Ruby's Memoirs

Part 7 - Married Life and the clouds of War

Early in the thirties I married and my life took on a complete change. Now I had a husband and went to live on the north side of London, St Albans in Hertfordshire, a delightful country town, or city, as it had its own police force at that time. I had a house to look after also a fair sized garden where I learnt the art of gardening, and growing vegetables etc, also a dog of my own, an airedale which was a ‘gentle giant’ but needed a great deal of exercise. This it got at least twice a day as it went everywhere with me and as in those days cars were not essential, walking or bussing was the usual means of transport. I enjoyed the new found freedom of endless lanes, footpaths that were still in use as means of getting to work for the farm labourers and the workers of the open countryside. There was very little barbed wire and gates were usually easy to open. This was permitted providing they were closed again and sheep and cattle left undisturbed. It was a wonderful life, I made many friends, joined a tennis club, swimming club, and apart from the domestic scene of cooking and cleaning, had a particularly workless life.

During the middle thirties we travelled quite a bit in Europe and I polished up my Schoolgirl French and learnt a little German. As well as holidays we travelled a little for business reasons so mixed with the population. In Germany this was very interesting as Hitler had just risen to fame or infamy as it turned out, and had the whole country, even many of the Generals, under his control. He was a fanatic but a man of great charm and persuasion and led most of the English of that time to believe that his only ambition was to give everybody an equal chance in life. Wasn’t that the very thing that we wanted? Well his national pride fooled most people. He built autobahns for his roads massively wide in comparison with ours, wonderful trains made of steel instead of wood, trained an army with shovels instead of guns, to skirt round a League of Nations convention, built the smallest car on the road at that time called the Volkswagen very cheaply so that everyone would have a car, although I don’t think this ever happened, but sounded terrific at the time, started building a new navy which included three new battleships, a fleet of U Boats in secret, and an air force of bombers and fighter planes under Marshal Güering, another nasty man with many bad habits.

With all this there was a feeling that something was wrong as he was ignoring most of the rules of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. Also his treatment of the Jews was coming into the open now. There were confrontations in the streets to be seen at times with nothing to stop the rough handling of these targets who were forced to wear the Cross of David on their sleeves. One could do nothing but follow the rest of the onlookers and Salute ‘Heil Hitler’ as you knew you would get the same treatment if you didn't. I saw it myself in Nurenburg but it was happening in all the large towns, from Austria, even with that fun loving people in the south, to the north by the Baltic and the Rhinelands on the French border. It was impossible to get to East Germany and of course afterwards we realised why it was ‘verbotim’. Hitler was not sure of Russia although it was an ally of his at the time, he didn't want them to know too much, and travellers might talk. In 1933 while staying in Munich, he had a ‘putch’ on part of his army which was controlled by his old friend Röehm, who was his partner in crime in the 1920's and imprisoned with him in 1926 when he wrote Mein Campf. Röehm was killed along with hundreds of his followers that night so now Hitler was in complete command and often could be seen ‘haranguing’ large political meetings in the squares, or tearing through the towns in a cavalcade of massive Mercedes cars just to show how powerful he had become. Heaven help you if you didn't stand and salute ‘Heil Hitler’. By this time the grip on Europe was about to be extended. He eventually invaded and occupied every country on his borders with the exception of Italy; often without opposition, and the peoples found themselves in the iron grip of the SS following Hitler’s orders to crush any opposition.

All this startled France but they thought that they were safe with their Maginot Line, an underground fortification of their North Eastern Border so allowed the Rhinelands to be dominated by Hitler. At this the British sat up and woke up to the immensity of his conquests but the Government was weak and led by MacDonald and Baldwin who were for peace at any price, we were without much of an army, without any up-to-date capital ships, few submarines, fewer planes. The only stand came from Winston Churchill who was out of power at the time and was called a warmonger, but thundered round the country calling on Britain to get into gear to stop the rape of Europe.

The people who could were now getting out of the occupied countries when possible, and brought horrific tales of what was happening but it was hard to believe and was a case of ‘what the eye doesn't see the heart won't believe’. Churchill managed to get through a little to the Aircraft Industry to look into the building of some fighter planes, a single winged plane after the style of the Dakota which had just come into commercial use, this was the Spitfire but it was to be the end of the thirties before many were built and became our only defence in the air.

Ruby Bullock

• to be continued.