11:34am Tuesday 24th November 2009
By Dennis Signy
MR Chalk, the rather austere headmaster of Finchley County School at the start of the second world war, once observed that my form 2B was the worst that he had encountered in 27 years as a teacher and he particularly singled me out as a no-hoper academic.
His view was endorsed when I scored three marks out of 100 in a geometry exam ... and still finished two places ahead of two classmates!
The word algebra still makes me shudder. When it came to a maths exam I had an arrangement with my pal Derek, who went on to work for NatWest and as a merchant banker, that he would slip his first page on the floor when he had answered a batch of questions. I copied his answers, cleverly changing one in three to throw a suspecting teacher off the scent, and then signalled for page 2.
Derek, a solid character, suggested a reciprocal arrangement when it came to the English essay as I was better with words than him. Mr Jones, our English teacher, had impressed on me early in our acquaintance that humour was the most difficult to get across ... so we were well rumbled when my witty piece was copied word for word by Derek. "I know you two are close", observed Mr Jones. "But not that close".
Barnet FC are holding a Help for Heroes Day on December 12 and I have been reminiscing about my schooldays, my life as a cub reporter in Hendon during the London Blitz and my four years in the Army looking for heroic tales to recount.
My hero highlight was when I was a 16-year-old ARP messenger (Air Raids Precaution), resplendent in a blue uniform and wearing a tin helmet as I cycled around Hendon dodging the bombs and linking various sections of Civil Defence. One evening I was in Elm Park Gardens, Hendon, with Barrett Newbery, my first editor on the Hendon and FinchleyTimes, when I stood on a ladder and tipped an incendiary bomb from the rafters of a damaged house into a bucket held below by Mr N. "Good show", he said ... but he said that ever day to every reporter when they handed him a story.
I dined off the story of the incendiary for years. Mrs S somehow took the edge of it by remarking that if I'd tipped another 100 incendiaries towards a bucket they'd have all missed and hit dear old Mr Newbery around the ankles.
I was in the old Ambassadors cinema at Hendon Central when a landmine destroyed three streets in West Hendon. The cinema literally shook and there was pandemonium until a young gent at the end of my row shouted "Don't panic, don't panic" and everyone was magically rooted to the spot and silenced.
Mr Hutchinson, the manager, came out on stage and told us the show would go on. As the lights dimmed, the only person to leave was the hero at the end of my row.
When I walked out into Vivian Avenue at the end among the shattered shop fronts and broken glass I found my mother searching for her eldest son. "Why didn't you come home?" she asked. I tried a stiff upper lip approach. "Bombs won't stop me going to the cinema", I replied. I realised how pleased and relieved she was to see me when she clipped me round the ear.
There was a gallows humour in our young lives. We gathered in Hendon Park each Sunday, observing planes above (and later doodlebugs that cut out, cruised silently for a mile or two and then exploded). "One of ours or one of their's?", we'd ask. As a bomb hurtled earthwards, we'd exclaim: "One of theirs".
My mother insisted that my brother and I slept in our own beds rather than go to an underground air raid shelter. One night, with the skies over Hendon lit up, and bombs exploding, my father, who had been in France and a member of the Dunkirk retreat, arrived home unexpectedly late one evening, delayed by wartime trains. He hammered on the front door and got no answer.
He went up the road to a telephone box and rang and rang until he woke my mother. "Why didn't you tell us you were coming and we'd have left a key?" she said to the returning hero ... turned round and went back to bed.
The Army gave me few chances of heroics. I was assigned to the Intelligence Corps, an outfit that reportedly had more casualties from motor cycle accidents than enemy action.
I was thrown off a motor cycle course at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire for gross inefficiency, an act that undoubtedly saved my life and left me to fight another day.
We were on an exercise in the fields at Earl Fitzwilliam's estate when I stalled my machine for the umpteenth time and saw my colleagues roaring off into the distance towards a wooded area.
The lance corporal in charge kicked-started my bike for me, repeated Mr Chalk's feelings with a one-word comment about my uselessness allied to a rather rude reference to my parentage. He then instructed me to rejoin the group.
They were in a line zig-zagging round tree after tree ... I caught up with them by going round a tree the wrong way, hitting the first bike head-on, unseating a few more, as well as writing off my machine.
I returned to Finchley County in khaki to see Mr Chalk. "What regiment are you in?" he asked. I turned my right shoulder to show him the words 'Intelligence Corps', his face froze with shock and I reckon he never got over it.
We used to refer to being in the I. Corps. I reckon lots of people thought I was a young optician!
I've racked my brain for heroic acts. Putting out an incendiary bomb aint bad. Winning five shillings for hitting the target with a hand grenade during training can only be construed as heroic when you consider the fear as I pulled out the pin and took hurried aim.
I'll be able to tell today's heroes that I served on the Afghanistan border ... but the war was over then. The only time I diced with death was in a motor cycle saddle.
My hero rating is zero.
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