Tag: Firemen

The London Blitz….September 1940 –May 1941.

London’s docks were the trust of the German attacks on the night of the 7th September 1940

London and the River Thames waterfront were the prime targets for the intensive enemy bombing campaign in the early part of World War II, which became known simply as the ‘Blitz’. Hitler had two objectives; to disrupt trade through the country’s largest port and breaking Britain’s spirit. But the Germans were to be proved to be wrong on both points. The German plan, overseen by Reich Air Marshall Goering, had been to reduce London, and other large populated cities, to rubble and ashes, shattering the infrastructures of everyday life. His aim to paralyse administration and industry and to leave the population exhausted, terror-struck, and cowering in their shelters. From this onslaught, it was hoped, Britain would sue for peace. Goering’s strategic bombing dissolved the clear distinction between the battlefield and homeland. His tactics turned a distant city into an embattled ‘home front’. The docks, warehouses, and munitions plants of London were obvious targets; but so were the utilities and transport networks that served them, together with the millions whose labour was the city’s lifeblood.

Sunday morning, 8th September, and Londoner’s looking eastward only saw a clouds of smoke billowing skyward.

This was industrialised war; a ‘total war of materiel and attrition’. The people of London became targets. As such, they faced a choice: they could be mere victims, waiting in the damp and muck of a crowded shelter for the bomb that destroyed them – or they could become combatants in their own right and fight back by simply not giving in to the bombing. Londoner’s chose the latter.

That first night, in Bonor Road, Peckham, SE15, a fire brigade hose laying lorry received a direct hit by a HE bomb. The lorry was blow up onto the roof of a terraced house, the bodies of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) crew were never found.

Throughout the summer of 1940 the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) had targeted the Royal Air Force (RAF), both in the skies over southern England and its bases in the Home Counties, especially across the South-east. The Germans needed air superiority before they could mount their planned invasion of England. This was the Battle of Britain, and despite heavy losses of men and aircraft, the RAF gradually gained the upper hand, forcing the Germans to change their tactics. The Germans did.

In September 1940 London’s burning docklands provided a beacon for the German navigators following the Thames upriver. For those on the ground and fighting the dock and warehouse fires, the contents, added to hazards the firefighters faced nightly. There were pepper fires, loading the surrounding air heavily with stinging particles, so that when firemen took a deep breath, it felt like burning fire itself. There were rum fires, with torrents of blazing liquid pouring from the warehouse doors, and barrels exploding like bombs themselves. There was a paint fire, another cascade of white-hot flame… A rubber fire gave forth black clouds of smoke so asphyxiating that it could only be fought from a distance.

London’s fire brigade was massively expanded with creation of the Auxiliary Fire Service. Both men and women were recruited although the firewomen were not meant to fight the fires, but for the women as AFS dispatch riders (taking messages from the fires to the control rooms) the dangers were just as real. For the AFS fireman very few had actually ever seen a major until that night of the 7th September but the Blitz would change all that. Tragically, for many, serving on the Home Front it would also cost them their lives.

ARP wardens were on active duty during the bombing, enforcing the blackout, guiding people to shelters, watching for incendiaries, attending and reporting ‘incidents’. Under such fire and doing this essential work, they were as much combatants as the regular soldiers, manning AA guns, searchlights, and barrage balloons around London. (The ARP suffered three thousand eight hundred and eight casualties during the war, one thousand tree hundred and fifty-five of them killed.)

On that first night of the Blitz, 7th September, only one in five of London’s firefighters had had any previous experience. The dangers they faced were numerous and unpredictable. During the war, more than eight hundred firefighters would be killed and more than seven thousand, seriously injured. Many of them blinded by heat or sparks. At the end of the ten-week onslaught of  intensive Blitz on London fire-crews were all utterly exhausted by lack of sleep, excessive hours, irregular meals, extremes of temperature, and the constant physical and mental strain.

On the river, beside the Massey Shaw and London’s other fire-fighting craft, London’s air defence precautions included the River Emergency Service. More than a dozen pre-war pleasure steamers were converted to first aid and ambulance boats. They were moored at various points along the river including Silvertown Wharf, Wapping and Cherry Garden Pier, alongside the Beta III. To give a taste of what the fire-float crews, and others, endured on the Thames that first night (7th September) it is perhaps best illustrated by a personal account given by Sir Alan Herbert, who was in command of the Thames Auxiliary Patrol’s vessel Water Gypsy, which was heading downriver:

Water Gypsy on the Thames.

 “Half a mile or more of the Surrey shore was burning. The wind was westerly and the accumulated smoke and sparks of all the fires swept in a high wall across the river.” He pressed on into the clouds of smoke: “The scene was like a lake in Hell. Burning barges were drifting everywhere. We could hear the hiss and roar of the conflagrations, a formidable noise but we could not see it so dense was the smoke. Nor could we see the eastern shore.”

As dawn broke on the 8th September the scale of the destruction was revealed. Four hundred and fifty Londoners had been killed and one thousand five hundred badly injured. Three main railway stations were out of action and one thousand fires were still burning, all the way up the river from Deptford to Putney. They included two hundred acres of timber ponds and stores in the Surrey Commercial Docks, destroying one third of London’s stocks of timber – which was badly needed for building repairs in the coming months.

The Blitz on London had started. The German bombers struck for fifty-seven consecutive nights and sometimes by day as well. The riverside communities from Woolwich to Lambeth bearing the brunt of the onslaught. Some streets had sturdy, well-constructed public air raid shelters; in others people had to rely on quickly-built Anderson shelters made from a couple of sheets of corrugated iron with earth piled on top. The shelters were for the civilians, there was no such safe haven for the emergency services, but especially the firemen, working on the streets and along the river.

Not all shelters were a safe haven, many were hit and hundreds would die in them. On October 15 a 50lb bomb hit the shelter in Kennington Lane killing 104 (the true total was never known). News of the distaster was kept from the wider public lest it spread fear about using shelters.

Meanwhile it was not exactly business as usual for the docks and wharves as traffic was reduced to half its pre-war levels. But more freight was carried by tugs and lighters (barges) since, unlike the roads, the river was never blocked by bomb damage. For Londoners, and particularly the East Enders, it was the winter from hell. From that September their homes, and their city, had been pounded almost nightly by the German bombers. In riverside communities from Woolwich and Silvertown in the east, and Lambeth and beyond in the west, everyone knew the bomb-damaged streets, the families whose homes had been destroyed or who had lost a loved one in the Blitz.

The night-time raids that followed were equally terrible and deadly. Night after night the bombers returned. The Strand, the West End and Piccadilly were attacked. St Thomas’s Hospital, St Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Lambeth Palace and the House of Commons were all hit. Between September and November 1940 almost 30,000 bombs were dropped on London. In the first 30 days, almost 6,000 people were killed and twice as many badly injured including London’s firefighters.

There were many acts of ‘Blitz’ outstanding gallantry. One fireman was awarded the George Cross, the Nation’s highest civilian gallantry award. Others received the George Medal, tragically some medals and commendations were awarded posthumously. In late 1940 Acting Sub Officer Richard Henry ASHTON’s actions saw him awarded the Medal of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (BEM) for Meritorious Service. (Published in the London Gazette Supplement No 35058, 31st January 1941, pp. 611.) About fifty people were cut off by a serious fire and were in danger of being driven into the river by the flames. With great difficulty and while bombing was continuing Sub-Officer Ashton, who was in charge of a fire-float, rescued the stranded people by towing them in a barge, skilfully avoiding other burning barges and disembarked them in safety.

Also awarded the Medal of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (BEM) for Meritorious Service was Auxiliary Messenger Samuel STILLWELL. At a large Docks fire this boy (16) was discovered holding a hose until relieved by firemen. He continued afterwards to deliver messages-and bring drinking-water to officers and men who were unable to leave their positions. Altogether Stillwell was at the fire in the Docks on the first day and night for over 14 hours and on five succeeding nights carried out duties at fires in the same area with great courage. He was quite indifferent to the danger he was in and, although ordered to shelter, he turned up again and again later in the night and the next morning carrying drinking water to the men on the hoses.

Just after Christmas, and at 6.30 p.m, on the 29th December the massive night attack began in earnest. Baskets and baskets of enemy incendiaries clattered down on the roofs and streets of the City of London. All around St Paul’s Cathedral fires sprang up and quickly spread. Some fire bombs fell on the cathedral’s roof but all were cast off or extinguished. The water supply in London failed, important mains being shattered by high-explosive bombs. Only by dragging heavy canvas hose across the mud from the fire-floats working in the Thames could water be brought to the bank. In the river bed firemen toiled, coaxing slimy hose-pipes into a battery of lines for their vital water supply. It was most one of the most notorious raids of the Blitz to date. The enemies focus was the City of London. An area from Aldersgate to Cannon Street and Cheapside to Moorgate went up in flames. Nineteen churches, including sixteen built by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London, were destroyed. Miraculously, however, St Paul’s survived. Of the thirty-four Guild Halls, thirty-one were decimated. When Paternoster Row, centre of London’s publishing industry, was destroyed, around five-million books were lost. Two fire officers and fourteen firemen were killed that night. Across London two hundred and fifty officers and firemen were injured fighting the one thousand-five hundred fires that blazed into the early hours of the following day.

The aftermath of the December bombing when fire engine crews were caught up in the blaze. They had to flee for their lives leaving the engines to be consumed by the blaze.

After that the air raids continued sporadically, with major raids on 16 and 19 April 1941. More than one thousand people were killed on each night in various areas across the capital. Finally, on 10 May, bombs fell on Kingsway, Smithfield, and Westminster and across the City, killing almost three thousand and hitting the Law Courts, the Tower of London, and many of London’s museums and the House of Commons.

By May 1941 forty-three thousand people had been killed across Britain and almost one and an half million had been made homeless. Not only was London attacked but so were many other British cities. Coventry and Plymouth were particularly badly bombed. Few, if any of Britain’s cities escaped enemy bombing. Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool all suffered major damage, the loss of life and its populations serious injury.

In the closing weeks of the Blitz the bravery of London’s firefighters was never far from the bombing. Fire stations from the outskirts of greater London headed into the fray, many attending the riverside docks and warehouse fires. The Blitz on Britain was called off in May 1941. Hitler had a far more prized target. In the following month, Operation Barbarossa was launched, the attack on Russia. The huge military force needed for this attack included many bombers and two-thirds of the German military was to be tied up on the Eastern Front for the duration of the war. Meanwhile it was not exactly business as usual for London’s docks and wharves as traffic was reduced to half its pre-war levels. But more freight was carried by tugs and lighters (barges) since the river was always clear of any bomb debris which blocked the capitals roads.

The Memorial Hall at the former Brigade headquarters on the Albert Embankment. Dedicated to London’s firemen and firewomen who perished in the line of duty on the Home Front during WWII.
The Blitz memorial, in its original position, opposite St Paul’s Cathedral, and which was unveil by Her Majesty The Queen Mother in 1991.

The Dream Cinema fire. 1994.

On the 26th February 1994 an arson attack killed eleven people at the Dream City Cinema fire, located at 7 St John Street, Smithfield, EC1. The Metropolitan Police would later confirm that the ‘gay’ pornography cinema was deliberately targeted after they launched a murder investigation into the fire related deaths which broke out in the private club just before 6pm on a Saturday evening.

One person was confirmed dead on arrival at St Bartholomew’s Hospital with another dying soon after; six more bodies were found on the second floor and up to 23 people were injured in this rapidly spreading lethal blaze. As the local fire crews arrived they were faced with scenes of pandemonium. At one point people desperate to escape scrambled to get onto Islington’s` turntable ladder. The first, second and third floors were already ablaze and flames were shooting out of the ground floor over the pavement as Barbican’s fire engine pulled up. The injured lay in the street as men jumped from the second and third floor windows to escape certain death.

‘Dream City’ showed straight and gay sex films and occupied the second and third floors in St John Street. Witnesses later said flames engulfed all floors within minutes of the building ‘exploding’. The injured suffering from severe burns, broken bones and the effects of smoke inhalation. The pavement outside became strewn with the dead and injured as firefighters fought the blaze and undertook rescues whilst the police and ambulance crews battled to revive badly burned victims.

The rear of the Dream Cinema fire premises.

The fire had started after a deaf, homeless man called David Lauwers (known as ‘Deaf Dave’) had a fight with a doorman over a disagreement of needing to pay his entry fee again having left the club earlier.But after being ejected from the cinema Lauwers went to a nearby petrol station. He returned with a can of petrol and set fire to the entrance area. The foyer exploded into flames and the fire took hold rapidly trapping most of the staff and patrons inside the building. Eight men died at the time of the attack, seven from smoke inhalation and one from injuries sustained from jumping from an upper floor. Three further fatalities followed in the week that followed and where thirteen were detained in hospital suffering from serious injuries.

The London Fire Brigade’s control room received the first of multiple calls at 1739. Barbican’s pump-ladder (on whose fire ground the fire occurred); together with Clerkenwell’s pump and Dowgate’s Ariel ladder platform made up the initial attendance. They were swiftly augmented by Dowgate’s pump-ladder, Shoreditch’s pump ladder and pump and Islington’s turntable ladder. With pumps made eight at 1820 hrs Euston’s and Whitechaple’s pump-ladders were both dispatched. It took crews wearing breathing apparatus, and some without, four hours to bring the blaze under control, locate the bodies and account for missing persons. Three jets and a two hosereels were used to extinguish the blaze. The Brigade rescued a total twenty-one people from the fire.

Station Commander Ken Emsley (Euston) was one of the first senior officers on the scene. He commented at the time: ‘It was a horrific incident. The worst I have experienced in my 30 years. It was absolutely chaotic. We were working under extreme conditions, with so many people trying to get out of the building.’ Efforts to escape were hampered by a lack of lighting. One man who had been inside said the cinema was ‘very dark and very seedy’.

In 1995 firefighters Raymond Walton, Mark Garrard, James Mansfield and Alan Ward received awards for their bravery in dealing with the cinema inferno.

Firefighter Raymond Walton (Barbican) received a Chief Officers Commendation and Firefighters Mark Garrard (Barbican), Alan Walton (Shoreditch) and Stephen Mansfield (Leytonstone) were each awarded the Chief Officer’s Letter of Congratulations for their respective actions.

As Barbican crews first arrived it was immediately evident that people were injured and panicking and many of whom required rescuing. With one person having already jumped from the 2nd floor of the building, Firefighter Walton was the first to climb a ‘Lacon’ extension ladder to begin the rescues. He doggedly held onto a casualty who had thrown himself head first at him but was forced to let go when another climbed over them both in total panic. He then helped two other people down the ladder. Returning into the building to fight the fire Firefighter Walton discovered other casualties, and with colleagues, got them onto an aerial ladder platform rescuing four people. Finally using a ladder Walton brought down a casualty in a face to face descent but the casualty lost his footing and Walton had to support his whole body weight whilst bringing him down to safety.

Firefighter Garrard had got to work performing ladder rescues and using a hose-reel jet placed himself in harm’s way to protect other firefighters undertaking rescues from the fire. He assisted in the rescue of eight people from the building in difficult and dangerous circumstance.

Firefighter Mansfield undertook the search for casualties on the second floor in extremely hot, smoke filled and dangerous conditions. Finding casualties he assisted them to safety onto ladders at the second floor windows before discovering a casualty that he had to carry down the internal staircase to safety.

Firefighter Ward also worked on the second floor searching for casualties. He assisted the safe rescue of injured casualties before carrying down a casualty from the upper floors, via the internal staircase, to safety. A total of sixteen people were rescued, five jumped from the building killing one, and six died within it. A further four died subsequently from their injuries.

The Dream City Cinema fire scene.

Notes:

Two days after learning of the gravity of the situation Lauwers handed himself in to Walthamstow police station. He was later given a life sentence at the Old Bailey on three sample charges of manslaughter.

Islington Council said following the fire that the club was not licensed as a cinema. They set about introducing licensing of all adult cinemas in the Borough. Although Dream City was unlicensed and its fire provisions were inadequate the London Fire Brigade was aware of the cinema.Post-mortem examinations showed the seven died from smoke inhalation and one from multiple injuries consistent with a fall from a window.

The other three deaths occurred in hospital and were attributed to the injuries received on the night of the 26th.