The Baby Boom Blitz

On the night of November 16th, 1940, many German bombers took part in a bid to annihilate the city factories in Coventry that were churning out machines of war. Most of the signature factories in the city had been built for the First World War, and with the return of mass warfare to Europe two decades later, local city residents were tasked with assisting the war. The Germans believed – correctly – that any attacks on the factories were doomed to strike their homes too.

“I’m a war baby,” said Geoff. “I’m so fortunate to be born later because millions of people had died during the war, everybody in England had lost at least one person close to them.” Geoff’s parents, Richard and Daisy, lived in Coventry before little Geoff arrived in the world. On the night of the blitz, a series of bombing attacks took place on this British city by the German Air Force. Geoff’s parents walked home from their night shift at the local bomb making factory, to nothing but a wreckage of rubble.

Their home on 29 Stepney Road was nowhere to be found. The whole street was devastated, and the only thing that remained was the debris. Geoff’s parents had only been married for six weeks and their first home was destroyed. “My dad had lots of budgies and canaries in that house, he came back to find they were all dead, he was more upset about them than their home!” Geoff said.

“They estimated around 60,000 bombs dropped on Coventry, huge incendiary bombs that could blow up all the streets. But, in Colne, only one bomb dropped.”

A German pilot was flying over the top of Knotts Lane, Colne, when below he could see a farmer and his cows. He dropped one bomb on Church Clough Farm. “There’s still a big hole there now! Luckily the farmer didn’t get killed, but a cow did!” he shrieked.

As World War Two raged on, the British Thompson Houston company (B.T.H) who made the munitions and weapons brought 84 families to Colne who had lost their homes and settled them into the town. “My parents landed at number 8 Hall Street, and that’s where I grew up. It was a wonderful home,” beamed Geoff as he reminisced his childhood memories. “My mum and dad were both munition workers at Colne’s B.T.H factory.

My dad left the B.T.H in the 60s,” says Geoff as he pulled out a shiny red sign. “He took an artefact from the wall just before he left, a sign saying ‘Pilot light to be left on during air raid!’”

On a Tuesday afternoon in 1943, Geoffrey Ralph Crambie was born at the Christiana Hartley Maternity Home. Little did they know their newborn baby would become one of Colne’s most legendary historians.

“Growing up was magical in the late 40s and 50s because our parents knew there had been such a terrible war so they wanted to really look after us all and make the most. Most of us were born in the war years. My dad was a home guard, so he never left, but there were lots of people on leave, and suddenly there were many children being born! The generation of us war babies just remember growing up after the war and we had such a great time.”

In 1947, Britain was still recovering from the war, the sky opened, but this time, it was not bombs falling from the sky, it was heavy snow. This was one of the toughest winters in the country’s history.

Geoff sighed, “It was the worst season ever, just horrendous, the snow lasted for four months. It’s not like today when it just clears and melts after a couple of days! It covered the land. I got really bad tonsilitis because I was sick, and I had to go to the hospital. I was sent to Laneshawbridge’s Hartley Hospital and I was there for three weeks. It closed in 1986, but it was always so busy.”

Back in Geoff’s days, there were no phones or TVs to keep people occupied in the hospital bed. During his stay in the hospital, his mum and dad brought him a gift to make sure he was entertained and in better spirits. An Archie Andrews hand puppet. “Everyone in my generation remembers him, it cost two and nine pence, I’ve still got the old fella.”

Geoff pulled the creepiest looking puppet out of his bag, if you had given this to a child in our modern day, they would whack it on the head with an iPad! Though with all due respect to Geoff, despite being 75 years old, Archie is in impeccable condition with a slightly stained T-shirt.

“Archie Andrews was a ventriloquist’s dummy, it started off as a radio comedy. He then got his own programme on ITV called Educating Archie. It was really famous at the time.” In his heyday Educating Archie netted 15 million listeners. Archie Andrews and his operator, Peter Brough, who died in 1999, were relics to another age where a bloke chattering to a wooden dummy was pinnacle amusement.

When Geoff recovered from his tonsilitis, he would take Archie out on the front street with his friends. “We used to set fire to gas tar on the street. I was playing around with the puppet, and I accidentally got tar on him! I got really told off when I went home. My mum put him through the wash, but still to this day the gas tar mark remains,” laughed Geoff. “Archie was my loyal companion in hospital.”

ColneLife Autumn 2022