大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by a volunteer from CSV/大象传媒 London on behalf of Anthony Cozens and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Cozens fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Saturday, September 17th, 1939 is a date that will forever be imprinted on my mind, for it was on that day that I was evacuated, along with 103 other pupils from West Acton Infants School in Acton, West London. I was seven and a half years of age and it was the first time that I had been separated from my parents and siblings. Even our teachers knew not where they were going and were only informed of our final destination once we had entrained at the local railway station.

We eventually reached Plymouth in South Devon, where we boarded buses for the 10 mile journey to a picturesque village called Holbeton, in the South Hams district of the county. Double-decker buses had never been seen in the village before as the lanes leading to the village were very narrow with high hedges on every side and I well remember all of us being frightened as the trees and hedges kept beating against the windows.

We finally arrived at Hobleton in the dark and it was pouring with rain - not the best welcome for 104 frightened children. We were ushered into the local school hall and the whole thing descended into farce as we were paraded before the local population like some sort of cattle market, with people picking out the children they thought were the best prospects. Eventually I was chosen, along with another boy of my own age, by a kindly looking gentleman. We thought our luck was in as he seemed such a nice sort of man but it did not hold, because he had already picked four other children to stay with him and his wife on their farm. We were to be billeted at the neighbouring Borough Farm and I remember so well the acid comment of our foster mother to the farmer that had chosen us. She said to him 鈥淚 told you to pick two strapping fourteen year olds鈥�. He said that we were the eldest in the group and her face dropped (I found out some time later that she wanted us as cheap labour on the farm). My co-evacuee and I cried ourselves to sleep that night but he was lucky one because his parents took him back to London after only a month whilst I was to remain on the farm for a further three years.

One would think that living on a farm that I was well fed. Nothing is further from the truth. My foster mother seemed to worship money and despite being paid for looking after me, I was always hungry and I supplemented my diet by living on apples which I took from the orchards on the farm. The farmer was a lovely old gentleman who was about twenty years older than his wife and when she was not there he was very good to me but he seemed frightened of her. The farm was about a mile and a half distant from the village and I used to walk to school and back every day along the high-hedged lanes which was sometimes quite scary.

Although my foster mother was so unkind to me I got to like life on the farm and used to help with the animals and got to know so much about country life. I used to love to ride on the backs of the four big shire horses we had on the farm. I used to go ferreting for rabbits with one of the farm hands, which to a London lad was very exciting indeed. By the time I returned home in 1943, I used to milk ten cows by hand before I went to school in the morning and then again when I returned home in the late afternoon. Life was not all unhappy and I became good friends with some of the village children and the parents of one of them were very good to me. They knew how unhappy I was and used to feed me well when I was playing with their son.

During the 鈥減honey war鈥� Plymouth was relatively safe from the Luftwaffe but once the Nazis had reached northern France the south coast of England was in range of their aircraft and the blitz on Plymouth and the dockyards of Devonport is another memory that will always stay with me. At the height of the attacks on Plymouth we could hear the German aircraft flying overhead and, on the first night of the raids, the farmer and I went up to one of the barns and the sight that met our gaze was like something out of Dante鈥檚 鈥淚nferno鈥� 鈥� the horizon from the left to right was one huge red glow and it seemed that nothing of the city would remain standing after the onslaught. The following night hundreds of Plymouth residents sought refuge in the surrounding countryside and Hobleton had its fair share of unfortunate folk that had lost their homes and came to the village to escape the terrible destruction.
At the time of the blitz, Plymouth appeared to have little or no anti-aircraft guns and the Luftwaffe seemed to have the freedom of the skies. All this was to change however. One beautiful summer evening I was in a field helping the farmer to tend to some sheep that were sick and suddenly a Dornier 17 of the Luftwaffe appeared high in the sky. Plymouth had been raided again the previous night and the aircraft was obviously on a photo-reconnaissance mission, unaware that Plymouth now had ack-ack guns. Suddenly puffs of anti-aircraft flak appeared near the German plane and the gunners were getting more accurate with each shell they fired. The pilot of the Dornier obviously decided that things were getting to hot for him and took evasive action. He suddenly put the aircraft into a steep dive (in our direction). The farmer thought we were going to be machine-gunned, although the pilot probably never even saw us, and suddenly I found myself being flung to the ground with the farmer on top of me to protect me. I still managed to get a glimpse of what was going on and I saw the aircraft suddenly pull out of the dive at tree-top height about a hundred yards from where we were laying and it was so close that I could see the pilot and photographer/gunner quite plainly, as well as the rivets on the fuselage. The aircraft then sped off, hedge hopping, back across the English Channel to its base in France.

Another fond memory is of the local Home guard. When it was first formed, it was called the Local Defence Volunteers, and the organisation wore the cap of the county militia, namely the Devonshire Regiment. One never saw a more motley crew but at least they were prepared to defend their homeland against the enemy, had the Germans decided to invade the United Kingdom. The estate manager was the commanding officer (he held the rank of major) and the sergeant was the estate foreman. The two men that worked on the farm where I was evacuated were also in the unit, the elder of the two having served in the arm in the First World War. He had been wounded in that conflict and in consequence marched with a stiff leg, but he wore his medals with pride. I feel sure that the television series 鈥淒ad鈥檚 Army鈥� must have been based on this unit. When they were first formed they were armed only with a few 12-bore shotguns and pitchforks. One night they had an intelligence report that German paratroopers were going to be dropped in the area and they spent the hours of darkness guarding a hay rick. I was always at a loss afterwards to understand why the Wehrmacht would want to capture a hay rick.

On another occasion, whilst I was in the playground of the local school, we heard the sound of many hooves clattering through the village. As it was playtime, we all ran to see what was making the noise, and we could hardly contain our excitement. About a hundred mules were being ridden through the village by turbaned Indian soldiers and on the left hand side of each mule was another mule carrying barbed wire. They were making their way to the local beaches to lay the barbed wire because a few days prior to this, a very loud explosion had been heard in the village and rumour had it that two bodies had been found on one of the beaches after one of the intruders had stepped on a mine. It was said that the bodies were of German spies that had landed in a rubber dinghy launched from a U-boar offshore.

My parents eventually brought me home after they found out from the parents of another evacuee how unhappy I was. When I did arrive home, it was to another house, because our former home had been destroyed by the Luftwaffe in the London blitz in October 1940. I underwent a thorough medical examination and was found to be suffering from malnutrition, and was put on a special diet to build me up after three years of neglect. All this after having lived on a farm where food was abundant. Having said that, I still have a great love of Hobleton and the surrounding countryside and have many friends there. I still go back as often as I can because it taught me my love of nature and for that I am most grateful.

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