大象传媒

Memory is odd, how much of what we remember is really our own recollections and how much have we accumulated from the stories of others, especially close family. Hopefully most if not all of what I am about to relate is a first-hand account of the war as I lived through it. Anyway, to the best of my knowledge the story which I will tell is true in all its detail.

It was a silly place for a six year old to be when the war started. Let me explain: My Dad was a soldier, a regular, having joined up as a fourteen years old bugle boy in the Royal Artillery. Shortly after my birth, in July 1933, he transferred to the Army Physical Training Corps as a PTI and was soon promoted from Sgt through Staff Sgt to QMSI (Sgt Major). I was very proud of him of course. My Mother, baby sister Diana and I lived in a married quarter at the Sir John Moore Barracks, Shorncliffe. Well, for those of you whose geography is not too hot I should explain that Shorncliffe is located near Folkestone, on the white cliffs of Dover, just 22 miles from France; hence my suggestion that this was a silly place to live in 1939 and even worse in 1940!!

I'm sure that I can remember hearing the wireless broadcast on 3rd September when Chamberlain said: "...this country is, therefore, at war with Germany". Although it meant little to me at the time I can still see the solemn faces of my parents, a solemnity which transmitted itself to me.
In the Spring of 1940 I remember vividly being taken by my mother to Folkestone Railway station where trains carrying the remnants of the BEF rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk paused on their journey. It was, to me, very exciting especially as I spoke to several of the soldiers whilst my mother and other women handed out cigarettes, sandwiches and tea. The troops were, I recall, all in high spirits and looking back they did not seem at all like a defeated army.

Now, of course, the Germans were just 22 miles away (thank goodness for the sea in between!) But it wasn't long before they brought up their 'Big Bertha' artillery pieces and started lobbing shells across the channel and into our barracks! When this happened the authorities moved fast and all of the families living at the barracks were given a few hours to pack up and move out. We were evacuated, but in a different way from the majority of children living in the south-east. Whereas most of them were sent off on their own to live in safer parts of the country we were luckier as our mothers were to accompany us. Later my mother told me that we were permitted one piece of luggage each and the children could take just one toy. I have no idea which toy I chose but I do remember Diana taking her beloved teddy bear, a companion to her over many future years.

It was a long and very tiring train journey from Folkestone and many hours later we found ourselves in Newton Abbot, Devon, where we were billeted in temporary lodgings whilst the authorities
tried to organise something a bit more permanent. After a week or two we were moved to a hamlet called Holcombe a few miles from Dawlish. We were allocated, along with my aunt and two cousins, who had decided to come with us, the servants' quarters in a large country house owned by a Mrs Lavis. She lived in the main house with her teenaged son whom she called 'Boysie'. From what I was told later by my mother and aunt Mrs Lavis seemed mainly to be interested in gaining as much as possible financially from having us there, this included regularly asking my Mother for cash for 'extras'. Mrs Lavis regarded my mother ironing as an extra which had to be paid for. I went to school in Dawlish cycling each day up and down horrendous hills and frankly hating every minute of it. Like children everywhere I soon picked up the local patois and within weeks sounded like a genuine Devonian!

My mother and aunt were not happy and my mother's anguish increased when my aunt and her two daughters went back to their home in Essex. Later that year (1940) after much argument with those responsible for evacuees my mother was permitted to move so we were off again. This time we went to Scotland to a place called Renton, a small town near Dumbarton. Renton is not far from Loch Lomand and the area was really beautiful, as was Devon of course. The difference was that the local people seemed happy to have us there and we were made to feel very welcome. However, my mother hated to be away from her parents and our accommodation was very cramped with far too many people living in a small semi-detached house. Early in 1941 my mother took Diana, then nearly three, to live in her parents' home in Shoeburyness, Essex. I was left behind to live with a family named Houston who owned the house next door to where we had been billeted.

Mary and David Houston had two sons, York 16 and Peter 14. I also being Peter was immediately renamed 'Wee' Peter. David Houston worked in a torpedo factory on Clydeside and Mary was a Nurse at the local army barracks. The Houstons were the nicest, kindest most loving family one could possibly imagine and I felt privelaged to be included in their fold. Their Grandpa lived with them too so we were a bit crowded but everyone got on well and I remember no disputes at all. Indeed, the only thing which in any way marred my time living in Scotland was at school. I attended Dumbarton Academy which was, like most Scottish schools, an excellent academic instituion where I learned a lot in a short time. Unfortunately, however, my form teacher, a young woman, had a pathological loathing of the English and she took delight in venting her spleen on the handful of eight year old English evacuees in her charge. We regularly received a taste of the tawse (a leather strap) with the admonishment "That's for being English"! Although I love Scotland dearly and am married to a Scot I have an abiding hatred of Scottish Nationalism which will remain with me until my dying day! Nevertheless, my memories of my days as part of the Houston household are warm and loving. Sadly they are all dead now except Peter who is a retired Church of Scotland minister with whom I occasionally keep in touch.

It was Christmas 1941 when my Mother sent for me. I left Scotland with happiness at the prospect of living with my Mother and sister in my beloved Grandparents' home, but was also sad at leaving the Houstons.

Life in Shoeburyness, a small town near Southend-on-Sea in SE Essex, was a joy to me. My Grandparents were such wonderful people and there were so many members of our family living nearby that I really felt that I was home at last. Looking back I now realise that my Grandparents had a far greater influence upon me than anyone else including my parents. My father, being a soldier, was not really a part of my childhood from the age of six as I saw him only very occasionally. He was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1942 and was posted to the Gold Coast (Ghana) where he remained until the end of the war, As a result, through no fault of his own, he had a far safer war then any of us!
My Grandfather worked very hard as Clerk of Works to the Essex County Council. In addition he was Churchwarden at St Andrews Church, a Special Constable and managed a large kitchen garden in which he grew vegetables and fruit to supplement our rations. My dear Nana sadly died in 1942 but I still remember her with great love.
What I did not realise at the time was that my parents' relationship was becoming increasingly distant and would eventually finish in divorce shortly after the war's end. I was, therefore, never again to live as a family with my parents and sister after we left Shorncliffe in 1940. Do adults have any conception of how traumatic divorce is for the children? I think not!
For me the immediate post-war years were unhappy and left their scars.

But back to 1942. Initially I attended Thorpe Hall school in Thorpe Bay. This was a private school where they taught good manners and polite speech, but where the academic syllabus was well behind that of state schools. When my father came home on one of his rare periods of leave he was horrified at how far behind I had fallen and he insisted my being removed from Thorpe Hall school and transferred to the state school in Shoeburyness. He was right of course, but it was pretty uncomfortable for me as I had been taught to raise my cap to adults and speak politely in well rounded Oxford English. This did little to endear me to my fellow pupils and I was often teased. However, my academic knowledge improved and when I was eleven I managed, just, to pass the scholarship to Southend High School for Boys.

But I am jumping ahead of myself. My experience of the war became more sharply focussed once I returned to live in SE Essex. We lived under the flight path of German bombers bound to and from London, and if they were chased by our fighters they would lighten their load by jettisoning their bombs on us!! All very exciting! The sirens were a nightly occurrence and we would be required to go downstairs to the living room which was dominated by a Morrison shelter. This was a large steel box with caged sides which my Mother would make up as a huge bed into which the whole family would fit itself (rather snuggly). The top of the shelter doubled as a table. In fact the grown ups spent most of their time sitting outside the shelter drinking tea! The Boy next door, Gordon Graham, was about eighteen months older than me and he and I would often sneak out during night raids, climb up onto my Grandad's flat shed roof and watch the searchlights and listen to the aircraft and ack-ack! I don't remember being frightened at all, too ignorant I suppose, but my Mother had a fit and would chase us indoors and into the shelter.

The only time I do remember being frightened was one evening when my friend Bob Birrell and I were walking home from school having stayed behind for games. Our teacher had been telling us about the V1 'doodlebugs' and he had stressed that when we heard one we would recognise its throaty roar. All was well, he said, until the sound stopped, that meant that the bomb would fall and explode! Well, that sunny evening that is exactly what happened, we heard the throaty roar, it suddenly stopped (as did my heart!!) and both Bob and I started to run, each in the direction of home. Goodness knows why we thought that this was the best thing to do. We should really have fallen onto the ground to lie flat until after the explosion. I don't even remember hearing the wretched thing go off..all I wanted to do was get to home and safety!

Collecting shrapnel, 'window' and bits of aircraft 'skin' was a popular pastime, and some idiots even tried to pull up unexploded incendiary bombs which were in copious quantities in the fields around us following a raid. Some were even foolish enough to break through the barbed wired fencing onto the nearby beaches so we could swim. This was especially dangerous as the beaches had been mined! Our guardian angels must have looked after us as no-one was hurt thank God!

Although we didn't realise it at the time school was marred by a lack of good teachers. Those who taught us were elderly, probably brought back from retirement, medically unfit or untrained. We didn't realise this until after the war when a sudden influx of young men recently demobbed came back into teaching or came to us via teachers' training colleges. They were like a breath of fresh air! Strict but fair and always with a sparkle of humour. They were approachable, eager and very good teachers. Although corporal punishment was commonplace then I recall very few instances of it being applied, the threat was usually enough to ensure the maintenance of discipline.

We children thought all servicemen were heroes and we tried, in our games, to emulate them. We never, even for a moment, doubted that we would win the war; the confidence of youth no doubt. But I now realise that the real heroes were the women. They coped in an amazing way with fear, deprivation, rationing, lonliness and generally having to get on with it. It was they who kept the home fires burning. They had so little and managed to do so much with it. Fruit cakes and puddings made with little or no fruit, carrots and turnips being used to supplement raisins and sultanas. One egg per person per week, very little sugar, a knob of butter each week and fruit only in season. Rabbit, corned beef, dried eggs and milk, gray bread, small quantities of meat of inferior quality. I've only scratched the surface. But they coped. For instance my mother made dressing gowns for my sister and I out of an old army blanket. Our toys were usually home-made or second hand and 'done up', but we still enjoyed Christmas and Birthdays which Mums managed to make special, somehow. We still had comics, albeit thin with few pages. Our main sources of 'canned' entertainment were the wireless (radio), two channels: the Home service which had plays, talks and the news and, joy of joys, 'Childrens' Hour', marvellous! The other channel was called 'Forces' and was, I believe, mainly music and comedy shows, the latter which we loved. ITMA (It's That Man Again) with Tommy Handley, Monday Night at Eight, In Town Tonight, Happidrome; simply writing these programme titles down fills me with nostalgia. Thank you 大象传媒! Our other joy was a weekly visit to the pictures (cinema). Hollywood produced some fabulous films during the war as did our own studios at Elstree and Pinewood. A visit to the local cinema was a real treat as we would see two films plus a newsreel and a cartoon, so we got our moneys worth. Outdoors play formed the bulk of our entertainment, especially during school holidays. We had such fun climbing trees or playing in the local quarry. I became a keen Boy Scout, a pastime I had been introduced to in Scotland by the Houston family all of whom had been involved.

Children all love sweets and I was no exception. But our ration was just four ounces a week, that's one Mars bar, and Ice Creams were unavailable as were exotic fruits such as bananas and oranges; so we couldn't over-indulge. But the thing about it was that we were all in the same boat, so it didn't seem so bad.

My strongest memories of the realities of war were the Dunkirk episode, which I referred to earlier, the air raids and later the streets being filled with hundreds of military vehicles so that every road was a car park. They stayed there unmoving for a few nights then one morning they were all gone, and we hadn't even heard them leave during the night! This was, of course, 6th June 1944: D-Day. A few days later we went down to the sea-front to look out into the Thames estuary where we saw a stranded piece of the Mulberry harbour stuck on a sand bar. It remained there for years and was always a popular attraction. My saddest memory is of my friend Barry who sat next to me in school. On this one morning he was sobbing uncontrollably. He had just learned that his father had been killed in Normandy. In September of 1944 my friends and I saw overhead hundreds of aircraft most towing gliders, bound, we later discovered, for Arnhem and the other bridges on the route of 'Market Garden'. Little did we realise at all of these times that we were seeing history being made.

The end of the war came as a bit of an anti-climax for me. I remember asking my Grandad what we would do now that there was no war to preoccupy us! I thought that life would be very boring! And in any case I had been looking forward to joining up and getting involved. Children have the strangest thoughts.

On VE day my mother took my sister and I up to London by train to join in the celebrations, but I have little recollection of the day other than that it was crowded and very tiring.

As a postscript to my wartime memories the readers, if there are any! may be interested to know that later, in 1951, I joined the RAF and served for the next 35 years flying mainly Bombers. Thankfully I and my colleagues were never called upon to emulate our illustriuos forebears in Bomber Command (Their deeds have never been rewarded nor were they ever thanked). Ours were jet bombers with nuclear weapons and because the policy of deterrence worked we were able to maintain the peace. Long may it remain.

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