大象传媒

The 2nd World War brought a sudden end to our safe and secure environment. My brother aged nine, sister aged five and myself aged 7 were to be evacuated.

So, in September of 1939 all the evacuees from Brighton Road School in Bensham, Gateshead, boarded the steam train at Bensham Station for our tearful journey, without Mammy, to somewhere in Yorkshire. I can't write this without deep emotion and I'm afraid my eyes are brimming with tears sixty six years on.

As the train door clashed shut, Mammy pushed 2 bunches of sweet peas into my sister and I's outstretched arms through the window.

After various abodes in different villages we ended up at Thirsk and remained here for another 2 years.

More than a year later, when everyone at home assumed us evacuees were safe, one night we heard the drone of a German plane overhead and the next minute there was an almighty bang and all of the cottage windows blew out!!

A neighbour was cutting my hair at the time and she ran out screaming and left me with lopsided hair!

The bomb had dropped on the school just on the other side of Long Street and completely demolished our classroom. The pilot dropped another bomb, for good measure, in the adjacent field. Apparently he was after the Army Barracks nearby but misjudged.

On reflection, I think we would have been better off at home in Bensham, at least we had sirens and air raid shelters.

Not long after this incident Mam brought us home - she said,"If we are going to die, we will all die together".

My brother had already decided long before the bomb had dropped that it was not for him the strange ways of country folk; him and two other lads made a plan one night that they would walk back to Gateshead and to their home town in Co. Durham.

Well, off they set, early one morning, with only sandshoes on their feet. They managed to walk from Thirsk to Northallerton and only nine years old - a distance of some 8 miles. By this time worn out, they hopped onto a train bound for Newcastle. They needed to avoid the Ticket Collector at the Station, so when the train slowed down near Gateshead they alighted dangerously hopping over a large tangle of electric lines.

Our house in Newton Street was adjacent to the main railway line. They were planning to walk back along the side of the line and slide down the embankment by our house, over the fence and they were home.

Well, they did end up in Gateshead, at our front door with a Railway Policeman! When Mam answered the door she was confronted by a large man with a small filthy boy with soleless sandshoes.

Confirming it was her son, the Policeman said, "We are not going to charge him for trespassing on railway property because we think he has been a very brave young lad to walk as far as he did in a successful endeavour to get home!"

Mam took in her little boy and to this day I can cry at his amazing exploit.

When we were all eventually re-united, our street looked strangely unfamiliar, but it was magic to be back to our beloved Tyneside - once a Geordie, always a Geordie!

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