coming back from Bedford one day. I'd been down to get spares from the machinery from the Bedford Plough and Engineering Company, Elstow works in Bedford, Beds. And I used to go through there in the car and just before getting there, there was the airship sheds at Cardington. And on one particular journey there, I thought, oh gosh, Jerry has got the airship sheds, because I could see them in the distance as a rule, but this time I just couldn't see them.

And then I suddenly realised that where the airship sheds appeared to be like a massive town area, houses outlined on, and as I got closer, I realised that the camouflage artists had done a real good job and that massive building looked like a whole lot of houses the way it had been camouflage painted.

And coming back may have been that journey, I don't remember because I made several journeys, had to get delivery of the stuff for, if we got a breakdown, nobody carried spares. So we had to go to the works to get them direct and, I was coming back through the Dunmow area, policeman steps out in front of me, and wanted to know where I'd been and what I was doing. They had seen me go through at six o'clock that morning. Didn't stop me then, but they stopped me when I was coming back. Of course, I was okay because I'd got spare machinery spare in the back of the car and the necessary paperwork. So that was that. But there were these places where you had to be a little ...