大象传媒

Those late August days of 鈥�39 and everyone was saying there was going to be a war. No doubt it would be a time of foreboding for the old folk but to us kids it was going to be dead exciting. We got hardly any lessons at school, the teachers were all to busy going into huddles and leaving us to our own devices except when we rehearsed for going to the evacuation. We did several times until the 1st of September when it turned out to be the real thing.

We assembled at Walker Gate station with all our belongings stuffed into pillow cases. Few had suitcases; we鈥檇 never needed them, didn鈥檛 go anywhere. We were told our destination was a place called Brampton in Cumberland, no more than fifty miles away but to kids who had been no further than South Shields or Whitley Bay it may as well have been a foreign country.

My mother obviously thought so too for when she bid us good bye she gave my sister Evie and I two pence saying 鈥淵ou never know, there might be somewhere to spend it鈥�.

We boarded a special train that was to take us all the way there leaving the weeping mothers on the platform. Some of the girls were crying too but to us lads it was the start of a great adventure.

The journey was a constant wonder. I couldn鈥檛 believe there were so many field and all those cows and sheep and horses and whenever we passed a lone standing tree with the branches unfurled we all broke into 鈥淯nderneath the spreading Chestnut tree鈥� a song that was very popular at the time. And a lad with a mouth organ played 鈥淭ough, mighty tough in the West" over and over again because it was dead easy; all you had to do was blow, suck, blow, suck blow.

When we got to Brampton we were taken to a big barn-like building they call The Mill and fed pork pies and as much milk as we wanted. Well, with all those cows they must have had gallons of the stuff and real milk too, not that watered down variety we got at school.

Afterwards we were dispersed to our various billets. Me and a lad called Kenny Wilkinson wer sent to live with a Mrs Thompson and her two grown up daughters, Olive, and Violet on what had been a farm but all they had now were chickens and geese because Mr Thompson had died and the two sons had gone away.

The next day the mothers and toddlers arrived from Newcastle among them my older sister nacy with little Joe and my sister-in-law Belle with baby Audrey and we arranged to go for a walk the following day, September 3rd.

I remember it was a gloriously sunny day as was the rest of September - an Indian Summer they called it - and while on our walk the two adults popped into a house to listen to the wireless and when they came ou they looked very distressed. "War's been declared", they announced. "So we are going home". I was rather perplexed at this, surely that was why we were here.

They were the forerunners of an ever increasing drift back to Tyneside. Many, especially the women could not settle and after all, they said, there have been no bombs or anything.

In the beginning we shared the shcool with the locals; they went in the morning and we went in the afternoon but soon there were few enough evacuees left to be absorbed so it was full time education for all.

I stayed on for two years during which time I was very happy. The Thompsons were good to me (Kenny Wilkinson had been any early depature) the grub was marvellous and I was becoming quite the country boy then the homesickness bug hit me and I too returned home.

It wasn't long before I was wondering why. Compared to the countryside Newcastle was a dismal place with its soot blackened buildings, windows criss-crossed with shatter proof tape and doorways sheltering behind sand bag walls. Barrage balloons floated on a sky that was always grey and there were shortages of everything.

All commodities that were no on the ration attracted lage ques and I was expected to take mu turn to sand in them. Off-ration food, especially meat pies attracted the longest queues and there was one pie shop in Byker that was paticularly popular, their pies were delicious. Then word go round that they were made from horse flesh and no one wanted then many anymore.

One of the items in short supply was teachers so we were reduced to going to school half days and the hard pressed teachers made liberal use of the belt. Not only as a way of keeping order but also as a teaching aid. For example, one teacher gave us twenty spellings to do and after marking our work ordered every boy with a mistake to come out on the floor. Almost the whole class of forty lads stepped forward and held out their hands which were belted. The teacher told everyone with one mistake to back to their seats. This still left a goodly number who received another belt but by that time the teacher was knackered and told everybody to sit down.

At that time we left school at fouteen and despite receiving such a poor education scarely any o that class failed to do well.

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