hamble - a boy at war

A Boy At War by Peter Armitage An age of life has descended upon me where I think of the past and memories come into clear focus at about 4 am in the morning and then lose their clarity as the new day goes on. If only someone would invent a "thought recorder" so that the clarity of bed time thoughts could be captured. But failing this, I have the urge to write these memories down... I have been going over my life as a young boy just prior to and during the last world war. I was ten years old and living in Hamble when the war came in 1939. My father had moved the family south from Yorkshire after many years of unemployment during the 1930's Great Depression. Dad had obtained work as a tool and die maker in the expanding aircraft industry. This was during the period leading up to World War II.	Peter in the Hampshire Cadets in 1940
The Supermarine Spitfire	My three-year-old sister, Shirley, and I lived in Hamble just five miles from the Supermarine works where the Spitfire aircraft was designed and built. I was very interested in anything to do with airplanes so it was an exciting time, and place for a young boy to live. To this day, I consider myself to be a Spitfire freak. The main shipping artery to Southampton was right by our house. As children we would run to see the Queen Mary and the all the other great ships of the day just as soon as we heard their sirens blast, announcing another return trip from New York after a five-day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.
Just across the water was the new flying boat passenger terminal at Hythe. The big Pan American Clippers were just beginning their regular flight service from America. What dreams for a young boy growing up where world travel history was being made, and to this day I think how lucky I was to be witness to all this. Such travel was not for the likes of us, so it never crossed my mind that one day I would be a passenger on the Queen Mary or that I would settle in America. The great ship was of interest to us boys because of the big waves she caused as she sailed by our swimming beach.	The Queen Mary
1938 on Folland's slipway. Peter is the boy in shorts, bottom left	Our village was home to three aircraft factories: Armstrong Whitworth, Folland Aircraft and Fairey Aviation. All of these companies played significant roles in the early history of aviation. There was an airfield just a half-mile from our home where many of the pilots for the RAF and British Commonwealth air forces were trained. Even foreign pilots were trained at Air Service Training (AST), including some of the German pilots who, as events unfolded, were soon to be flying in the Luftwaffe against England. Additionally, we had a Shell Oil storage facility and tanker dock. What targets we were! and war was approaching.
Soon these boyish areas of intrigue would become of strategic interest to the Germans, or so we thought. As it turned out the German pilots who trained to fly in our village may have had other things in mind, as I will return to later in my story. click here to read more...
©Peter Armitage 2011