SOME STORIES

THREE FRIENDS

Cis Keefe, then Cis Hancock, was born and grew up in the East End of London. Her two friends, Hilda Dupree and Joan Ridd, were born nearby and grew up a few streets away from her. The girls, all of a similar age, were friends throughout their schooldays and later they remained close when they left school and began their working lives. When war broke out all three decided to join the Auxiliary Fire Service. After enrolling and completing the required training, they were attached to Brunswick Road Fire Station. Hilda was sent to a sub fire station based in the Old Palace School, in St Leonard’s Street, Bromley-by-Bow, and Joan was sent to Ricardo Street School, also a sub fire station under Brunswick Road, while Cis remained at the main station.

On the night of November 1st 1940, Ricardo Street School, a three storey London County Council Elementary School, received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb. The main impact of the bomb was concentrated on the part of the school in use as a watchroom where Joan Ridd was on duty that night. When the building collapsed Joan was buried under the rubble along with one other firewoman and ten firemen. Of those trapped and injured under the debris seven recovered but five did not and died as a result of their injuries. Joan Ridd was among them; she was 20 years old.

Several months later, on the night of 19th/20th April 1941 the Luftwaffe launched one of their heaviest attacks on London, so bad that it became known as ‘the Saturday’. Hilda Dupree was on watchroom duty with her friend Winifred Peters at The Old Palace School. Shortly after 1.30am, three crews from Beckenham along with several other more local crews from Hackney and Homerton were assembled in the school playground standing-by to be sent on to where they were needed most when a land-mine, one of the most violently destructive weapons at that stage of the war, landed on the roof of the school and dropped down a stairwell at the bottom of which was the watchroom where Hilda Dupree and Winifred Peters were at work. The two women were killed outright. The men waiting outside were caught by the blast, which also demolished two thirds of the school building, and were buried by falling masonry. Rescue services, already hard-pressed, arrived too late for any lives to be saved.

Thirty-two firemen and two firewomen died at The Old Palace School, the largest number of Fire Brigade lives lost in a single incident, in peacetime or war. In April 1997, Firemen Remembered, along with the London Fire Brigade, dedicated a plaque in their memory. Several years later, Cis Keefe told us of the link between Hilda and Joan. Until that time we had not known of the connection between them and in response to her story, in July 2006 a plaque was unveiled by Cis at Lansbury Lawrence Primary School, now occupying the site of the old school building, in memory of Joan Ridd and those whose lives had been lost with her. Cis Keefe died two months later.

A VOLUNTEER FROM OVERSEAS

On the night of 16th/17th April 1941, following a lull of several weeks, the Luftwaffe launched a major attack on Britain. The concentration of the attack in London was, as usual, on the dockland and industrial areas along the Thames on both sides of the river. An estimated 890 tons of high explosives, including a particularly high number of parachute-mines, and 151,230 incendiaries were dropped on the capital. It was the night that the singer Al Bowlly was killed in his flat in Duke Street.

It was also a bad night in the area of Pimlico and Chelsea. Something of its unusual intensity is conveyed by the following account written by Francis Flaviell, a young artist, later to become a writer, who lived at 33 Cheyne Place, Chelsea, until she was bombed-out on the night of the 16th/17th. She describes leaving a local restaurant with a group of friends with whom she had been dining:

“As we walked home enjoying the warm air, to our astonishment the sirens went-first in the distance those eerie, mournful howls and then nearer till they blasted the still air in full fury…

Almost immediately there was the sickening roar of a great drove of planes which increased and increased so that we knew there must be hundreds of them. The guns opened up at once-a terrific barrage, so loud that it was difficult to speak, and huge flares-different to any which we had seen- were being dropped… We had never experienced such a night-bombs seemed to rain down-and in the intervals explosions which tonight were the loudest we could remember, we could hear the guns in the planes as the fighters chased them. The sky was alight with flares, searchlights and exploding shells-it was a magnificent but appalling sight! The fires which we could see were enormous and appeared to be increasing. Behind us, much nearer there was a terrible blaze in the direction of Burton Court. Wardens kept running by and we heard the revving-up of engines from the auxiliary fire station a few doors down…”

Further West, Chelsea Old Church was guarded by a party of volunteers from the congregation and nearby business premises. Among them was Yvonne Green, a part-time Auxiliary Fire Service driver who had agreed to swap shifts with two of her fellow firewatchers. Yvonne was newly married to Leonard Green also a Canadian, who had volunteered for the British army and was stationed in Farnham. Recently divorced from Tyrou Nichol, a British actor, Yvonne had a daughter, Penelope, then a baby, left safely in the care of her mother at home in Canada. Yvonne Green was thirty-one years old.

It would seem that the early part of the raid was fairly routine in the area of the Old Church, apart from a great deal of noise and shrapnel from ack-ack fire. At about one o’clock in the morning, because of what they by then understood to be the increasing severity of the raid, the six firewatchers from Chelsea Old Church, including Yvonne Green, set off on a patrol along the Thames embankment. One of them, a Mr Mallett, was examining some of the shell casing that had fallen in the street when he suddenly noticed something that he described as being “like a fifty-six pound coal sack dropping on the soft ground”. Realising that it was in fact a landmine, he shouted to the others to run. About twenty feet away from where he was, they began to run towards the church. Mr Mallett, running too fast to turn the corner and follow them, ducked down for cover behind a fire-alarm post on the corner. At almost the same moment a second landmine landed between the still running firewatchers and the church. The explosion from the second mine detonated the first, which up until that point had not exploded, and in the blast that followed, the tower and most of the western end of the church were demolished and all five firewatchers caught in the open were killed.

In 2007 a plaque in memory of Yvonne Green and the four firewatchers who died with her was dedicated in Chelsea Old Church and now hangs on the wall of Roper’s Gardens opposite. Penelope Nichol came from Canada to be present at the service with her daughter and grandson, all of whom together unveiled the plaque.

ABRAHAM LEWIS

Jim Barnard was born in Lowestoft in 1912 and began his working life as ship’s cook on the steam trawler, Eager, in 1926. In 1936 he joined the London Fire Brigade and eventually the Essex Fire Brigade where, by the time he retired in 1967 he had become Deputy Chief Officer. He was a gentle man, never losing his soft east coast accent, nor his innate sense of decency and kindness. In 1939, Jim was based at Whitechapel Fire Station in London’s East End, where he volunteered to train auxiliaries for wartime firefighting. On the outbreak of war, Jim was promoted to sub-officer and appointed in charge of a sub fire station and over fifty men and women auxiliaries. In conversation with Jim one afternoon he spoke of an incident at which he had been present as Officer-in-Charge and which still continued to trouble him.

On the night of 10th/11th May 1941, the last night of the London Blitz, the heaviest and the worst, in the early hours of May 11th, three crews were ordered by Whitechapel Fire Station to Tower Hill in response to calls for assistance at fires in Trinity House. On arrival the Officer-in-Charge, Jim, found a fourth crew already in attendance. Having been warned that the mains in the area were dry, he was surprised to see a fireman bent over a hydrant on the corner of Trinity Square and Cooper’s Row, trying to attach a stand-pipe to the outlet. At this point a second wave of bombing was in progress, the first having caused numerous fires, including those in Trinity House. A stick of bombs comprising clusters of about fifteen incendiaries each had been dropping in front of the crews from Whitechapel as they made their way to Trinity Square. The Officer-in-Charge then witnessed the last cluster falling directly onto the back of the man bending over the hydrant. Firemen standing nearby rushed over to help him, shocked and confused by what they had just seen. Jim, at this point still believing the threat to Trinity House to be urgent, ordered two firemen to take the injured man into a concrete surface shelter that stood directly opposite and to call for medical assistance. He then ordered the remaining men into Trinity House to investigate what damage had been done. Jim believed that the man died in the shelter and even after more than 60 years continued to feel regret, as if, had he not left him the man might somehow have been prevented from dying. Firemen Remembered agreed to dedicate a plaque in memory of the man whose name was Abraham Lewis.

Abraham Lewis did not die in the shelter, as Jim believed. Although he never regained consciousness, he was taken to the London Hospital where he died the following day. His spine was damaged by the impact of the bomb and the shock that he suffered was massive.

In July 2003 a plaque in memory of Abraham Lewis was unveiled by his daughter and her son and granddaughter at Whitechapel Fire Station. The plaque now hangs in Trinity House.