Scouts, de Havillands and Table Tennis

My dad, John Bryant, died a couple of years ago from an asbestos related lung disease which he thought was caused by dust from machining jig components at de Havillands Aircraft Company. During the last year of his life, when he new he was dying, he made some notes about his life which included these personal war-time memories:
"I was in the Cub Pack of the 4th Potters Bar Scout Troop from 1937 and moved up into the Scouts in 1939. The first camp I went to was on the 2nd September 1939. Because war was declared on the 3rd we were taken home. So ended my first experience of camping!
Life was very full from then on, waste paper and salvage collecting with a trek cart, messenger duty with the Air Raid Protection Wardens, and collecting firewood from the fields. Where we lived in Potters Bar only one side of the road was built on, there were open fields for miles over towards Northaw and Cuffley.
As all the Scout Leaders were called-up for military service, in 1940 I was asked to take over the running of the 1st Potters Bar Cub Pack, which I did until starting work in May 1943 just before my 15th birthday. I left school early because the Enfield Technical College was bombed and we had to make way for a new intake. The school leaving age was 14 at this time, so I was sent down to the Labour Exchange to be directed into industry. My two years at Enfield were disrupted by daylight bombing raids and we spent many hours in air-raid shelters. These were concrete pipes, about 8 ft. in diameter sunk into the ground, about 100 ft. long with duckboards to keep our feet dry and a row of seats down each side. All these distractions, together with having to cycle nearly 10 miles each way, sometimes going home through an air-raid with anti-aircraft guns blazing away and with shrapnel falling on the road, meant that I was not sorry to leave.
So started 20 years of working for The de Havilland Aircraft Company - initially as a shopboy, at 17 shillings and a penny a week, and then as an Apprentice Toolmaker from my 16th birthday. The first year was spent at Salisbury Hall, London Colney. It was there that I first experienced the class divisions in our society.
There were 4 categories at the Salisbury Hall Training School, Trade Apprentice, Craft Apprentice, Engineering Apprentice and Engineering Student. The last category was fee- paying and many of them were only there to avoid conscription. Some were involved in "Black Marketeering", buying and selling food, petrol, and clothing coupons. This was my first introduction to the divisions in our society. The craftsmen with whom I was working got a lot of job satisfaction from their work, most of them were over 40 because the younger ones had been called-up if they were fit enough. Their satisfaction came from the application of their skills, in the early war years we were working with very old machines driven by overhead line-shafting where speeds were changed by slipping the drive belts from one pulley to another. Achieving the necessary accuracy required a high degree of personal skill as precision machines such as Jig-Borers did not arrive until the later years of the war. The Toolmakers were also very patriotic and against any "Black Marketeering".
Trade Apprentices worked in the Fitting Shop, Machine Shop and Assembly Area, they could become upgraded to Engineering Apprentice by passing exams taken at evening classes (no day release in those days).
Craft Apprentices were expected to stay in their craft. I, and Ian Thomas, another toolmaking apprentice, protested and became the first Craft Apprentices to be upgraded. This was in December 1946. After three years studying for three nights a week, culminating in an exam equivalent to O.N.C. Evening classes could be disrupted by having to work overtime particularly if there was a breakdown in one of the production areas. Sometimes we had to work all night, called a ghoster, to repair a tool. If this meant missing an evening class we had to catch up by getting notes from another student. Of course, there was also a lot of homework. During this time I joined the de Havilland Youth Club where I started competetive Table Tennis. I had been given a start by Tony Tonking, my first cub-master, just before the war and this stood me in good stead and I steadily improved. I mainly went to the Youth Club after evening classes and did some homework between games. Cycling to and from school, and now 7 miles each way between Potters Bar and Hatfield, kept me pretty fit. I was also playing some football for the Scouts. When the war finished in 1945 the St. Albans Table Tennis League started-up again and I was selected to play for the first team of de Havilland Sports Club senior team. Shortly after, I was selected for the Hertfordshire team in the County Table Tennis Championships. Football had to be dropped as County T.T. matches were always played on Saturdays. There was no football on Sundays because of the Lords Day Observance Society!"

Whether it was the fault of the war or not my dad lost contact with his father's (Dennis Bryant) family. I don't know my great-grandad's or great-grandma's christian names, and they had another daughter as well as those mentioned below. They lived in South Africa and Canada for a time. Dennis, my grandad, was born in Durban in 1904 and they all came to England in 1917:
"I vaguely remember a visit to see "Baby" (Dennis' sister), who lived somewhere in Kent, she had twins, a boy and a girl. Tony my brother and I got into trouble for climbing trees in their orchard. Cecil (Dennis's brother) was in the regular army and early in 1939, before the outbreak of war, he was posted to the North-Western Frontier in India. He took his wife, Joan, and son, Rex, with him and we lost touch and do not know what became of them. Stella (another of Dennis's sisters) was living in Guernsey when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands and we haven't heard of her since."

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.