大象传媒

My parents were British Baptist Missionaries in the Belgian Congo. Early in 1940, when I was six years old and my sister was three, we travelled back to the UK by ship bound for Antwerp. The sea journey started off uneventfully enough, but the end of the journey was another story鈥�

When we got into the Bay of Biscay the ship put in to a little port just north of La Rochelle called La Palice (I think it was a fishing village). I remember the captain getting all passengers onto the rear deck and addressing us. He apparently explained that it would take another few days to get to Antwerp and that by then it was highly likely that Belgium would have fallen to the advancing armies. A train had been arranged to take the passengers across France to Brussels overnight and we were advised to pack necessary items in a suitcase and take the train. Our heavy baggage would be sent on if possible after the ship arrived in port. I remember that the railway line came very near to where the ship was and a train was pulled up there, waiting. We all filed off the ship as it was getting dusk. We had to walk up between a double row of soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets pointing at us. We had to walk the gauntlet over the shingle between them. We then clambered up off the ground into the train. There were no lights on the train and, once everyone was on board, we were locked in, and in darkness for the whole of the journey.

In Brussels Dad somehow got places on a small, orange coloured, plane for all of us except himself. It was the kindness of a Belgian businessman, who gave up his place so that Dad could remain with the family, which enabled us to fly together. Otherwise it is highly likely that, as an Englishman, he would have been imprisoned by the Germans for the rest of the war. Just before we boarded the plane to take off from Brussels someone pointed out to me German spotter planes flying near the airport.

Our plane was apparently the last one to leave the airport. All the widows had been painted over so that light came in, but we could not see out at all. We landed at Shoreham airport in Sussex. Later, on that same day, Brussels fell to the Germans . We arrived in Britain with one small suitcase and the clothes we stood up in. The remainder of our luggage never came. It was all found 5 years later, after the war, in a damp cellar in Antwerp, with the locks blown off, but otherwise still intact. I remember we spent that first weekend with an Uncle and Aunt at their home in Bromley. Later, I remember Dad showing me the sheets of clothing coupons that were issued to us to enable us to buy clothes. We moved into a house in West Worthing.

Air raids and planes flying over Worthing were a daily and nightly occurrence. As a Baptist minister, Dad went out most nights as an air-raid warden, wearing his steel helmet - 鈥淲ith a 鈥榃鈥� on the front and a 鈥榃鈥� on the back鈥�! He did not come back until daybreak. After my sister and I were in bed, Mother spent many evenings out at the front gate, also wearing her steel helmet, as a fire warden. She was armed with a wooden spoon and the dust-bin lid, which she was supposed to bang if ever she saw a building set on fire by an incendiary bomb. We slept through most of these nights, but they must have been worrying days for Mum and Dad.

In 1941 Mother and Dad prepared to leave us at home and travel back to their work in Congo. Looking back now, I don鈥檛 know how they did it, but for them I鈥檓 sure it was in obedience to the call they felt God had given them and because of the war. From various accounts I鈥檓 sure it was very, very, tough for them. We were left under the guardianship of my Father鈥檚 youngest brother and his wife and were both boarded at Rustington P.N.E.U. School (Near Littlehampton).

They sailed for Congo in a large convoy of cargo ships from Cardiff with a naval escort of corvettes.
It was to be a terrible three-month journey for them. After the war, when they returned and I was old enough to understand, Mother gave me more details. German U-boats patrolled the western coats of Britain to intercept and sink cargo boats going to, or leaving Britain (Hence the escort of corvettes). The convoy went the speed of the slowest ship and there was total blackout of information as to where they had got. They knew they were not going south because the sun set over the bow of the ship each night and it got colder instead of warmer. They were steaming out across the Atlantic to get away from the U-boats off the coast of Ireland.

Then a U-boat struck, picking off the last ship in the convoy. The next moment corvettes were charging about, dropping depth charges all around the ships, trying to hit the U-boat. They then had to pick up survivors from the sunken ship. The U-boat followed and slowly picked off one or two other ships and the same routine with the corvettes and depth charges was repeated each time - and also the survivors. That night a huge Atlantic storm blew up which lasted the best part of a week. It made them miserable, but it was the storm that saved them from the U-boat. It could not surface and eventually had to make off and leave them.

After the storm the remains of the convoy still steamed west, towards the sunset. One evening, when Mother and Dad were on deck in a dead calm sea, suddenly each ship in the convoy turned 90 degrees to the south (They saw how sharp the turn was from the wake of the ship). For days then the weather got warmer and hotter, before getting cooler and cooler again. They sailed right down the coast of America and eventually turned north-east again somewhere off the coast of South America, heading for Africa. Somewhere south of the Equator their ship鈥檚 rudder controls broke down and they could not steer. After some time they limped into the port of Takoradi in the Gold Coast (Ghana) and stayed there three weeks for repairs. They were also afraid of U-boats waiting off the coast to pick off cargo boats leaving port. However, they had an uneventful journey from there to Matadi, the port in the mouth of the Congo.

That whole journey took three months. How they re-fuelled, or got in supplies, I don鈥檛 know. Dad wrote my sister and me a letter, with illustrations of trunks and teapots etc flying around the cabin, which arrived many months later, but the horrific details we of course did not know as children.

Memories of the school in Rustington include all us children being bedded down on many nights in the large hall of the house. This was considered the safest place of the house as, most nights, German bombers and fighters flew over the coast on their way to bomb London. They were intercepted on or near the coast by British fighters and there were many dogfights near us as our fighters tried to prevent them getting near London. One boundary to the school house grounds was the brick wall of a large hangar-type building where bren-gun carriers and other military hardware were kept. On many occasions I remember leaning through the fence at the end of the garden with other children, watching them come and go.

In the autumn of 1942 I left my sister and we were separated for the rest of the war. I went as a new Eltham College boy, evacuated to Taunton School in Somerset. Eltham College boarders formed 鈥楨ltham House鈥� in the main school (Rochester School boarders were also evacuated there and formed 鈥楻ochester House鈥�).

I owe a lot to Uncles and Aunts on both sides of the family who had me for the holidays from boarding school. Early on, when I was on holiday from school in Taunton, my guardian Uncle Arthur had arranged for me to spend part of the holiday with an Uncle and Aunt in Letchworth. Uncle Arthur drove me up to Letchworth from London in his Morris 8 car. Being wartime, all road signs and signposts had been removed to make it difficult for the enemy in case of an invasion. Also few people then had telephones. It was difficult enough to get to Letchworth as he had not been there before, but locating 鈥楩ield Lane鈥� was even more difficult. I remember him driving round and round trying to find the road.

On another occasion, I was coming back on the school train from Taunton to London on holiday. As we pulled into Paddington station it seemed completely deserted. I got off the train with the others and suddenly Uncle Arthur ran up to me, grabbed my baggage and me, and ran with me down the steps into the Underground station. He then explained to me that a 鈥淒oodle-Bug鈥� (a 鈥榁1鈥� 鈥� an unmanned flying bomb) had followed behind the train and its engine had cut out and glided over the train as we pulled into the station - it could dive and explode at any minute. That explained the deserted station and his haste to get me away!

I remember once staying with another Uncle and Aunt in Forest Hill, south-east London. I remember during that stay sleeping out in a Anderson air-raid shelter in the back garden and being taken out by my Uncle to 鈥榮pend a penny鈥� during the night, in the middle of an air raid over central London. To one side of us the whole sky was a-glow, lit up with searchlights and flares. There was also the noise of fighter planes weaving back and forth with red tracer bullets. He pointed out the silhouette of St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral away in the far distance. We got back quickly into the shelter.

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