大象传媒

Born in Seaforth, I was five when war was declared and by then was living in Litherland. My mother died when I was a baby and my dad re-married in order to keep the family together. My eldest brother joined the Royal Navy and the next oldest the Fleet Air Arm (By lying about his age!)

My sister and I were evacuated to Mid Wales in late 1940 and so experienced some of the blitz before we left. Like all boys, after air raids I went looking for pieces of shrapnel - at school we would compare our collections. We lived in a four storey Victorian house and during air raids my dad would carry me down to the cellar from the top floor where my bedroom was. The cellar was our air raid shelter and had been fitted out with bunk beds, food and drink. Often I would be asleep when dad came for me and I would still be asleep when he reached the cellar.

Lots of stories used to be told about amusing happenings during air raids and this is one I remember best. An elderly lady living in Litherland Park watched a landmine suspended on its parachute, fall into her large garden. Thinking it was a German pilot she rushed out, garden fork in hand and started poking the landmine with the fork saying, "Come on Gerry, put your hands up, I've got you now!!" Fortunately the landmine didn't explode.

I will never forget the feelings of fear and excitement when the day came for us to leave for Wales. I was really scared at leaving home for the first time, even though my sister would be with me, I knew we'd be separated when we got there. The excitement was occasioned by the long journey by steam train. I'd only previously travelled on the Overhead Railway. I remember the long mackintosh, the gas mask, which I hated because when we had to practice putting it on at school, it gave me claustrophobia, the luggage label with my name in large letters and the address of the farm I was going to. I remember the crowd of children at Lime Street station and the tears and screams as parents departed leaving us with the volunteers who were accompanying us to Wales. I don't remember much about the journey, except for stations with strange names like, Crewe, Oswestry, Gabowen, Moat Lane Junction. I do remember the long platform at Rhayader station with it's pretty flower beds and views of the hills all around. I remember seeing lots of white dots on the hillsides and asking what they were. "They're sheep," I was told, "You'll be seeing a lot of those here." I remember the Drill Hall, the lemonade and cakes and the official welcome by the Mayor of Rhayader and the kindly Vicar Davies who was to drive me to my new home in Nantmel.

The farm I was sent to was chosen because there was a boy there of my own age and I was intrigued to meet him. What I didn't know until I got there was he had lost a leg in a mowing machine accident and wore a wooden one from just above the knee down. We slept in the same room and on the first night his mother removed his wooden leg and Davy wiggled his stump at me. I was only six - I couldn't take it. I screamed the house down and wouldn't stay in the room with Davy. My foster parents bravely put up with my tantrums for two weeks but after that they asked the vicar to find a new home for me.

Fortunately a kind, older lady and her daughter took me in and I was very happy on their farm. What an eye-opener country life was for a city boy like me! My boots, bought so carefully at Lewis's by my dad, were wholly inadequate for the muck and my foster mother bought me a really strong pair almost immediately. There was no gas, no electricity, no running water. Baths were held once a week in a tin bath before the fire. We used candles and oil lamps and Vera used to carry drinking water in buckets from the well about half a mile from the farmhouse. There were the sides of bacon and hams on racks hanging from the ceiling in the single living room and the large, tall, black pot with a tap at the bottom, always boiling on the open fire and called a fountain. There were cows and pigs that had to be milked and fed and dogs and cats. There were my comical attempts to milk a cow, the thrill as I was allowed to churn the cream into butter. Then there was the scary day when the butcher came to kill one of the pigs. They used no humane killers in those days - they tied the pig on the bench and slit its throat. The screams of agony as the pig lost its life-blood I sometimes hear to this day.

Then there were the horses. There were no tractors in that part of the world then and everything on the farm was done with the aid of the horses. There were the births and deaths. How well I remember seeing little lambs helped into the world by my foster-mother's eldest son and then more gruesome perhaps but nonetheless fascinating, seeing him thrust his entire arm into the rear end of a cow to pull out a new-born calf and seeing it's struggles to get to its feet and reach its mother's udder. On the other hand there was the sadness of sheep and lambs trapped in snow drifts and suffocated and my vain appeals to stop a litter of kittens being drowned. I was allowed to choose one and keep it for myself. What a thing for a six year old to have to do - choose one kitten from seven or eight squirming in the sack with their eyes tight shut, knowing only the one I chose would survive.

It's amazing how quickly the young mind adapts to these changes and soon I accepted them as quite normal. Indeed, my foster-mother claimed if the war had lasted a year longer, I would have ended up becoming a hill farmer. Then there were the high days. Hay making, sheep shearing and grain harvesting. Days when all the local farmers and villagers came together to help one another. When the men would drink cider from big barrels and the women and children cold tea. Ugh!!

Market day was a big event when my foster-mother and her daughter carried baskets filled with eggs and butter the almost two miles into Rhayader. Sometimes, when I wasn't at school, I would go too and be able to wander among the pens in the market to see the sheep, lambs, goats, cows, pigs and bulls. Although I wasn't allowed into the auction shed, I could hear the auctioneers calling out the prices in that strange, almost manic way of theirs.

School was very different. There were only two rooms at the village school. A small one for the infants (up to the age of seven) and a large room for all the rest with only one teacher in it to teach all from 7 to 14. The cleverer ones moved to the County School at the age of 11 but that still left plenty of older boys and girls at the village school.

We were isolated but not completely cut off from the war. One bomb was dropped harmlessly in a field and later, a plane crashed in the hills above the village. We boys used to go up there whenever we could to collect aeroplane glass, as we called it, in order to make rings for our girl friends!! Then there were the convoys that passed through the village with tanks and bren gun carriers, as well as lorries. The American convoys were the best because if we shouted "Got any gum chum" the kindly GI's would always throw some to us. How those sticks of gum were prized!! So much tastier than the Wrigleys pellets we bought with our sweet coupons at the village shop.

Occasionally, I would listen to the news on the radio with the family and the names of newsreaders and reporters like Alvar Liddell, John Snagge and Richard Dimbleby became household names. I especially liked it when Mr Churchill was on because I was mesmerised by his voice. It eventually became apparent that the war was moving inexorably towards the allies and I remember asking to much laughter from the adults, "Will there be any news after the war Aunty?" By then I was living with my foster mother in the village because her husband had died and the farm had passed to the eldest son, so we just exchanged houses with him.

My sister returned to Liverpool in 1943 because it was time for her to leave school but I remained until after VJ day in 1945. Then I had to go through the same process of re-adjustment but this time to city life again. When I think about it now I wonder how we managed it all but I guess we've all done pretty well despite everything.

Now I'm retired and living in Rio and yet it all seems such a short while ago.

Hopefully you will be able to read all about this in more detail soon if I can find a publisher for my book.

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