Winter 2002

Life behind bars - Women’s RVS - Sheffield girl knew Dam Buster secrets - Adopt an owl box

Life behind bars

Welcome once again to the ramblings of the maestro of the emporium of pleasure and delight and all who sail in her. As the leaves start falling from the trees and the drains get blocked with the debris and leaves one is reminded that autumn is with us. The colours at this time of year are fantastic and certainly the attraction of living in this part of the city is all too apparent.

I am pleased to report that I have at last tracked down my singing teacher in order to ready me (and you of course) for the delights of Christmas caroling and logs by the fire and gifts on the trees (with acknowledgment to Sir Cliff Richard).

My teacher reports that my vocal talents are on a par with Dr Crippens social skills (that’s nice of him isn’t it?) So I can’t wait to share my Xmas talents with you all. The results of my upbringing mean that I know just about every verse of every traditional Christmas carol (and probably a few that were never written.)

Bookings for our Christmas Fayre are going thick and fast and we begin the task of preparing ourselves for the festive season. The Christmas fayre menu is almost fully booked for the whole of December and Christmas Day 2002, which has been fully booked since 2001, now has a waiting list till 2005. (Confusing isn’t it). It won’t be long till the decorations start appearing at the Castle Inn and we look like every department store in Sheffield but rather like Gertrude Shilling (remember her from Ascot) you will have to wait till December 2nd to discover "wot" Kens Christmas headgear will be.

There’s been a bit of movement on the neighbour front and we lost Frank (not literally) who has moved not too far away but far enough to curtail his visits to the emporium and we have yet to meet his successors who obviously don’t feel the need to borrow milk and sugar as yet.

Tia and Bailey have now been given the freedom of the borough and before you gardeners begin barricading your petunias June and I are pleased to report that they appear to have no wish to avail themselves of that freedom but prefer to stay indoors especially during bouts of inclement weather, of which we seem to have had more than our fair share lately.

I’m afraid that the only joke I have heard during the last three months is really not suitable for the Bugle and its discerning listeners and readers so I will resurrect an old one with apologies to readers over 65 who may have heard it in their teens or even earlier.

A landlord (who shall remain nameless) was busy polishing his glasses one evening when in walked a White Horse and ordered a pint of bitter.

The landlord was a little taken aback but regained his composure enough to serve the beer (albeit a little unsteadily). The horse soon was one of the crowd and chatted amiably with the landlord who soon felt compelled to say to the horse, "do you know we serve a whisky named after you?" "Really" said the horse "And how many of your regulars drink a whisky called Eric?"

See you next issue!

Ken Cottrell

Women’s RVS

WRVS has been providing services to local communities across England, Scotland and Wales for 63 years and has over 100,000 active volunteers.

Its volunteers were at the scene of the recent Selby train disaster, 18 hours a day, for eight consecutive days; who else would have responded in this way to support the emergency services? Without its volunteers families devastated by the recent floods would not have received the same reassurance and support given to them at WRVS rest centres up and down the country. Without WRVS volunteers, thousands of vulnerable and elderly people would have missed out on the social contact and care given by our Meals on Wheels teams. Without WRVS volunteers vulnerable children and families would have been deprived of the many community projects run in their locality by WRVS.

Locally the WRVS are expanding their services in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Northern General Hospital, Weston Park Hospital and Sheffield Children’s Hospital, and are recruiting volunteers to assist in the day to day running of it’s tea bars, shops, and trolley services. Currently they have vacancies for retail/catering assistants, cashiers, a rota organiser, recruitment officer, and stock assistant, to help in the running of these units. Training will be provided. All goods sold will be pre-packed so catering experience is not essential.

Volunteer work 4hr shifts to cover the day from 8am - 8pm Monday to Friday. 10am-4pm Weekends. Travel expenses will be paid. Ladies, Gents and Couples are most welcome, aged between 14 to 75. To find out more contact: 0845 601 4670 (local rate number). So, go on why not Volunteer?

Sheffield girl knew Dam Buster secrets

"I taught myself to forget," says the secretary who took shorthand notes at top secret wartime meetings.

Continuing his series of articles about local people with wartime and service experience, Roger Davis turns to the Home Front to interview "Miss X".

The 60th anniversary of the famous Dam Buster raid by the RAF's 617 Squadron, led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, occurs on May 17 next year, and the event will be noted with special interest by a Sheffield woman who knew many of the secrets of the operation. "My work was covered by the Official Secrets Act, and I just taught myself to forget said regular Bradway visitor Miss X".

As a young secretary, she took detailed shorthand notes in Sheffield of secret meetings attended by Barnes Wallis, who was working on plans for the ‘bouncing bomb’ to be used against the Moehne and Eder dams in the Ruhr, and top steel experts at works in Brightside, now the site of the Meadowhall Shopping Centre.

"While we did not know everything about the project, we had a pretty good idea of what was going on she said. "We never spoke about the work outside, and that has remained the position for me ever since". Even soil Miss X admitted that for old times sake she had watched the classic black and white film, The Darn Busters, starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, on television the night before I interviewed her!

In particular she recalled the spirit of those now distant days when thousands of grim faced workers would stream along the East End pavements to keep the 24-hour round-the-clock shift system going at full blast. They had lived though the nights of the Sheffield blitz, when waves of German bombers brought death and destruction to the city on a massive scale, and now it was Hitler's turn for punishment.

Vast quantities of bombs and shells were pouring out daily from the Sheffield works, and there was little time for them to wonder at the identity of the slightly built, diffident looking man seen in deep conversation with some of "the high ups".

Barnes Wallis, already 53 when war broke out in 1939, spent all his working life with Vickers aircraft works, near the old Brooklands motor racing circuit at Weybridge in Surrey. To the general public he is the man who invented the bouncing bomb, but there was to be much more to his war.

As 617 Squadron blazed their way into RAF history after trial runs over the Derwent dams in North Derbyshire, the price was heavy with only 11 Lancasters returning from the 19 that flew out on the raid from Scampton near Lincoln. A total of 56 men were missing out of a complement of 133, with three escaping by parachute to become prisoners of war.

As dawn broke after the raid, the weary survivors sat down to bacon and egg breakfast back at base and then moved into the bar, with Gibson greeting the all powerful Air Chief Marshall Bomber Harris with the comment "It was a wizard party, Sir. Went like a bomb, but we couldn’t quieten some of the flack. Some of the boys got the hammer."

But the celebration talk was all too much for the gentle little man standing close to Harris and the other senior officers. "Where are they? Where are all the others" asked Wallis. He was the only person present not drinking, but someone made him take hold of a half pint. He only held it and stood there blinking back the tears. "Oh, if I’d only known" he said. "I'd never have started this".

The association with 617 Squadron was to be strengthened on numerous other occasions as the war ground on. In his definitive book, The Dam Busters, Paul Brickhill says that as Wallis was working away at plans for the bouncing bomb, the subject was brought to the attention of fiery newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, then enjoying an all powerful role as Minister of Aircraft Production.

Wallis was summoned to the great man’s presence and had a mere 40 second interview in which he had just time to say that the bomb could win the war. He was then sent to Sheffield to meet steel industry experts able to advise on the manufacture of tempered castings that would be strong enough to withstand the shock of hitting the ground at 1000 mph without breaking, and Miss X's secret war began.

There was more frustration for Wallis when his plans were put into cold storage by Whitehall, but he finally won the day by convincing the authorities that a 10-ton bomb dropped 50 feet away from the target stood a good chance of breaching a dam like the Moehne, and the bouncing bomb project was finally on its way.

Heavy casualties had brought many new faces into 617 Squadron but it still basked in the image of the crack unit of Bomber Command, the first to be called in when there was a ‘suicide’ type action to be carried out. It was in action with more of Wallis’s bombs against the battleship Tirpitz on the Norwegian coast, and when British secret agents picked up reports of Hitler’s new rocket weapons.

Just 60 miles from London, a great complex of blockhouses was being built near Calais to bombard the capital with rockets. They had massive reinforced concrete walls up to 20 feet thick for protection, and the RAF's existing bombs were having little effect.

Britain soon came to teens with the V1 Doodlebug and the V2 Rocket but Hitler’s real secret weapon the V3 Rocket would be a very different proposition. Fired from 500 foot underground barrels, six V3 shells were planned to be launched every minute on London - 600 tons of explosives a day.

Wallis had previously worked on plans for a shock wave bomb and was prompted "Do you remember your crazy idea?" Asked how soon he could complete work on the bomb he said there was a lot to do, even if he could get the facilities. But within ten minutes a startled controller at the Ministry of Aircraft Production was shouting at him "What the hell do you want the services of 20,000 men in Sheffield for?"

Miss X recalls something of the drama of those days when it became clear that Wallis was taking charge of much of the production of the works. "I am never going to tell anyone just what was going on" she said.

Wallis moved to Sheffield again to iron out more problems. New methods of casting had to be evolved for hardening the bomb casings, so that the bombs could plough into hard ground faster than sound and not break up. Six hundred bombers attacked the secret weapon base at Peenemunder with the target almost wiped off the map, but Churchill still made plans for the evacuation of London.

A memorable encounter took place between Group Captain Cheshire of Pathfinder fame and now leader of 617 Squadron and Wallis over dropping the new ‘tallboy’ bombs.

"I haven't really designed this thing for concrete" said Wallis. "I think my dear boy it might not be a good thing to drop them right on the roofs of those wretched concrete affairs. They might bounce out again like corks. Just drop them in the earth and they will bore down and blow them up from underneath".

Cheshire suggested that although he had enormous faith in 617 Squadron, it was one thing to stick a pin in a diagram and other thing to drop a bomb on the same spot from 20,000 ft. Replied Wallis: "If I had known you proposed to scatter the bombs around the countryside like grass seed, I would never have bothered to design them!".

Roger Davis

Adopt an owl box

Owl lovers are being asked to adopt nest boxes and help boost the population of these endangered birds. The Hawk and Owl Trust, which has spearheaded barn owl conservation since 1988, says the nesting boxes help to make up for the loss of natural nesting sites in barns and hollow trees.

Adopting a nest box costs £12.50 a year. At the end of every year adopters are told what kind of birds have roosted or nested in their box, how many eggs were laid, and how many young owls reared. You can adopt a box in one of seven regions of Britain but, because it is essential the birds are not disturbed, the Trust cannot say exactly where the nesting box is.

Adoption forms are available from Adopt A Box, Hawk and Owl Trust, 11 St Mary's Close, Abbotskerswell, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 SQF. Please enclose a stamped addressed envelope.

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