Cutting it on the frontline

AS the German bombs rained down on Southampton, a solitary figure ran from street to street.

It was one of the worst raids of the Blitz and the city's families were huddled in dark, damp shelters, shuddering with each blast.

But Ernie had been forced out into the night because his wife needed urgent medical help.

Kathleen was waiting for him in the New Road air raid shelter below his barber's shop.

And time was running out.

She had just gone into labour and was about to give birth to their first child.

Ernie's feet pounded the ground as he increased his pace - he was terrified but determined.

He tracked down a doctor in Oxford Street who didn't even change out of his pyjamas before flying out the door to rush to his patient's side.

Eventually, as the raid continued unabated above them, Kathleen gave birth to a daughter who they named Julie.

"I had to go and get a doctor and nurse in the middle of the night. The hospitals were mostly kept for people who were injured," says Ernie now 87, who still lives in the city centre.

"Julie really lived in air raid shelters until she was nine months old. When you look back you wonder how we did it."

Southampton was one of the worst hit cities during the Blitz.

It was pummelled by heavy air raids which levelled entire roads, especially in Woolston where the Supermarine factory churned out Spitfire fighters.

Ernie remembers many of those who perished in the bombings, including a girl called Joan, whose entire family was wiped out by a direct hit to an Anderson shelter.

"I remember looking out of the window to see these planes coming over in V formation. Then they broke formation; one lot hit the Supermarine and the other lot hit Chapel - then they hit the art college.

"We could see the bombs coming down."

Ernie was born Pasquale Ernesto Spacagna in Chantry Road, Chapel.

His parents had moved to Southampton from near Cassino in Italy just before the turn of the century and ran a general stores corner shop.

The family home was big - there were 12 rooms - but the area was poverty stricken.

"The children had bare feet and only wore shoes and socks when they went to school. The ground was gravel so they would use a pen knife to pick the stones out of their feet.

"Them days the work was casual, two or three half days a week, so for the rest they would go on the parish. If they didn't pay their rent they would be evicted and their furniture put out on the street.

"There were two workhouses, one for the men and one for the women. It was a very close knit community."

Ernie grew up as part of a musical family and played the accordian.

He and some of his seven brothers and sisters would sit in one of the house's back rooms playing their instruments.

"In the summer time, when it was hot, we had the windows open and there would be a crowd of people listening to us play.

"I love music. My sisters were both classical musicians but I was into jazz, tangos and mumbas."

Ernie's upbringing was very strict.

"So he got married," intervenes Kathleen, 82, a tiny meticulously groomed lady with a firm handshake.

The couple met in The Palmeston pub, which was located where the bandstand is today.

You fell for her immediately? "Absolutely. But it was four years before we got married."

After surviving the Blitz in Southampton, Ernie joined up, serving with the Royal Army Service Corps during the North African campaign, a bloody conflict fought in truly terrible conditions.

"Africa was a stinking dirty old desert, full of flies and insects. You got your food from the kitchen and, by the time you got back to the tent, there were flies all over it.

"Men would sit there all day smoking a hubbly-bubbly pipe and the flies would be crawling all over their eyes and ears.

"We were in formation in the desert when we were straffed by a Stuka. I went through the windscreen and cut my finger. I stitched it myself."

Was he scared? "No, I took things as they came."

And with this he shows off the scar he carries to this day.

After two years Ernie was recalled because of his duel nationality.

Then, once Italy was out of the war, he returned to frontline service and was a tipper driver during the D-Day landings in France, working alongside the Pioneer Corps and the Royal Engineers.

Ernie sailed from Southend and spent the days before the invasion using his shaving brush to repaint his truck - because there weren't enough supplies to have it sprayed.

Once across the channel he helped build the Bayeaux bypass, used by allied troops as they set off on their way through western Europe towards Berlin.

"One of our corporals was killed when one of our own tanks went over him. He went to turn round and give orders when it hit him. He was still alive and screaming 'shoot me, shoot me' until he died."

Ernie was a hairdresser by trade and, while serving abroad, would put his civilian talents to use by giving soldiers' the short back and sides.

"One day in Caen I cut seven chaps' hair and they went over into the corner afterwards to have a bath in a wine barrel. All I heard was this blast. They had all been wiped out by a shell."

As the troops advanced, Ernie went with them, through Belgium, Holland, ending at Eindhoven.

"The Dutch wouldn't have anything to do with the British soldiers at first. But as soon as the war was over they came out that day and put barrels of wine on the street and mixed with us. It's like they came out of their shells.

"The only people I really got on with there were the monks. We were staying in part of a monastery. I was playing the accordian and, the next thing I knew, they all came out with their violins, playing along."

During his years away, Kathleen only heard from her husband about once every three or four months ("When you got the money you knew they were alive," she says.)

Then, after the war Ernie returned both to Southampton - and to hairdressing.

He opened a shop in Park Road, Freemantle in 1946, where his customers included the likes of Sir Alf Ramsey, Terry Paine and Charlie Wayman.

Ernie eventually shut up shop in 1986 but his hairdressing bag still sits under the sofa and he continues to trim friends' hair for free.

On one thumb is a big lump from holding scissors for decades while under the skin of a finger is a lump of lead where his hand collided with a pencil in one of his customer's top pockets.

In addition to Julie he and Kathleen also have three sons, Mario, Peter and Paul.

The couple celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary last month and the love they share today is still apparent.

Together they have revisited the places in France where he fought, mourning those who did not return to their families.

Today Ernie is president of both the Southampton branch and club of the Royal British Legion.

Each year he puts a wreath on the grave of Kurt Hilgers of a young German airman who was shot down over Southampton in August 1944.

He does this on behalf of the dead 21-year-old's family in a scheme organised through the War Graves Commission.

"I used to do it on Armistice Day but now it's on his birthday.

"The last few years the Post Office has handled them very roughly and it takes me quite a long time to reset them.

"But this year was the limit. When I went over to pick it up, I was shocked by what I saw. It looked as if a lorry had run over it.

"The box was torn open and all the flowers were squashed. I was devastated, but that is not all. The official document I have to fill in and send back was found in the middle of the street by one of our members.

"They should show a little bit of respect for the dead."

Ernie is clearly saddened by this but there's otherwise a real zest for life and jollity about the gentle pensioner.

He beatles up the stairs to his flat at a furious rate, explaining that it's good for lubricating his joints.

"When you lost six years of your young life, you make the most of what you have now.

"You don't expect them (society today) to remember - there's a new world we are living in now.

"But when I collect for the Poppy Appeal the young people are the most generous."

* A full account of the city during the Second World War can be found in Southampton's Children of the Blitz, by Andrew Bissell. It is published by Red Post and priced £12.95