~ Chapter Twenty-Four ~
A Better Life in “Hithee”

In May 1940, after responding to an advertisement in the newspaper, Charlie successfully applied for the post of Chief Fire Officer for a factory in Hythe, near Southampton.  The factory was the British Power Boat Company Limited, a company which was owned by Hubert Scott-Paine and which manufactured torpedo boats, motor gun boats and RAF rescue launches.  Charlie took up the post and went to live in Hythe village, but it wasn't until the following September, after the Dunkirk evacuation, that his family was able to travel there to join him.  By that time, he had rented a small flat at Pylewell Cottages.  As Ken explains:

Sue really resented moving away from her relatives at Margate and hated Hythe, which she always pronounced as “Hithee”.  She said Hythe was the place where all “Mystery” coach tours ended up.  She thought the villagers were mostly yokels, and as a result she did not talk to them and consequently she did not make any friends in the village.  She constantly harangued Charlie to take the family back to Margate, but he was rather proud of the fact that he had improved his personal status from being a manual worker to being an executive of a successful company, and he was very loath to go back there to an uncertain future.
            Some six months after Charlie moved to Hythe, the Head of Security for the factory resigned and Charlie was asked to take on the additional role of Head of Security, a promotion that almost doubled his wages.  He then looked for better accommodation for his family and found a bungalow to rent called “Four Hedges” at Jones Lane, Hythe.  Ken tells us more about the new home and the family’s life there:
The bungalow was owned by a Miss Orchard – a name which was quite appropriate because the property had many fruit trees in the garden.  She had been appointed as the headmistress of a school at Farnborough and had moved there to be near the school.  She needed to let the house to be able to pay for her new home at Farnborough.  The bungalow was in excellent condition.  It had been built for her father, a ship’s captain.  Unusually, instead of pine floor boards, he had imported very expensive teak boards for the floors of the bungalow.

             Four Hedges was a really nice bungalow and as there were two bedrooms it was just right for a family of four, two adults and two boys.  In the garden there was a large lined wooden cabin known as the “Den”.  In 1941, Charlie was offered the bungalow for £400, but as he had just had a red hot anti-aircraft shell through the roof, which had set fire to the rafters, and although the roof had been repaired, he declined the offer to buy the bungalow.  He eventually bought it for £1,100 in 1948.

             He was always trying to help his family.  In 1942, his older half-brother Jack Holmes, had lost his job at Margate.  Jack had been gassed during the First World War and he had suffered in the past from tuberculosis, but had been cured.  It appears that employers were not too keen to keep him on.  To try to help Jack to get back on to his feet, Charlie took him on as a fireman at the same factory.  Jack slept in the Den but lived and had meals with the family.  Eventually, Charlie had to dismiss his brother because there were reports from workers in the factory that Jack was sleeping on night duty when he should have been awake and alert. Charlie checked on these reports and despite warning his brother, on a number of other occasions he found him sleeping.  Jack returned to Margate in high dudgeon.  This was much to the disgust of Elizabeth, Jack's mother, who thought the dismissal of Jack was unacceptable as she felt he should have been given a lot more chances to overcome his problems.  Charlie’s view was that if he gave Jack more leeway, his own position would be at risk.

             Charlie himself was always a very hard worker and a strict disciplinarian.  Apart from the garden at Four Hedges, he took on two Council owned allotment plots at the rear of the house to grow vegetables and fruit.  He also took on the large garden of a manor house in the village of Hythe which had been requisitioned as offices for the factory where he worked.  This meant that the twins had to help with the weeding, planting, sowing, etc.  To save them digging over all of this land, he had a hardwood plough made for the boys to use.  Ken had to pull the plough and Len guided it to make the furrows.  The family also kept rabbits, chickens, ducks and geese to supplement their food rations.

             Charlie held the view that if the two boys were kept busy in all their spare time, they wouldn't get into trouble.  This proved not to be the case, because they were caught scrumping apples on one occasion and on another stealing the hearts of kale in a farmer's field to feed the rabbits.  The boys were chastised by the owners, and Charlie punished them by giving them a good thrashing.
            Ken also tells us that, despite Charlie’s strict demeanour, he told many stories against himself:
One was that in 1943 the Minister for Air visited the factory to see one of the high-speed RAF rescue launches and Charlie was asked to accompany him for a demonstration of the boat's capabilities.  The boats were capable of reaching 44 knots and because they skimmed over the surface of the water, the bumping effect experienced during the voyage was extremely rough.   In the galley of the launch, the Minister commented on the china crockery and asked how it didn't get broken during these high-speed journeys to pick up the surviving crews of downed RAF aircraft.  Charlie replied that although the crockery looked like china, it was in fact a new product called melamine and was unbreakable.  To demonstrate this, he picked up a cup and threw it very hard upon the deck.  It smashed into many pieces, causing him much embarrassment.

             Another concerned Marchwood Park, a large country house near Hythe, which had been requisitioned by his company.  Part of the house was a convalescent home for military personnel who had been badly burned and there were many patients of the famous Plastic Surgeon, Archibald McIndoe, recovering there.  Charlie had helped to design and build a new golf course for the patients.  In 1943, his Majesty King George VI paid a visit and as he had been in charge of this golf course venture, Charlie was presented to him.  Charlie said that in his embarrassment, when he shook the King's hand, he said, “Good-bye, your Majesty.”  Was his face red!
            In 1945, Charlie was asked to design a new Fire Station at Hythe for the Auxiliary Fire Service, a part-time service.  The station was built in New Road in Hythe, and Charlie became the Station Officer in charge.  Ken recalls a couple of stories from that time, which serve to illustrate the immense dangers that Charlie and his colleagues were often exposed to:
On one occasion in 1946, the Hythe Fire Brigade was called out to a fire at the stables of a riding school at Hardley, near Fawley.  The vehicle they were travelling on was a Dennis make open-fire engine towing a large two-wheeled auxiliary water pump.  Charlie was in the front with the driver, a fireman named Jenkins.  They were driving along at about 60 plus miles an hour when, as they turned a corner, the nearside wheel of the pump hit the kerb.  The pump leapt up in the air, turned on its tow bar and fell flat on its top.  The pump was extremely heavy and, like an anchor, it brought the fire engine to a sudden halt very nearly turning it over.  Jenkins broke his wrist trying to keep the vehicle on the road, and a fireman named Matthews and Ken, his son, who was also a part time fireman, were thrown out into a wooded area.  Matthews was only bruised, but Ken landed on his knees and was unable to walk.  Charlie then uncoupled the pump and drove on with the fireman Matthews to the burning stables, where they rescued some of the horses and extinguished the flames.  Jenkins and Ken waited for an ambulance and they were eventually taken to hospital for treatment.  Charlie received burns to his hands and face and was commended for bravery during this incident.

             Also during 1946, there was a fire in a Warren hut (a very large hangar type building) at the Royal Engineers Marine Base at Marchwood Port.  The fire was in a large pile of sisal rope in coils, which had spontaneously combusted because it had become damp.  Charlie instructed his son, Ken, and one of the other firemen to take the hoses in at one end of the building to put out the flames.  A short while later, firemen from another station at Totton and headed by a Leading Fireman arrived at the other end of the building.  Without consulting with Charlie, they pulled back the sliding doors and the powerful draught caused by this action increased the intensity of the flames which were then blown towards the two firemen inside the building, so much so that both were badly singed.  Charlie was then forced to order his firemen to close the doors at his end, leaving his own staff inside, so that the draught could be reduced and the fire extinguished.   Ken and the other fireman, who were wearing army type tin helmets, lost their eyebrows, eyelashes, and the first inch or so of the hair on their scalp.  Charlie was furious and he told the Leading Fireman in charge of the other brigade that he had put the lives of two of his men at risk and he should have had far more sense.   Later, when they were clearing up the mess to ensure the fire had been completely put out, it was discovered that there were some boxes of live high explosive mortar bombs about five yards away from the burning rope.  If the fire had reached them, many of the firemen would have been killed or severely injured.
            In 1948, when the responsibility for the fire services was returned to local authorities, Charlie became a Station Officer in the Hampshire Fire Service.  During his time there, because of his experience dealing with fires where there were no fire hydrant systems, he was asked to design a water tender fire vehicle.  The new fire appliance became known as the “Hythe” Water Tender, the first twenty-eight of which were sold to Brazil and many others to Fire Authorities throughout the UK.

            Meantime, because the War had ended and no-one wanted to buy military service boats, the British Power Boat Company had ceased operations in 1946 and Charlie had needed to look for a new “day job”.  He became the Chief Fire Officer for an American owned engineering and construction company called Foster Wheeler Limited, which at that time was building the very large new Esso Oil Refinery at Fawley, near Southampton.  But he would not remain long with Foster Wheeler.  By 1953, he had been headhunted by the International Synthetic Rubber Company at Fawley to become their Chief Fire Officer.  His association with that company would last for almost a quarter of a century.