Our Display had been organised by Mike Hebbard on behalf
of the Fire Service Preservation Group, and included 11 fire
appliances of the wartime era, and 2 ambulances,
Commentators at the time stated that this was probably the
best represented line up of war time appliances the capital
had seen since World War II.
Our accommodation for the FSPG Crew, now approaching
15 members was in a large student accommodation block in Pentonville Road, King Cross. ( Luckily we found an excellent local hostelry to keep up our spirits each night).
Because of the situation on Thursday the public crash barriers stayed up for the duration of the day, but even with all the chaos around us, we were to get a flavour of some of the memories flooding back” from the ex-serving personnel that passed by.
Taxi’s were the order of the day from then on, the challenge being to find an empty one and then persuade him we wanted to go back to the Kings Cross area!
The next day after a very large RAF breakfast (and no I was not one of the ones who went up for a bowl of cereal after the plate of Fry-up), we learnt that all of the appliances had to be checked for bombs! That's all lockers, pumps, engine compartments, plus the undersides and escapes. (This became our early morning after breakfast exercise each day).
Finally the barriers were opened up and the public flooded in. As we tried to keep in kit for most of the time, we soon became
