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EVACUATION

In 1939 aged 5 I stood on the railway platform in London to be evacuated to Hastings

I had my gasmask in a small cardboard box and a green home-made canvas bag for my clothes. I was sent to Hastings to an elderly couple with no experience of children. My breakfast on one occasion was a piece of bread and dripping. On visiting me, my sister, 14 years older than me, took me to the public baths to be scrubbed clean, de-loused and given new clothes. I was then moved to a much better family for a while.

As the war worsened I was again moved to South Wales, and standing in the village playground heard some-one say “We’ll have this one!’ and I was lifted over the railings to begin the rest of my evacuation.

‘Auntie’ and ‘Uncle’ were related in some way but slept in separate bedrooms, I had to share the room with ‘Uncle’. Many years later I realised that Auntie was possibly the village ‘Lady of comfort’, but I could have been mistaken. Certainly I now realise she was suffering a severe depressive illness.

The village was divided into several factions. The Baptists were supreme, Methodists a fairly close second , the Church of Wales worshippers were barely tolerable whereas Roman Catholics were beyond redemption. Jews were Christ killers, utterly despicable, never to be spoken to. For a long time I would feel a degree of distaste towards anyone I met of those faiths, fortunately later in life I realised that I had been badly instructed at a vulnerable age.

The non religious villagers frequented one or other of the two public houses, the posh one went to the Red Lion, the riff-raff to the Castle Inn , as they were sinners of the worst kind, they were never to go to the Baptist heaven.

Despite having to attend chapel three times every Sunday, a Prayer Meeting every Tuesday evening and Bible Class on Friday, I found that Christian principles had rather obscure boundaries. For sinning on Sunday by whistling, picking up a stick (working on the Sabbath) , reading anything but the Bible or the ‘Christian Herald’ or any other real or imagined sin I would, at bedtime, be made to say my prayers then to be beaten on my bare bottom with a stick before being allowed to go to sleep. The only treat I was given was one sweet a week, if I had been good! Except once when, while praying I heard behind me an ominous rustling. Terrified, I was astonished to be given a chocolate Father Christmas. Perhaps during one of Auntie’s many hour-long sessions on her knees praying to God he had told her to give me a treat!

One day after eating cider apples I was given a slice of fruit cake by a friendly farmers wife, when I got to the house I vomited the result of my gluttony and so was thrashed for the sin. Calling out ‘Oh she’s courting’ after a local school teacher invoked the same punishment. For that sin I also had my ‘Young Sowers League’ badge confiscated , a Christian symbol for which I had worked hard, including learning the names of all the books of the bible, the badge was never returned.

Each Saturday evening was bath night. A tin tub was put in front of the kitchen fire and filled with hot water. Uncle went first, then Auntie, finally I had the luxury of the now tepid water; the clean clothes for Sunday had to last the week.

I became ill with a dysenteric type of illness and was confined to bed for two weeks eating only arrowroot slop and hardboiled eggs, this was to ensure that the Devil would be starved out of me, it certainly put me off arrowroot for life!

Then started what I now know to be sexual abuse, Auntie would fondle me ‘Down there’ ( I would not be allowed to use any other name without being beaten) and on one or two occasions would try to encourage me to do the same to her, I did not want to do so.

I was used by a farm worker in a similar way on several occasions, being reassured by him that it was perfectly natural but not to share the knowledge with anyone else,

My life became so unpleasant at one stage that I ran away, I only got as far as a nearby hay barn but wasn’t discovered until the early hours of the morning. I was threatened with Borstal for my crime, sadly the idea quite appealed to me, it had to be better than my present situation. I had no idea what Borstal was so my thinking was logical if misguided. After that life became a little better for me, the Headmistress of the Evacuees school had somehow interceded.

During the years there my Father was able to visit me twice and my Mother once, my sister and her husband two or three times, they were both in the Forces. My mother was told never to come again as she went to a whist drive, a pack of cards were the

Devils handbook, hell was her certain destination.

Not all was doom and gloom, the village blacksmith sometimes made us iron hoop with iron guiders, we would race through the village in convoy, the noise must have upset a few people. We fished in the lake, with varying degrees of success, rowed from one of the two landing stages where two families competed for the trade. I caught a very large perch on a spinner that I had found by dragging it along in the water by the landing-stage on a short piece of line.I fished with that spinner for months afterwards with no luck at all.

Before D-day great columns of American troops drove through the village, they were a tremendous attraction for us and , no doubt, to the local girls old enough to be interested! The held live firing exercises on the hills around the village, much to our excitement. We salvaged ammunition and mortar flares from the hill-sides afterwards and set them off for our enjoyment, our guardian angels were working overtime for us as we came to no harm. Only once , when firing .22 bullets down the stream in the middle of the village was anyone injured, only a small cut from a piece of .22 case on one boys lip. Put on the parapet of the bridge and git with a dumbbell the rounds made a very satisfying bang and whizzing noises like a Western film. I found a bren-gun magazine with a dozen rounds in it, by taking the bullet out of the case the powder when sprinkled onto the hot stove in the school; burnt with lots of flame and smoke.

Another thrill was the landing of a Lysander aircraft on the playing field , I doubt if that has ever happened again.

We made our own ‘guns’ by putting a small hole in the bottom of a Golden syrup tin, placing a lump of calcium carbide into the tin, spitting on it, jamming the lid on tightly then holding a lighted match to the hole in the bottom. After a few seconds the vapour from the wetted carbide would ignite and blow the lid off down the street.How lucky w2e were to once more avoid injury.

On November the Fifth we would go round the village begging for pennies, singing ‘Please give a penny for the poor boy’s guy, if you haven’t got a penny a halfpenny will do, if you haven’t got a halfpenny then God bless you!’ We more than often were give a sweet or a piece of cake instead.

Killing a pig was always a great event attended by most of the villagers. The unfortunate animal would be dragged to the fatal spot next to a heap of straw and as the humane-killer bolt was fired into its head its throat was cut. The blood was saved to make black pudding and the body heaped over with the straw, set fire to and the bristles burnt off. When dis-embowelled the bladder would be given to the boys to blow up as a football. We thought it was a great occasion but never considered the poor pig’s opinion.

When we Londoners arrived in the village we were beaten up by the local boys because we had London accents, on returning to London I was beaten up for having a Welsh accent, sometimes life seemed a little unfair!

It was many years before I returned to the village, I knocked on the door of someone who had been very kind to me to be greeted with ‘It’s the boy who spent the night in the barn. At least three people claimed to have been the one to find me!

I was saddened to see in the graveyard the names of several people that I had known.

I hope that such things will never happen again, so much misery for so many people, not just the evacuees but the families that were so disrupted, never to regain the lost years.

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