A Little Brit History: Mr Harkus Does His Bit

“This royal throne of kings,

this sceptered isle,

This earth of majesty,this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in a silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Feared by their breed and famous by their birth”

In Elizabethan times, England felt itself embattled and surrounded. At one point, Elizabeth faced hostility from Scotland, France, Ireland as well as from across the North sea in what is now Belgium. At times, the threat of Spanish invasion caused near hysteria. This famous painting of Queen Elizabeth, known as the Armada portrait partly celebrates this victory which saved England from a Spanish led invasion.

“I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realms: to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms”

Queen Elizabeth I – 1588

Naturally, nobody took Elizabeth’s words about taking up arms herself at all seriously. As ever, the duty of taking up arms fell to the common man. In the days of Elizabeth’s father, King Henry it was the task of Cardinal Wolsey to attempt a survey of England’s military readiness. In 1522 he organised a survey which discovered that there were 128,250 men available from 28 counties. These men had 35,328 coats of mail and that one third of the men were archers. Funnily enough nothing much came from this survey in the way of military preparations although it was used as the basis for a series of repayable ‘loans’ to the government amounting to £260,000 – of course, the ‘loans’ were never repaid.

Nowadays of course, apart from a lingering anti-Europeanism -( I know, I know we are European too, it’s better not to try & understand that one) we don’t feel at all threatened by the rest of Europe (well most of us don’t – not all the time anyway) and we don’t spend a lot of time preparing defences. On the whole, England feels pretty safe and where I live is no exception.

A few years ago we moved into our 1930′s house in Solihull in the West Midlands. Only three families had called this place ‘home’ since it was built.  Now I have lived here a few years I can see what makes people stop. This is typical English middle class suburbia, red brick houses, privet hedges, well tended gardens sloping down to the park. This is the sort of place that Betjeman would have written about (but didn’t) :

It was difficult to imagine anything unpleasant troubling the past inhabitants of this house until a find in the attic made me think about our recent past.

Photo from Flickr

Inspired by years of watching the ‘Antiques road show’ on TV, I was keen to climb into the loft to check out its secrets. Sure enough there was plenty up there, mostly looking like it had been untouched for many years. There were a lot of 1930′s books, and a framed photo of a well dressed man punting a boat down a river. In far corner of the loft, leaning against the chimney was a dusty, string tied parcel. Inside was a neatly folded fireman’s uniform, a canvas bag containing a gas mask, some booklets about air raid precautions and how to build a shelter. On the bag the owner, a Mr Harkus had penned his name and Auxilliary fire service number. Mr Harkus had obviously spent the war helping to put out the fires from the blitz.  Although I don’t think Solihull was bombed too much (we still have a shelter down the garden) there were certainly plenty of bombs dropped around here on Birmingham and Coventry.

Photo from Flickr

Mr Harkus wasn’t alone in being called up to do his bit for the war effort. My Grandfather, Francis McCabe served with the Home Guard, a force made up of old soldiers and others who were not called up into the regular forces.

I remember Granddad telling me that in the event of invasion his unit was responsible for stopping the Panzers advancing up the Bristol Road into Birmingham. Luckily, the Panzers never came and Granddad, Mr Harkus and all the others packed up their uniforms and got on with the rest of their lives.

I listened recently to some of Churchill’s speeches from this time and heard an echo of the words spoken by Queen Elizabeth in 1588. Churchill had said that if the invaders got as far as London then he would have died fighting, somehow, I suspect that he actually would have done.