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    The Yellow Six
    The Yellow Six
    The Yellow Six
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    The Yellow Six

    By James Clarke

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    About this ebook

    What is this book about?
    I am so glad you asked me that.
    It is about a band of six Boy Scouts who, during World War 2, collected silver paper from cigarette packets and chocolate wrappers to be recycled into Spitfires and Hurricanes which, smelling faintly of Cadbury's and Virginia leaf, swept the German Luftwaffe from British skies and eventually caused Adolf Hitler to commit suicide.
    Read about the hardships the patrol had to endure. How when they went around from house-to-house on "Bob-a-Job Day", villagers would hide or paint white crosses on their doors.
    Despite it all the Yellow Six – aka the Peewit Patrol of the First Streetly Boy Scouts – adhered heroically to the Boy Scout's code of conduct which entailed smiling and whistling "under all difficulties" – they smiled and whistled even when trying to help a man who was buried under some collapsed scaffolding and who was doing his best to shut them up and drive them off.
    Read how they helped old ladies across roads even though some struggled violently, and on to buses going the wrong way; how they helped drag furniture from a house they thought was on fire...
    And, if the reader can stomach it, read how they gained their proficiency badges for cooking and how long some of them managed to hold down their self-cooked meals.
    It is a stirring yarn hitherto untold – and largely autobiographical.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Clarke
    Release dateJun 2, 2013
    ISBN9781301605071
    The Yellow Six
    Author

    James Clarke

    James Clarke is the author of Movie Movements: Films That Changed The World of Cinema and a number of other film books. He has contributed to Empire, Imagine, Resurgence and Classic FM and has lectured on the subject of film at the University of Gloucestershire and the University of Sussex.

    Read more from James Clarke

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      Book preview

      The Yellow Six - James Clarke

      FOREWORD

      I

      By LORD LOGENBERRY OM, PC, KCB, TGIF; Chairman of the Federation of Souvenir Teaspoon Collectors’ Clubs; Vice-President of the Bring Back Hanging Society; Patron of the Badger Liberation League.

      My Dear Clarke,

      I must insist that you stop writing to me. I must ask you to accept, once and for all, the fact that until you first asked me to write a foreword for your book, The Yellow Six, I had never heard of you or your wartime silver paper collection for recycling into Spitfires, or the Yellow Six patrol of the 1st Streetly Boy Scouts. Nor was I ever Chief Scout of Great Britain.

      Bearing these factors in mind I must, once again, ask you to understand that it would be totally inappropriate for me to write a foreword for your book – in fact it is out of the question.

      I hope I make myself clear.

      I (once again) return your manuscript herewith, please find.

      It occurs to me that you may be mistaking me for Lord Cranberry.

      Logenberry

      FOREWORD

      II

      By Lord Cranberry, KT, PC, ASAP, GBE, MC; Chairman of the Royal Bean Commission.

      Dear Mr Clarke,

      Thank you for your letters. I must repeat – I can see no earthly reason why I should write a foreword for your book and please desist from requesting that I do so. I was never Chief Scout of Great Britain and Ireland and why Logenberry should have put you on to me is beyond my mental resources to fathom.

      I asked my secretary to ascertain whether anybody with a name resembling mine was with the Boy Scouts Association and he tells me there was a Sir Reginald Black-Berry. Fortunately, for Sir Reginald, he has been dead many years and is therefore spared from being pestered for a foreword.

      Yours truly,

      Cranberry

      FOREWORD

      III

      By Lady Margaret Black-Berry.

      My Dear James Clarke,

      How nice of you to write to me as the widow of the late Sir Reginald Black-Berry MC, who was, as you so cleverly recalled, Assistant District Commissioner of the Boy Scouts. This was in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, a country which, I am told, has since changed its name. What is happening to the world?

      You want me to write a book for you about the Yellow Six and silver paper. I forget when my late husband was in the Boy Scouts (it was in Rhodesia, you know?) but it was certainly before 1938 because Reggie (we called him Reggie because his first name was Reginald) was dead from that year onwards – trampled by a large herd of elephants (I seem to remember). As you can imagine, we all felt a bit flat after that. But, I said to myself, ‘Life must go on’. As indeed it did. I remarried the following week.

      We were in Rhodesia, you know? It is now called something else. But, that’s Asia for you. Ever since we gave away India things have gone from bad to worse.

      I don’t recall Reggie (my husband) collecting silver paper in the Second World War. Are you sure about this? He was dead, you know? He was run over in Rhodesia. I don’t recall the Second World War very clearly. Was that the one with Mr Churchill in it? I recall King George.

      Reggie knew King George. Are you sure it was not King George who collected silver paper? Memory does funny things, you know?

      I don’t recall Sir Reginald Black-Berry at all. I think he has passed on. I have enclosed some silver paper as requested, please find.

      Yours, etc,

      Margaret

      INTRODUCTION

      Excuse me, Sir. May I introduce myself?

      What?

      I’d like to introduce myself. I am James F Clarke, former L*E*A*D*E*R of the Peewit Patrol – known as the Yellow Six – of the 1st Streetly Boy Scouts; author, journalist, keen train spotter, honorary member of the Institute of Solid Waste Management; twice nominated as Solid Waste Man of the Year, and who, as a Boy Scout during World War II, collected silver paper from which to make Spitfires and Hurricanes and...

      What?

      I said, my name’s James F Clarke, former...

      What?

      CLARKE!

      Oh. How d’you do Clarke?

      Fine thank you.

      Chapter one

      MAKING A BOB OR TWO

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      Bob-a-Job, that annual Saturday event when Boy Scouts the world over used to offer their services around the community is more or less a dead institution today. A pity because it was very character building.

      During and after World War II we Boy Scouts in the village of Streetly on the border of Staffordshire and Warwickshire were prepared to do anything for a bob (a ‘bob’ was otherwise known as a shilling and worth in today’s context five pence).We were even prepared to work. And, as so many men were fighting the Germans, work was easy to find.

      At the end of a hard Bob-a-Job day the Yellow Six, after much accounting, would end up with three or four bob. This was, of course, after deducting our subsistence and travel allowance.

      I will explain later why we of the Peewit Patrol were called the Yellow Six but I must hastily assure the reader that then word yellow was no indication of a lack of courage. We were fearless, almost.

      When, on Bob-a-Job Day, we came calling, villagers who knew us would barricade their doors or paint white crosses on them, but a few kind souls would go out of their way to find jobs for us such as turning three tons of compost or cleaning out the coal shed. In 1946 the Yellow Six was booked a week in advance for Bob-a-Job by the Cowins who owned a chain of confectioners. By the time Saturday came we had worked ourselves into quite a froth of expectation, Laidlaw saying he was sure Mr Cowin would want us to wrap sweets or squirt jam into doughnuts. For this reason I suggested we all scrubbed our fingernails and made sure we smelled of Lifebuoy before we knocked at Cowin’s door.

      We mustered outside the gate at 7am feeling unusually antiseptic and then marched up the drive in single file. Making quite a display of our fingernails we saluted Mr Cowin. He asked us if we had brought our trek cart. Most troops had a large-wheeled trek cart in which they carried rope and tents and framed pictures of Jane Russell and the King. Thoughts filled our minds of being asked to take a trek cart full of sweets and sherbet sticks and distribute them, at our own discretion, among the underprivileged.

      But we had no cart. I said we would come up with a plan. Mr Cowin then asked us to follow him round

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