Us Crowdies were DFLs, escaping the deprivations of my native Hackney in search of a quieter existence in a quaintly named place called Twydall, before moving to Rainham in 1985. Here I am forty years later although, in my head, I am still a Londoner and, to the Kent folk among you I expect, I am still a DFL.
After moving here in 1978, we found a family connection to the Medway Towns. My maternal Grandfather, Arthur Flint, underwent training in Chatham Dockyard during the war. A native of Barking (Essex), Arthur attended the Stewards’ School at HMS Pembroke in 1943 before setting off on an epic adventure that took him from Chatham to the USA, the Arctic Circle, Gibraltar, Suez and Australia, before taking part in the aerial bombardment of Japan. Before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Arthur noticed an order posted on the bridge of the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable instructing the British Pacific Fleet to move two hundred miles out to sea. Puzzled why they were moving away from Japan, Arthur shrugged and delivered his tray of tea.
It was only later, when they announced the use of a new type of bomb and the destruction of Hiroshima, that the penny dropped. Arthur realised they’d been ordered out to sea as a safety precaution. Arthur was full of anecdotes, mostly about the two kamikaze hits on Formidable in May 1945. When under attack, Flint was an ammunition loader in one of the 4.5” gun turrets. It was back-breaking work, in tropical heat, dressed in asbestos ‘anti-flash’ protection. Arthur witnessed the grizzly aftermath of these attacks and never forgot.
But before all that, Arthur had happier memories of his time in Medway. He told me of a pub-crawl he and his mates would make through Rainham. They would take the bus from Pembroke to Upchurch and then walk back, stopping at every pub on the Lower Rainham Road. Assuming they started at The Crown in Upchurch, they would have visited The Three Sisters at Otterham Quay, The Angel at the foot of Station Road, the Army & Navy and The Three Mariners, before crossing over into Grange and then the pubs of Gillingham. The Upchurch-to-Rainham leg of the journey is about two and a half miles, an hour’s walk on a normal day. I might well re-enact this part of my Grandfather’s wartime service when the summer comes!
