When I began my research into the wartime history of the London Fire Brigade, I was bemused by the number of technical references that appeared in almost every narrative, words like branch, radial, escape, towing vehicle and heavy unit, but slowly, as happens with growing familiarity, I was able to decode some of these esoteric terms. Then, knowing in theory what they described, I became keen to experience the reality. It seemed that the most difficult of all was to locate the heavy unit. I had watched one as the star of the Humphrey Jennings' film Fires Were Started, and since it was with that eloquent and unassuming tribute to the men and women of the AFS that my passion had first begun, I wanted to find and study a heavy unit at first hand. And, dare I admit it? I wanted to stand on the running board and ring the bell, a sound so evocative in the memory of many wartime fire service veterans and, through them, to me.
          A particularly vivid illustration of the potency with which such an object can recall the feeling and atmosphere of its time is shown in the following story. An AFS veteran, stationed at Penge Fire Station, which stood on the corner of Croydon Road and Franklin Road, told me of the nights when, like firemen from many areas outside London, he and his crew were called in to the City or docks to assist those already at work. Usually the call came after dark when the raids were well under way. The streets were, by them, deserted, most people sheltering in public shelters, or under stairs or in cellars, or in Anderson shelters at the bottom of suburban gardens. Leaving the fire station, the crew would drive their appliance up the hill from Penge to Crystal Palace, then down to Dulwich, through Peckham to the Old Kent Road and onto the docks. Despite the fact their minds were on their job and the prospect of what lay ahead, the bombs continued falling around them, lighting up the empty streets and making them eerie and unfamiliar. All the time the bell was ringing, not only on their appliance but on dozens of others, all pouring in from the outskirts of London towards the glow in the sky that could be seen clearly from the top of the Crystal Palace Hill.
          'And do you know', said the old fireman, 'As we all drew closer and closer together, the sound began to change. Whether it was something to do with the wind or the weather I don't know, but the sound of all those different bells, all those different fire engines, began to merge together and in the end it was like one sound, one note. Wasn't that a funny thing?' He stopped and laughed, almost apologetic at such a fanciful idea, but in that re-creation of his own impression he had taken me with him for a moment, through dark streets and cold nights, hurrying breathless and impatient, towards that ever present, ominous and haunting glow in the sky.
          At Penge the fire station doubled as an ambulance station, before and after the war. Before the war the ambulance was driven by two firemen specially trained in first-aid. When the war began the ambulance was used for any emergency that was not caused by enemy action and still driven by one regular fireman who was then assisted by a member of the AFS, also trained in first-aid to a level more advanced than that most firemen were required to know. At one time the ambulance assistant was a sixteen year old messenger. His initiation into the practical side of first-aid was uncompromising when it came. Within a matter of a few weeks he had delivered two babies (a boy and a girl) in the ambulance on its way to hospital and had had to deal with an incident involving an unfaithful wife whose husband, returning from active service, had discovered her with another man and in his rage, put an axe through her head. The AFS messenger, in his role as ambulance man, tried to remove the axe from the woman's head, but it would not budge. The woman was dead, of course.
          The local hospital for the Penge area was across the boundary that marked the place where Penge's ground became Beckenham's ground. If a patient was to be taken to hospital the driver of the ambulance had to telephone ahead to notify his counterpart in Beckenham who would then drive to meet the Penge man at the boundary line, since neither could cross over into the other's ground without first obtaining permission. Usually the patient would be removed from one ambulance to the other and taken to hospital by the Beckenham driver.
          The continuation of such a time consuming practice after the outbreak of war seems surprising, almost