Historian Stephen Nunn finds war-time spoons stir up memories

THERE is an old saying, often attributed to Napoleon, that “an army marches on its stomach”.

Whether it was the 'Little General' who coined the phrase or not, to be effective, an army relies on a good and plentiful supply of food.

In my experience that is also true of the RAF and research into the wartime activity at Maldon’s local aerodrome, RAF Bradwell Bay, reveals an abundance of references to food.

A contemporary site plan of the airfield shows separate mess facilities for officers at requisitioned Bradwell Lodge, for sergeants and airmen on a communal site alongside the East End Road, a dedicated WAAF dining room near to their quarters and a kitchen for the Defence Unit.

In addition, a continual brew of strong, sweet tea, served in those classic RAF pint mugs, would have been available on tap across the airfield – in the surviving control tower (or watch office), station headquarters, guard house, recreation block, on the flight line and from the mobile NAFFI wagon.

By all accounts the food was just as plentiful, with scant regard for rationing.

An original menu for Christmas 1944 lists turkey, pork, stuffing, sprouts and potatoes as a main course, followed by pudding with rum sauce, cheese and biscuits, fruit and nuts.

To wash it all down, there was coffee, beer, cider and minerals.

• The old control tower still survives

Two years earlier, in 1942, the fare had been just as good with one WAAF recalling that dinner “came up to the standards of a home-cooked one”.

If anyone remained peckish after that, there was always the site grocery and local produce store and a number of former personnel remember picking mushrooms on the airfield and having a fry-up.

Bradwell’s pubs were “packed to capacity each evening” – “the most frequented spots on the site”.

Whilst the Queen’s Head was taken over as a guard room, the Green Man served “Truman’s Main Line beer at fourpence a pint”, albeit that “the supply was intermittent and rarely lasted more than an hour or so, maybe twice a week”.

To compensate, the landlord’s wife provided “wonderful corned beef and spring onion sandwiches”.

The King’s Head was another favoured haunt and aircrew used the Cricketers, signing their names on the ceiling there (alas long since painted over).

Similar signatures could be seen on a White Horse Whisky statue, stolen as a trophy by crews from 219 Squadron from a pub in Southminster and adorning the mess bar at Bradwell Lodge. (This was later returned to avoid prosecution!)

The importance placed on good food at Bradwell is amply illustrated by the arrival of a new station commander, Wng./Cdr. RF 'Digger' Aitken, in September 1942.

• Time for a cuppa Bradwell’s CO enjoys a brew

He had previously been at RAF Hunsdon (in Hertfordshire) and when he moved he brought the catering officer with him.

Many years later I interviewed that catering officer, who told me he was not best pleased by the enforced transfer. There is no substitute for eye-witness accounts like that.

Sprightly 90-year-old Derek Monk spent his formative years living with his family in a tied cottage on the Down Hall estate, alongside the aerodrome access road and in the middle of the Defence Unit with their Bofors anti-aircraft gun.

Like many locals, Derek’s father, Victor Monk, did a bit of work on the station.

His job was to collect swill from the mess sites, which was carted away for boiling and feeding to pigs.

Derek would often accompany him and has vivid memories of that special time.

On one occasion a cook handed him a large metal container full of rich, sweet-tasting trifle and told him to help himself.

Derek said it was “Heaven” and can still taste it all these years later.

But it isn’t just memories that remind Derek of RAF Bradwell Bay.

When the swill was consumed by the pigs, Derek had to clean out their troughs and to his surprise he began to discover cutlery, inadvertently thrown out with the waste food.

Most of this was returned to the mess, but the family retained some pieces and Derek has generously given me two of the teaspoons.

They are of a simple, cheap wartime design. The fronts are entirely plain and ordinary looking, but turning them over there are markings at the end of the handle.

• The old RAF spoons ... and 'cigarettes' on the Christmas menu

Close up you can make out the date 1941, the manufacturer’s initials (LH), followed by the metal type NS (for Nickel Silver) and the all important ‘AM’ and crown for the Air Ministry.

These came from the swill at the sergeants' mess and, given their date, could have been at the airfield from the time the first squadron arrived (number 418 in April 1942) until Derek recovered them in 1943 or 1944.

Holding them today makes you reflect on who might have used them.

Did a sergeant pilot stir his tea with one of them perhaps?

Was a dessert consumed with the other by a technical sergeant from the Mosquito flight line?

We will never know, but they are undoubtedly a special, very tangible connection with our local wartime past and the brave “boys and girls in blue” who defended our Maldon skies during the desperate days of the Second World War.