大象传媒

I was a schoolboy of 10 when the war started. Just before, I learned that I was to be evacuated. It was then an adventure; I had never been away from home before. Where would I go, what would I see, what would I do ?

I said goodbye to my parents at Portmouth Town Station where thay put a label on my lapel, and gave me a big hug and kiss before I boarded the train with my school friends.

We arrived at a big rambling old house, which I later learned was near Winchester. We were all asked to stand by a large white tiled swimming pool where there were piles of hay. Beside us were sacks some larger, some smaller. We were told to fill the sacks with straw. The small ones would be for our pillow, and the large for our bed. We then all trooped of to our dormitories.

There we found some rough orange boxes. One was given to each of us as a cupboard to store our meagre belongings. A pail in the centre of the dorm. was for relieving ourselves for number ones.

I don't know why, but I remember nothing about lessons. One morning I was eating porridge for breakfast. Funny I would not eat it at home. I began to like it, maybe because there was nothing else. Anyway there was a rap at the head of the table. "Boys", said the headmaster,
"The Prime Minister has announced that we are now at war with Germany". There was a hushed silence followed by a rustle of chatter around the refectory. What was all this going to mean to us ?

The days that followed were a bit of a blur. I do remember enjoying ourselves in the large grounds, climbing trees, playing cowboys and indians, and racing round like mad things. The evenings were taken up playing monopoly and totopoly.

During one of these sessions we played the fool and I was pushed into an orange box where my back came into contact with a rusty nail. I still have that scar today.

I did not mind the privations much, but I was missing my Mum and Dad terribly. I kept writing to them "Please take me home". I don't remember how long it was but eventually they came to see me. "Victor, do you realise what you will come home to in Portmouth, you will live dangerously day by day, and the bombs will be terrifying". "I don't mind", I said, "All I want is to be with you". They did in the end agree to put me in another school.

This school was the only one to remain open in Portmouth, run my monks of the de la Salle Order. I soon settled down happily here even though there were the rumblings of war surrounding us.

I well remember the first air raid siren sounding. I was scared out of my wits. That awful wailing sound up and down, up and down, in tone. Then the drumming of the bombers engines as they came over. The first bomb destroyed a pub near North End.

At home some workmen came from the Council, dug a big hole in the garden, erected a corrugated iron structure, and topped it with the spoil from the hole. It was called an Anderson Shelter. It was to be our home, particularly at night and whenever the warning sounded.

The nearest I ever came to dying was when a bomb
landed in the next street 100 yards away. I could see all the windows of our house cave in from where we were in the shelter.

As time went on I wanted to see what was going on outside, so out I popped and watched as the German Stuka bombers dived to attack the ships in the dockyard. I could see the swastikas quite plainly on their tails.

In this front line city things were getting hotter and hotter, so Mum & Dad decided to move to a friend's house in Waterlooville 10 miles away, and later bought a house there. One evening Dad and I went to the pictures. In the middle of the performance all the lights went out. No announcement was made in fear of pannicking everyone. When we got outside and looked South, the sky was red. Portsmouth had had a pounding once more.

That pounding hardly ever stopped, and when I cycled to school each morning I wondered if it was still going to be there.

At school the routine was that if there was an amber alert we stayed in class. A red alert meant that we went into the cellars. In the cellers during the attack we all sang songs. "Roll out the Barrel" was the favourite.

In the quadrangle we swopped pieces of shrapnel we had picked up and yarns about what we had seen in the sky. Two of such events have stuck firmly in my mind. One day in the garden I saw a Spitfire flying in from the South with its tail hanging off. It amazed me how it could still fly. Then the pilot baled out; I must go to where he lands, I thought to myself. Off I ran across the fields. I got there at the same time as a number of others, and there the pilot was safe and sound. "Where have you been ?" I aksed. "You'll read about it in the papers tomorrow" he said.

Again in the garden, it must have been 1944, I saw a host of aircraft pulling gliders across the sky. We learned later that was going to be the famous landing at Arnhem. When aircraft went over I would try to plot direction and speed to see if I could judge where they would be going to bomb a target. I was very often right.

At school, during lunch, we used to go to Southsea Common to see what we could pick up in the way of souvenirs from the night before. Shrapnel was a good find, but also cordite which was an amber coloured primer for the shells. This we used to fuel the rockets we made out of paper wrapped around pencils to form a tube. The addition of wings made a superb jet aeroplane pre Whittle. As we know today a foolhardy thing to do, but life was a danger anyway in those days.

That jet aeroplane had its more terrible counterpart in the form of the V1 or commonly known as the Doodlebug. Huddled in the shelter one night I heard one come over and at the same time its engine cut out. That meant it could be the end of us. As it happened it fell about 20 miles away at Eastleigh.

From my bedroom window I used to watch these Doodlebugs follow each other acoss the sky at night. It was fascinating to a teenager, by now hardened by the horrors of war.

As "D" day approached activities around us reached fever pitch. Along the main road approaching and beyond Waterloovile were gathered a multitude of armoured vehicles and amphibians. I chatted to some of the men, some of whom were Americans who gave me the inevitable gum to chew.

These vehicles became a target for enemy aircraft, and of course as our house was so close we were in danger of being hit. They missed us but the house across the road must still bear the marks of machine gun bullets which I saw at the time.

When victory in Europe finally arrived in 1945, I remember the jubilation so vividly. A huge bonfire was lit in the park at the bottom of our road for the whole village to dance around, and dance in a frenzy they did.

So my plea to my Mum & Dad to come home to a war torn Portsmouth did in the end work out well. It could of course been very different. Wherever they are now I want to say thank you to them from the bottom of my heart.

End

Ellifaz

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.