Jim Radley's Story page 3
THE HEATH
The language
of the 1781 ‘Heath Award’ is very hard to understand, but the
part that always pleases me is where it says:
‘left from this day forward for all time’
The legal document says ‘for all time’. So no one can ever take
it away The Charity Commissioners are all powerful in that respect, you
know, because of that being a charitable organisation. I’m one of
the Heath Trustees, and we had to make new rulings because the old Heath
Award let the land so that any household with a £10 hire could use
the heath for grazing and rabbits and whatever, and of course they said,
well, £10 hire is ridiculous today. So we had to change it, and
that took us I think five or six years to settle it. We were all pretty
well of the same mind, Salthouse people, but it took a long time to get
it right. The heath is all powerful. That’s our heritage you see,
and we fought for it through all sorts of troubles and trials, so everybody
is in agreement that it is sacrosanct.
Our family had two Common Rights: we had one with the house, and one with
the little pightle up the road called Rosie’s Pightle because there
was an old house in there. As long as you had the hearthstone, you were
all right, and the whole chimney-breast was there and everything. Once
Grandfather died, and I grew up, I could go and use the heath and Father
could go
MY
FATHER
Not that he could take much advantage of his rights though. My father came home from the first war and he’d been frozen in the trenches. He had special surgical boots but he couldn’t work on the land. When the means testing was on, you had to go round a half a dozen farms to get them to say that you’d been seeking work, so he had to go round but he couldn’t work on the land because of his feet. It wasn’t trench feet, that’s a different thing; his feet had been frozen and his ankle bone was near his heel. He was gassed as well. The means test was a dreadful thing, it really was. You see, there was no work and you couldn’t get Parish Relief, or whatever the poor law was at that time, unless you’d been round seeking work. Somebody had to sign to say you’d been to that particular place, and I know several farmers wouldn’t sign his paper because they said he wouldn’t work; but my poor old father couldn’t work on the land you see. Then, when the first huts were built at Weybourne Camp around 1935, he got a job decorating inside the buildings and at last he really was ‘on his feet’. I think that was the best time we ever had. Money-wise, things were getting better and there were more jobs about.
THE WEYBOURNE CAMP
It was an artillery practice camp. They had big guns along there, 4.5mm
guns, and an aeroplane going along trailing a drogue behind it. That was
red with a white net tail on the end of it. It had a great pole in the
front with a weight in the bottom to keep the thing upright, and they’d
fire at this as the plane dragged it along. I can remember the first rocket
firing down there. They had an artillery barrage of rockets. I remember
coming down Cross Street when those rockets were firing for the first
time, and the house where Mrs Elsden now lives, that had a tin roof, and
all the nails were jumping out of the roof and running down it. The vibration
was so much!
There were gunning places all over the area, and there was a dummy aerodrome
on the heath as well. On the cross roads at the top of Bard Hill—you
know, the first cross roads you come to—there was a light there that
they called a ‘lion light’. It was a big revolving light to
simulate an aerodrome. Do you know where Bix’s Lane is? Well down
there, which was the Deterdings’ Warren, that was all part of the
dummy aerodrome. We had dummy tanks and lorries all made out of canvas
stood about all over the place.
Above: 1985 FOUR GENERATIONS
Jim Radley, his mother Florence (aged 95),
Jim's eldest daughter Susan, and two
grandsons,
Stuart and Paul.
continued top of next column
Father worked down at the camp on the Nissen huts. Then as the camp progressed and got bigger, there were more Nissen huts, and they had a barrack warden stores where they issued the blankets and linen and everything, and he had the job of stores labourer, until he became barrack warden, and the poor old boy was there until died. In the first part of the war there was a German plane crashed on the marsh up Purdy’s Drift. There was a great tank trap made out of piping right across the marsh; that ran at angles right up to the beach as well. We boys used to walk along, holding on to the uprights and walking along the pipe, that way we could walk up to this plane. There was bits of it scattered everywhere and there was bullets laid about there in their hundreds. We used to take these damn things to pieces. When I think about it now it makes me shudder: they were explosive bullets and we used to unscrew them and take the firing-pin out, you see. If we had screwed them the wrong way . . .We had all sorts of different types of soldiers in the village: infantry, artillery, armour and whatever. The last thing I remember here were the Essex Yeomanry and they were an artillery regiment with field guns and an armoured vehicle to tow them. They were on the heath, and I remember them building that pylon. They lodged with my Aunt Alice who lived round in the council houses then, and I can remember seeing the plans and thinking how interesting that was to see them build it. It had a hoist—a lift in it—the pylon did, with a cabin at the top and they went up in the lift to do their spell of duty there. The Eighteenth Division was here until they went to Singapore, the Norfolks and Suffolks and Cambridgeshires they were here training; they were infantry. It was them who laid the mines along here on the beach.
The mines were stored at the bottom of Cross Street behind the council houses. Do you remember how cheeses used to come years ago, two to a crate, big round cheeses, well that’s how these mines were. Well, along come Jerry Sunday morning and dropped those bloody bombs on the coast road and it played hell with the soldiers, they thought he was after those mines. I don’t think so though, They were hit and run raids. Anyway, after that, they laid them. There were eighteen thousand mines laid on the beach, and there were two boys got killed laying those mines. They had to prime them themselves, you see, and they weren’t taught—they weren’t sappers or anything like that—they were just ordinary privates. One young soldier, Leason his name was, he’s buried up in the churchyard. We reckon he screwed the detonator in too tight and that blew up and killed him. I believe the villagers told the soldiers not to set them on the beach but on the marsh, because they knew they would be blown up by the first high tide. In fact, the first high tide, there was eighty blew up. The waves beat on them. If a rabbit had run over them they would have exploded they were so sensitive. After the war they come up with bull-dozers and they bull-dozed the whole beach away and I’m convinced to this day that’s what caused the trouble. They broke the hard panel of the clay bank that Purdy had put down.
I know when the soldiers first came here in 1939, duck shooting was just about to start and I was talking to someone in the street and I said, “Don’t forget that’ll be duck shooting tomorrow morning, so don’t think that’s an invasion starting!” They said later, “Thank goodness you told us because we’d no idea.” That just show you how a silly little thing could cause all sorts of problems.
ARMY SERVICE
I joined up towards
the end of the war, in 1943, and I went to Carlisle. I tell my children
about this now. They gave me a hessian sack which I had to fill with straw.
We had double bunks and the wires in the bottom were four inches apart
and you lay on that. When you think I came out of a feather bed, you can
imagine what that was like. My first breakfast was a spoonful of beans
and a small rasher of bacon. They put a basket of bread on the table and
I suppose we were about eight of us to a table, and I thought: that’ll
go round and that’ll come to me when the time comes, and I looked
at it and there weren’t a bloody crumb left! So I thought, “Well
I’ll be first in the queue tomorrow morning!”
From being sheltered, you mixed with all walks of life and that rubbed
all the corners off I can tell you. That was an experience I think many
of us would not have missed. I know some people had a hell of a time,
like poor George Cooke in Japanese imprisonment, but by and large when
you think about the comradeship you developed, you would give your last
shilling to anyone you knew, that was how you were. You were so reliant
on one another for your life you see.