On 15 December, 1940, Dennis Bingham, a 16-year-old member of Sheffield's Messenger service, was badly injured during a raid on the city. Though injured, Dennis still managed to relay a message to the Report & Control Centre regarding the incident. He was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for his devotion to duty.
From the Supplement to the London Gazette, 11 April, 1941: "On leaving his Post with a message, Bingham was injured and rendered unconscious by the explosion of a H.E. bomb. Recovering consciousness, he endeavoured to get his message through. He had covered some distance over the debris of demolished buildings when he collapsed. He managed, however, to crawl to the home of another messenger and pass on his message. Bingham showed great devotion to duty although suffering from serious injuries."
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Something new to me cropped up on a Facebook group over the weekend. Someone posted a few pages from a wartime magazine called the "Police Journal" (dated to the third quarter of 1941) that mentioned individual Civil Defence services would use coloured pennants at incident posts so the service could be quickly identified. The pennants were triangles 12 inches at the broad end and 2 foot long. The colour scheme used:
Ambulance - White with red cross pennant Casualty (First Aid Parties with ambulances) - Black and White divided horizontally pennant Fire - Grey with 6 inch diameter red disc pennant First Aid Parties - White pennant Police - Dark Blue pennant Public Utility Repair / Rescue - Green pennant Decontamination - Yellow pennant How well used this system was is up for debate. It was probably after the major blitz period of 1940 into 1941 that liaison between services was crucial and possibly not very well coordinated initially. The pennants were an attempt to rectify this but with the lessening of raids they perhaps were not widely adopted. To date, there is no photographic evidence of them in use (either training or for an actual post raid incident) The marking of Incident Posts during daylight was with a 3 foot square chequered flag of six inch squares of Cambridge blue and white. The night time marking was two stacked lamps (both blue and purple colours have been mentioned in original references). For major incidents where a large number of services may be called in to assist, a Rendezvous Point may be set up by the police. This is marked by a 3 foot square flag of six-inch wide vertical Cambridge blue and white stripes. At night, the rendezvous point was marked by two blue/purple lamps side by side. Thanks to Graham Murray and Austin Ruddy for the information. Here's an interesting item sent in via the website (thank you Wayne). This looks to be a homemade instructional poster about the dangers of incendiary bombs - especially the ones containing additional explosive material. Two IBs have been made from wood to show scale no doubt. Possibly someone that had attended an instructors' course returned to his area and made this to show his fellow wardens. A rare survivor.
Currently there appears to be some remarkable prices being asked (and in one case £115 paid) for plastic WW2 Junior Salvage Steward Cog In The Wheel and related badges.
The cost of the "Junior Salvage Steward Cog In The Wheel" red plastic badge is extraordinary (it has also sold for £35 on eBay as well). There are a few copy cat sellers chancing their arm that it will sell again at this absurd price. The tin button badge (possibly a tad scarcer) and one on eBay at the moment (starting at £23). The most common variety - the red plastic Salvage Steward - is usually selling for between £20 (one sold on eBay recently for £18) and £50. A number of militaria sellers have the badge at the £40 mark. I once saw the red, green and blue Salvage Steward badges for sale at War & Peace Show for £80 the lot (which I turned down...d'oh...). Home Front badges do go through fits and starts and as ever the rarer factory ARP badges always go for a premium. All the way from Canada this badge. Sent in by Scott this badge was amongst his grandfather's personal items. I have seen similar badges with green and blue enamel but this is a first for the red. I am assuming that the colours were used by different CD services (first aid probably using the red).
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