大象传媒

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jane Hart from Hastings Library on behalf of Roy Frank Edward Clarke, copied directly from personal interview, and has been added to the site with his permission. Roy Frank Edward Clarke fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions鈥�

My name is Roy Frank Edward Clarke, and I was born on 8 Jan 1936.
My earliest memory is of 1940. All my memories are from then until end of the war. I was born and brought up in Hastings, and some memories are from here, but others from my evacuation to St Albans when I was 4. I started school in St Albans at St Albans Abbey Infant School in Spicer Street in April 1941. It was about a mile from home and I walked it every day on my own, after my mother taking me for the first few weeks to get used to it. Children then had much more freedom. Other children were walking there as well, across the abbey grounds. (The building is still there today). I only remember the name of the Headmaster, he was Italian, Mr Perera. It was a good school.

My parents were Frank and Nora and I was an only child. We were all evacuated together and billeted in Holywell Hill in St Albans, to a coal merchant and his wife, Mr & Mrs Ridge. Mr Ridge鈥檚 office was on the ground floor of a big Victorian house. We had a 2nd floor bedroom. Mum and Dad had the bed and I had a camp bed next to the fireplace. The whole building was infested with mice. We used to set a mouse trap in the fireplace every night and there were at least 2 or 3 mice in it every morning. We had only been there for about 2 months when the house we had left in Albion Street, Halton was bombed and flattened. We were very lucky! (In Sept 1940 my father got a war damage payout of 拢320 for the house). We had meals with the family, usually in the kitchen and the old scullery at the back. This was also infested with mice. As Mrs Ridge went from the kitchen into the scullery she would clap her hands to get rid of the mice and they鈥檇 scatter! They were an elderly couple who had an adult son who was away in the war theatre somewhere. I never met him. Next door was a sweet and newspaper shop owned by Mr and Mrs Thrussell. They had a daughter, Margaret who was about a couple of months older than me. We still keep in touch today. Mrs Thrussell died a few years ago aged 98. Meg married an Italian and now lives in Rome. I鈥檝e not seen her for years. We used their air raid shelter during bombing raids. It had a corrugated iron roof sunk into ground, concrete floor and 2 bunks. Because it was below ground it flooded every time it rained. If we were in there overnight we often got wet up to our knees!

My earliest memory is of looking out of the window of our house in Hastings, watching aircraft having dog fights over the town and the sea. This was just after Dunkirk. Then I remember being dragged away to the shelters, yelling and screaming because I was enjoying watching planes. There was no fear, I just found it exciting. The adults were scared but not children. A month after Dunkirk I was evacuated. My father was the caretaker at Hastings Grammar School and this was evacuated en bloc as many of the pupils were boarders. Mother and I were able to stay with him, hence all of us being evacuated together. So I was fortunate to have both parents with me throughout the evacuation. I didn鈥檛 see much of my father as he was working every night. Dad went into the army quite late, when he was 40. They were desperate for personnel in 1940/41, calling up anyone. He was invalided out in 41/42 but couldn鈥檛 go back to the caretaking job as he still had to do war work. He became a night security guard at De Haviland鈥檚 aircraft factory at Hatfield, only a few miles up the road. He did some of his job as the caretaker during the day but my mother did the rest of it. She used to stoke the boilers!

I was born with one leg slightly shorter than the other, and admitted to Hill End hospital in St Albans when I was 6, in June 1942, to have my right leg lengthened. A piece was put in the Achilles tendon so the heel was flat on the floor and I had to exercise it. I was in hospital for 3 months. This was the war time home of St Bartholomew鈥檚 hospital in London so the surgeons were first class. I still have letter of admission from Barts (attached). As it was during the war the hospital was crowded and children鈥檚 ward was full. I was put in serviceman鈥檚 ward where I stayed for 2 or 3 months. I was the ward mascot! All the men were suffering from war wounds and it was very noisy, more so at night. It was not particularly pleasant and quite frightening. There was a lot of yelling and screaming and shouting because of their horrific injuries. In the morning there were often beds that had suddenly become empty during the night where men had died. After my operation I had a 鈥榳alking plaster鈥� which was a plaster up to my knee with a sponge pad on the bottom and I could walk with a stick. I had a wheelchair prior to that but it meant I could go around the beds in the ward and talk to all the men in them. I remember men with bullet wounds and men in plaster, all sorts of disfigurements. I found it frightening at first but when I got to know the people it wasn鈥檛 quite so bad. It probably did them some good to see some normality in a kid trotting round talking to them and it taught me some things as they showed me how to play brag and pontoon and even the rudiments of snooker though I had to be lifted up to use a cue! It was an interesting time. I came out of hospital and went back to school in Sept 1942.

The war at that time was fairly quiet where we were, because we were a fair bit north of London. We sometimes saw the night sky over London and heard some very very distant noises at night, but there wasn鈥檛 that much going on until much later on in the war in 1943 when the Germans started throwing flying bombs over. Now, a hell of a lot of those overshot London and we got an awful lot of them so were using the night time shelters and having the night time bombing raids far more than we did earlier in the war. But as a child you don鈥檛 really identify too much with all of this; it was all a big adventure, it was exciting. We had a much freer and more exciting childhood than children have now. There were deprivations; the food was lousy but we didn鈥檛 realise as we didn鈥檛 know any different. Schooling was a bit rudimentary. We were crammed into already crowded classrooms, fitting in with local children. Sweets were rationed but were available. Sometimes during the daytime on the walk to school we鈥檇 have flying bombs coming at us. And doodlebugs. We鈥檇 run and dive into a ditch. As we learnt at the time, we saw them come over, sought shelter, then watched the jets coming out of the back. As soon as the jets stopped that was when the bomb was going to drop. Then you waited for the bang! Then you got out and looked for the shrapnel. We collected it, then swapped it with American soldiers for chewing gum and sweets. We didn鈥檛 keep anything. We weren鈥檛 interested in shrapnel, only chewing gum and sweets! By now there were an awful lot more Americans. There were more Americans than British. They had more generous rations and were happy to part with what they had. None of the Americans had seen a theatre of war at that point so they were interested in having the shrapnel to take back. This was still before D Day. We returned to Hastings in 1944. The town was largely flattened by then. There were lots of bomb sites. We couldn鈥檛 go on the beach as it was all covered in barbed wire and tank traps. Fairlight was mined so we couldn鈥檛 walk far over it, and the mines were still being blown up.
I returned to school in 1944 at Mount Pleasant Junior School. We lived in a flat in Nelson Rd as Dad wanted to be close to the Grammar School as he returned to work there. He had started there in 1935, the year before I was born and his job was held during the war. He stayed there until he retired, then died the following year, in the 60鈥檚. The old building no longer exists. Our furniture was stored in the arches below the old Grammar School, so at least we had furniture to go back to, even if no house!. After the war this was converted into the dining hall. There was no such thing as school dinners prior to the war so there had been no need for a dining hall.

One other vivid memory is after the war in late 1945, early 46. I had a cousin who was a lot older than me who had been in the army. He was captured at the fall of Singapore in 1942. They were literally captured as they walked off the boat. The fall had happened during the time they were at sea. He spent 4 years on the Burma/Thailand railway. But I remember him coming home. Bear in mind that they had been fattened up and looked after for almost 6 months before they had been allowed to come back to the UK. One thing I remember, and I asked my parents why, was that he couldn鈥檛 sit at a table. When he was served with his food he would take the bowl and go and sit in the corner of the room and hunch himself down. It was several weeks, even months before he even spoke about it. He had psychiatric treatment and eventually made a recovery. He emigrated to Australia with his family. But he was in a terrible state when he got home. Subsequently as you get older and read more you learnt what people like him had had to put up with, and you can understand why they were like they were.

It was an exciting time for a child. We didn鈥檛 have so many restrictions on our movements. You went around and did what you liked when you liked and had a more exciting time than kids do now. We were too young to be frightened. Even when you were grabbed out of bed and rushed to a shelter in the middle of the night you didn鈥檛 really know what it was all about. When I came home I was 9 so from about 7 onwards I started to realise what was going on. I could read by then and was reading the newspapers. You start to take a bit of interest and start to realise what you are looking at. It was a strange time but I wouldn鈥檛 have swapped my childhood for any other period because it was interesting.

There was another thing I remember about my next door neighbours then, which was nothing to do with the war. When you went into their lounge which was at the back behind the shop, there was the usual furniture but in the corner was a tall cabinet with a screen which was covered over most of the time as they never used it. I didn鈥檛 know what it was. Subsequently I went back to St Albans in 1948 with a Scout camp. By then I was at the Grammar School and was in the Scout Troop. For the first camp after the war we went back to St Albans because obviously the masters knew it and they took us back there. I went back to see my old neighbours and found out that this thing was a pre-war television set. Obviously there were no transmissions during the war so it was never on. The first thing I watched on it was the 1948 Olympic Games which were in Wembley, only a few miles away. I鈥檇 never seen a TV set before and we didn鈥檛 have one until 1952/53, Coronation year when a lot of people got them.

So my most vivid memories are of the time I spent in hospital which you would remember as a child and obviously my mother wasn鈥檛 there for the best part of 2 months, apart from visits during the day. I made friends with the soldiers and servicemen and began to realise what they must have been through to be in there. They were pilots and soldiers from all over the place. I don鈥檛 remember any of their names or any teachers, only neighbours and the family we lived with, but I do remember the names of the masters at the grammar school.
I remember when we were evacuated wanting to take the cat, called Tinker, but not being able to. I was very upset, as I was so attached to him. This made more of an impression than many other things at the time. The elderly neighbours didn鈥檛 evacuate and took Tinker but the whole street was bombed and wiped out in one night. The road is where Halton flats are now, at the top of Priory Road. The only building left standing was the school dental clinic where you went in fear and trepidation! It鈥檚 mentioned in a locally written book charting the bombing. Hastings got bombed with the bombs that hadn鈥檛 been dropped over London as the planes were shedding the weight. Hastings and other small coastal towns weren鈥檛 important ports, unlike Portsmouth or Plymouth, or major naval bases but this was a restricted area. Many troops were billeted here. There were a lot of Canadian soldiers in Queens Hotel. This was a big disaster as it got bombed one night and several hundred soldiers were killed. They were strange times.

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