MEN OF TOMORROW

foreign [Music] [Music] good gracious what have you two been doing again we had a bit of trouble man alcohol had to demonstrate firefighting for the younger Scout that's what you think if we hadn't been there they would have had to call out the five again boys all right I'll get your clean shirt and wash properly tell me you look at this grace I don't know why you need more practice didn't your Patrol without 22 incendiaries during the last list yes we're dead the islands Patrol the answers got a lot of new youngsters we've got to be prepared you know besides we Scouts have a lot to do for instance that business of fire practice this afternoon intenders will let off all over the place and we had to show how we could get them under control the artists were lucky their instructor got on the real fire bomb to practice on the panther Patrol was standing by for first aid one of the artificial burnt his fingers picking up an incendiary before it had called off we've been waiting a long time to try out the new ointment we had the burnt doctor came in handy he only burned a finger but we took him away in style like a real casualty Ted Brown their patrol leaders got his ambulance badge and he's taught his Patrol quite a lot about first aid but we're doing all sorts of other things besides firefighting most of the younger Scouts have been evacuated to the country they helped the Scouts have always lived there to collect berries for jams and food they even collect Nettles and dandelions and acorns to pigs this war stopped people quite a lot of things about food from the Hedgerow and collecting scrap for Salvage that's another thing I do they call it people's houses and collect old iron Waste Paper tins bottles and bones it can all be used for making things again the scouts back it all into the patrol car then it's taken to the dumb but headquarters paper and cardboard is repulsed and old metal melted down to make shelves guns and tanks they sort it all out in separate Heats ready for the Salvage men other Scouts in the country helping farmers I had a week at that helping with the harvesting there's a lot more land being cultivated now and fewer men Left Behind to do it so the more we lend a hand of haymaking with a pitchfork or the harvesting machine Gathering crops and plowing the field the more food we shall grow lots of the boys Drive tractors and some of them can plow Farrow straight enough to get a grunt of pleasure from a farmer nearby where I was haymaking there was an observer post and Scouts were doing some of the spotting for planes I have to have the wits about them and I have to know about different types and shapes of planes the instrument they use shows on a map where the plane is directly they spot any plane whether friendly or Jerry they phone a warning to the control post giving height and direction the local Home Guard asked some of the scouts I was staying with to pass on their scouting experience snap reading and tracking Scout Thompson was pretty good at this sort of thing and when they had a trial he helped them track down the muck enemy he read signs of their tracks and Scout fashion let them off and what he thought was the route the enemy taken a certain point checks in to disappear so the scouts notice that it branched up through the bushes the Home Guard might have gone right past tracking and sign reading are part of the training of every Scout it just shows you how handy the training is eventually Thompson LED them up to a field there was the animated Spring Gun Park ready for action sea Scouts are in the Thames River emergency service they work from auxiliary Patrol boats they watched the code flags and every ship that passes if they say anything suspicious they may have to go out and investigate in most cases it's a mistake in the code flare they pull alongside the vessel and ask to speak to the captain they sort of act as go between for the shore station in case it's difficult to make the ship understand by signaling Direct the captain gives the scouts his particulars which is signaled to the shore station if the station signals back okay the scouts tell the ship to proceed some of the Scouts in town paint curbs and lamp posts with white paint since Frank Boyd's mother walked into a Lamppost in the blackout and hurt her nose Frank in his Patrol spent quite a lot of time painting things White and the town Scouts helping to put up the new ARP shelters in people's houses the kind to act as a table by day and have a still top to give protection during Air Raids there are lots of nuts and bolts to be fixed and it's not too easy unless you know how people's gas masks and especially children's have to be regularly checked to make sure they're working properly and we do this at headquarters and repair them if necessary although world work takes up most of our time now we still carry out Morse practice in other ordinary scouting work of course we have a whole lot of new recruits and after the war we thought our headquarters would be a bit small so we started to build on a new room ourselves number of our chaps are quite handy at carpentry bricklaying and putting on paint our idea was to have a big fireplace in it so we could do our own cooking John transom was putting in some good work on this just before the night of the Blitz we were all playing Kim's game that is looking at a lot of things on a tray covering it up and then seeing how many items we could remember there goes moaning mini again you'll know what to do Andrews and Johnson see the youngsters home good night chaps now you two are on messenger deal at the fire station tonight a couple of chats from the other Patrol will be relieving you at midnight okay okay so long okay come on hurry up we'll have the grub later central control center control messenger [Music] so the intersections the High Street and James Road give this to the driver right hello all right message from station five thanks son go ahead and drive quick [Music] [Music] next morning Bill and I went back to headquarters who weren't any headquarters left the old place had caught one the rest of the gang were there sorting over the debris to see what they could rescue everyone was safe because they'd all been out on different jobs but we had to say goodbye to the baked beans we thought we were coming back to the bomb had certainly made a mess of our new fireplace you know John it wouldn't have been a good job who didn't use enough cement in that mortar use more next time yes is next time why we can build a new headquarters from the ground up yes as we've always wanted it we will too and we're gonna build something bigger and build to last we Scouts can do it [Music]