This is one of four films made by Colin Windle held with YFA. Colin was born in Sheffield and worked in the architect’s office at Sheffield Town Hall until his retirement in the 1970s. In fact Colin was brought up at the Banner Cross Inn in Eccleshall where his mother was the landlady for 27 years, which is on the way to the Fox House where this training session was filmed. The ‘Marilin Films’ given in the credits was presumably named after his daughter, Marilyn.  Colin may well have made...

This is one of four films made by Colin Windle held with YFA. Colin was born in Sheffield and worked in the architect’s office at Sheffield Town Hall until his retirement in the 1970s. In fact Colin was brought up at the Banner Cross Inn in Eccleshall where his mother was the landlady for 27 years, which is on the way to the Fox House where this training session was filmed. The ‘Marilin Films’ given in the credits was presumably named after his daughter, Marilyn.  Colin may well have made this film off his own bat. He was well known for his sense of humour, which comes across in all his films, and also here in his opening sub-titles, despite the serious subject matter. For more on Colin see the Context for The Great Sporting Epic: The Netball Match of the Century (1930s).  

 

Like The Great Sporting Epic there is no date for this film; but as the other two films were made in the late 1940s, after the end of the war, it is probably in the same time period when this training film was made. There is nothing to indicate that it was made during the war, although of course this would have been the time when the St John Ambulance Service would have been most in need, with the bombing of Sheffield right through the war; although there were few casualties after the raids of December 12th and 15th 1940. Yet even then the targets would have been in the industrialised east, rather than to the west of the city going towards Derbyshire, where Fox House is. Much of the work during the war would have been done under the auspices of the Joint War Organisation (JWO) or the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD). 

 

However, there were so-called Starfish Sites in the area around Fox House. These were decoy sites that were built at various places around Sheffield to try to fool German bombers.  Apparently one such "Fake Sheffield" was built on the moors near Stocksbridge to decoy from the Newton Chambers works which was producing Churchill tanks – see Thorncliffe - A Story of Enterprise in Its Seventh Generation (1953).   These decoy places did require site operators, who would of course be exposed to any bombing, and so these may have had a St John Ambulance Service. Also, according to one post on the Sheffield Forum website – which has an interesting thread on this – “at the Fox House end of the old road to Ringinglow there are some concrete bases. These weren't a Starfish site but are the remains of an experimental 'radio unit', probably early radar”. Another post claims that, “US troops trained there with live ammo and grenades, and scars can be seen on the rocks where they went off”. There are other intriguing buildings from this period that are cited that may well have a connection to the St John Ambulance Brigade hut seen in the film.

 

Yet another posts tells a comical story that bears repeating: ‘Maintaining the deception is always a problem; in one of Alfred Prices’ books he recounts an archetypical tale of a dummy RAF airbase complete with fake runways, buildings and fake hardboard aircraft. One day a German Ju88 dropped a bomb smack in the centre of the fake runway, it didn’t explode. When the “bomb” was examined it was found to be (a) made of wood and (b) contain a note that said “Bang!”’

 

More likely though the film was made just after the war, before the new National Health Service, which came in in 1948, took over the role that had hitherto been played by the St John Ambulance Brigade.   Although historically the Brigade goes back to the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem of 1113, it wasn’t until 1887 that trained volunteers were organised into a uniformed Brigade, with women getting their first nurses uniform in 1893. They played a crucial role in providing a first aid and ambulance service at public events, and especially so during the two world wars, along with the Red Cross.  See also the Context for Princess Mary Visits Malton (1928). It is intriguing if the film was aimed at new recruits, given that many would have been trained in first aid during the war – see Morley Depot of the C.H.S.S & St Johns Ambulance (1943).

 

No doubt with the huge cuts in public spending that are taking place at the time of writing (December, 2010), and the corollary of the ‘Big Society’, volunteer organisations like the St John Ambulance Brigade will become more important in trying to meet the needs of society through unpaid work.

 

References

 

Sheffield Forum thread on decoy sites

St John Ambulance, Wikipedia