Jellied Eels and Zeppelins Read Online Free PDF Page A

van. Then he used to go to the East India Docks mostly, to load up. He would grumble about the dockers. They packed up at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. He used to have to line-up in the queue. Sometimes, when he got to the front to be loaded, they packed up and went home and he would have to wait until the next day. He used to wait for two hours sometimes. Mum would say ‘Your Dad’s come home in a bad mood, be careful what you say!’ He would leave home at 6 o’clock in the morning. He used to be up at 5 o’clock and he often used to work part-time in the evenings too when we were very young.’

    Edwin Turner (2nd from right, front row) with other military police colleagues

Six
Zeppelins, Dolls and ‘Spanish Flu’
    The Great War of 1914-18 was the first in which civilians were threatened with the fear of air raids. Ethel was just six when she saw the hydrogen-filled airship, the Zeppelin:
    ‘I can still see that Zeppelin. It was massive and I’ll never forget the droning it made. I remember seeing an airship coming down in flames at Cuffley, Hertfordshire - even though it was miles away, it lit up the sky. I was about five or six then and was holding Dad’s hand when I saw it coming down.
    We was all together when another Zeppelin, came over. Cousin Flo, she was very comical. She had a loud voice and she used to take-off Nellie Wallace, an old music-hall star. She used to have a flower in her hat and she used to dance, Nellie Wallace did. A woman at the biscuit stall in the market used to take her off too - singing and dancing.
    Flo was just turned 14 then and she said ‘Come on you kids, I’m going to dance for you.’ And she pulled out the kitchen table and stood on it and took-off Nellie Wallace and made us kids laugh, to take our minds off it. Afterwards, I remember opening her bag and saying ‘What have you got in there Flo?’ and she gave us all a doughnut to keep us quiet!
    Mum and Dad never actually told us that we were at war. We never had no radios or anything like that and Dad wouldn’t let us read the newspapers.’
    On June 28th 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Princess Sophia, were assassinated by a Serb while visiting the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. This was the spark that ignited the conflict leading to World War I.
    ‘My Mum told me about the Archduke and his wife being shot and Dad thought that there would be a war.’
    At the start of World War I, Britain’s army consisted solely of volunteers. When the government realised that the war was not going to end quickly, a massive recruitment campaign took place, led by Lord Kitchener.
    Ethel’s father, Edwin, rejoined the army in 1916 after having left to work at Lipton’s shortly after he married.
    ‘Dad didn’t mind being called up, because he said ‘Someone has got to fight this war,’ and I think that he rather liked army life.’
    Ethel still possesses Edwin’s Army Service Corps (ASC) badges and ‘The Soldiers’ Pocket Testament’ he was given with its inscription reading:
    ‘I pray that God’s
Blessing may rest
On the Reader and
The Reading of this
Little book. November 1914.’
    ‘I’ve also got my father’s baton, which he used when he was a military policeman stationed in Guernsey. It has a leather strap and grooves on the handle, so your hand doesn’t slip. Once he caught three Irish soldiers escaping from barracks after curfew. There was a struggle and Dad hit one of them with his baton. The soldier had to go to hospital, but Dad got away with cuts and bruises.’
    Edwin’s duties also included bringing horses over by boat from Weymouth to the Channel Island, where he and his colleagues trained them before they were shipped off to France to take part in the war. The horses were used to drag equipment and supplies including artillery to the front-line and records show that, by the end of the war, more than eight million horses had been killed in the conflict.
    ‘The horses