In a recent conversation with some longtime Windham natives, I was asked if I remembered the Forest Fires of 1947. I vividly remember the fire, as many in Maine do.

I would have been 15 years old that fall, soon to be 16. I was a student attending Frederick Robie Jr. High School in South Windham. It had been a very dry year and the woods were tinder dry. While the lakes region was spared the conflagration western Maine saw, we battled smaller fires. Many smaller fires.

It started with the occasional grass fire but soon blossomed into an almost daily event having our “South Windham Fire Company” (no Windham Fire Department then) called out to stop a grass fire from getting into the woods.

It was the custom for the fire whistle to sound the alarm, and if the firemen who had already responded needed help the whistle would sound again. The second alarm would trigger a release of workers from L.C. Andrew, the South Windham paper mill (Keddy’s) and Baker Ice. As the calls became more numerous, the ninth grade boys also responded from Frederick Robie School.

Yes, I remember the fires of ’47. I was in the group that fought the Highland Lake fire. During that fire, I was part of a firefighting team that pulled a hose into the woods as far as we could and had fire all around us. We had just started to knock the fire down when we lost pressure. It seems the pumper crew decided at that time to change the source where they were getting the water. It only took a couple of minutes but in the woods it seemed much longer. Being a 15-year-old boy, that was a pretty scary experience.

I was also at a fire in the area of Buxton and Hollis. None of us really knew where we were. When we turned right off Route 4 onto 4A, west of Gorham, we entered a bank of smoke so thick that visiblity was severely limited. Oncoming traffic consisted of farm trucks, trailers and cars packed with furniture and families fleeing the fires.

The sun was blocked and the air was full of ash. My uncle, Charles Foley, was in charge of our group and when we arrived on scene, he met with the Portland fire chief, who had overall command of all forest fire crews in this part of the state. Charley suggested that we start a backfire, but the Portland chief wouldn’t hear of it and instead sent us onto a ridge to set up a fire line. At about 3 a.m., a messenger came running (there were no radios in those days) and told us to evacuate as fast as possible. It seems the Portland fire chief had not informed his relief that he had sent us in and the relief firefighters had started a backfire behind us. This put us in between fires. That was yet another hair-raising experience.

It was thought that some of the fires were set and also rumored that some of our fire personnel were carrying rifles on the fire trucks. Schoolboys were dismissed so that we could fight the fires and L.C. Andrew provided trucks to carry us to different fires.

I particularly remember a grass fire that started behind the filling station at the corner of Newell Street in Little Falls and Gray Road. The ninth grade boys were assigned the task of staying between the fire and the woods at the back of the field. The firemen were to try to stay between the fire and the houses on Newell Street. The fire raced up the length of the field and despite the best efforts of the firemen a barn at the corner of Newell and Upper Brackett Street (now Huston Road) caught fire and was lost. This was particularly devastating to us school boys because the owners let us use the barn to play basketball in during the winter. Fortunately, an elderly bed-ridden man was evacuated sucessfully from the house before he was harmed.

The “Fire Companies” at that time were not municipal fire departments and each company purchased and maintained their own equipment. During the fires of ’47, fuel oil tankers were converted to water tankers with pumps on top to spray water on the fires. Often tankers were accompanied by a group of men and boys in a lumber truck. The men had shovels and grub hoes to dig out a fire line and this was patrolled by others with Indian pumps on their backs to maintain the line and to stop the spread of the fire.

Many times, as the fire approached buildings in its path, the heat would be so intense that the buildings would just explode. In one particularly amazing instance, a crew from Windham was retreating from the fire in Waterboro and found the road blocked by heavy smoke and fire. They found a parking lot in the village and hunkered down waiting for an escape route to open. They had a tanker and crew and decided that they would try to save the building in the parking lot. They wet the building (and themselves) down and survived the flames. That is how the church in Waterboro was spared. Many thought that it was an act of God, that the only building in Waterboro still standing after the fire was the church. Maybe it was.

Many more stories can be told about a very exciting time in our lives. It is amazing to me to compare our abilities and equipment of today with what we had then. In 1947, we had much more manpower, very little comunication and firefighting equipment and no training. We did the best we could with what we had.