大象传媒

EXPERIENCE OF BEING EVACUATED - AUGUST 1939

I had just turned thirteen years of age in September, 1939 and the School I attended was on City Road, Hulme, Manchester. The building is still there at the end of the Mancunian Way on the left hand side of the road near to Chester Road and opposite Hulme Church, but not being used as a school at the time of writing.
I was in a class in the Boys section and my sister, Marjorie (aged eleven), was in the Girls section of City Road School. The Headmaster, Mr Moss, held rehearsals for evacuating all pupils from the school to areas outside Manchester in the event of war being declared. Trafford Park, a large industrial estate some two miles west of where we lived, would possibly have become a prime target for German bombing should war have been declared; so it was decided to move all the younger children living in Manchester away to a safer place away from danger.
Because my mother insisted that my sister and I should not be separated, should evacuation need to take place, my sister Marjorie always came in to the boys鈥� section of the school when we all assembled in the school yard for evacuation rehearsals. This we did some four times, but always returning to our classrooms when we had finished assembling in the school playground. On the fifth occasion it turned out to be the real thing, and that was the last time I ever attended City Road school.
There we were, all lined up in the playground with our cardboard gas mask cases round our neck and cardboard labels attached to our coat buttons by string and carrying a few spare clothes in a case. The labels had our name, address, age, and the name of our school written on to them in ink, ready for what turned out to be something of an adventure and certainly a big change from the everyday classroom teaching given to us in the City of Manchester.
High excitement, mixed with a little fear and trepidation, as all the pupils from the different classes set off in a long column and began marching along City Road towards Jackson Street and then on to Deansgate. At first there was the buzz of conversation among ourselves as we all tried to guess where we were going; commenting on what we thought was in store for us and how long we would be away - some thought it would be a kind of two week holiday, while others thought we would be home by weekend.
Later on, as we neared Victoria/Exchange station, we all began to sing to keep our spirits up. All along Deansgate typists and clerks came to their office windows to wave to us, as did the people walking on the pavements on both sides of the road - and we all waved back. There was not a lot of traffic in those days, so we were four abreast as we walked in the road in between the tram tracks and the pavement.
When we did reach Exchange/Victoria railway station, it was like a football match with other schools as well as our own mingling in a large orderly crowd, along with some of the parents who were assisting, while others who had just come along to try and find out where we were going - no one knew - or at least they were not saying. There were a few tears from both children and grown ups as we trundled along the platform to board the different trains allocated to each group.
We were soon on our way, ten or twelve to a carriage, with a teacher or parent helper. It was not a corridor train so we were all chattering with some of us trying to look out of the windows when we either slowed down or stopped. We eventually arrived at a town named Preston where we were put on to 鈥榖uses to take us a little distance to a large room in a big school building where we were all given a carrier bag with 鈥渆mergency rations鈥� in. There was a tin of corned beef, a tin of condensed milk, a small pack of butter, tea, sugar, etceteras; but the best item of all was a big block of chocolate. Even though this was supposed to last us and was only for 鈥榚mergencies鈥� - we all ate it, some before we even got back on the 鈥榖us.
The 鈥榖us that the rest of my class and I were put on took us to a very small village just outside Woodplumpton named Catforth; about half way between Preston and Blackpool. The village was surrounded by trees, hedges and fields with real live cows in them. Coming from a City where the only green grass you saw was in the local parks, this was something else - an entirely different world - and we were going to stay there - but for how long? Nobody knew. There was only a small Village Hall, a tiny Post Office come general store, and a local Public House named 鈥淭he Running Pump鈥� near to the Post Office, with a small Church on the outskirts of the village, not far from Woodplumpton. All the rest of the people in the area lived on farms surrounding this small central community hall.
Trestle tables had been put up in the village hall with forms on either side for us to sit on. The tables were full of sandwiches, cakes and drinks for the children, with cups of tea and sandwiches for the teachers and helpers. After drinking their tea all the helpers then got back on to the 鈥榖us and off they went on their way home to Manchester, leaving all our class, and Mr Evans our teacher to be accommodated within the Catforth community. Marjorie, my sister, and I were taken to a local farm where we became involved in the milking, mucking-out, feeding the hens and pigs and all the other jobs that had to be done each and every day.
Everyone had their jobs to do. We had only been on the farm a few days when we all gathered round the 鈥渨ireless" to hear Mr Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister, announce we were at war with Germany. Not a lot was said, but everyone had different thoughts and after a short while the farmers wife, Mrs Cornall, said we should all say a prayer. This we all did together.
I was given three cows to milk before school and the same three cows when I came back home in the afternoon. The school was quite near to the farm, just a very large field away. My sister used to feed the hens and collect the eggs. Being 鈥渢ownies鈥� it was all new to us both, but we soon settled in and really enjoyed the different chores we were given to do and our new routine. We must have looked a little peaked as Mrs Cornall gave both of us a large mug with the instructions: 鈥渨henever you feel like it, go and get a fresh egg from under one of the hens, break it into the mug, pour some warm milk from the cooler on to the top of the egg, beat it up with a fork and then drink it up - it鈥檒l do you the world of good鈥�.
The first weekend we were taken into Preston to be measured for two pairs of hand made clogs. I was given an old hat to put on when in the shippon and very soon became quite adept at milking, sat on a three legged stool with the bucket resting on one heel and held between the legs, with my head resting on the side of the cow. After being on the farm for some six months, an automatic milking system was installed, but when the automatic teats were disconnected, we still had to finish the cows off by hand to make sure that all the milk was out of the udder. Each cow gave between a half and three-quarters of a bucketful each time they were milked. They all had individual names which I soon got to know.
There was only one cow that gave any trouble and she was always milked by the farm hand as she was prone to kicking out while being milked. First a large harness was strapped round her middle and attached to a large hook in the beam above, then one of her back legs was bent and tied back so that she was only standing on three legs. If she did try to kick with the one free back leg, then the harness took the strain.
The weather was really nice in the late summer of 1939 and the cows were left out in the fields. They were brought in to the shippons to be milked twice a day and this was done with the help of the dogs who used to round them up. When the milking was finished we had to clean out the shippons with hosepipes and stiff brushes. During the winter the cows were kept in the shippons and fed with hay from the loft up above as well as cattle feed.

Once when we were being taken out for the evening, in order to expedite the cleaning out of the shippons following the milking, each time a cow lifted it鈥檚 tail, either Ronnie or myself would run behind holding a bucket to save the manure splashing on to the shippon floor. If you look in any farm fields, you will see that a cow that coughs while undertaking its 鈥榙uty鈥� drops a large pat of manure and then ever decreasing smaller pats extending for about five feet. On this particular night, I was standing behind the cow with the raised tail with my bucket at the ready waiting to catch what was being ejected - when the cow coughed. That was the end of the night out - I ended up covered in 'you know what' from my waist up to the top of my head ! I have always put that incident down to me always having a good complexion from that day onwards !
The winter of 1939/40 was a very bad one with lots of snow. One morning we woke up with the back of the house covered in snow from the roof to the floor. When we opened the back door, there was just a wall of snow. Luckily at the front of the house it was only about two feet deep. The snow had drifted in the wind and as well as drifting on one side of the house, it had drifted between the hedges. On the roads the snow was level with the hedges and was about five to six feet deep.
The village was cut off for a week and the only method of transport was by hitching the horse to the large upturned oak table from the kitchen. This was used like a sled and the hedges were broken down between fields. This was the only method of transport between the different farms, post office, pub and the few houses. on the outskirts of the village, where eggs and milk and other necessities were taken to help out while all other forms of transport had ground to a halt.
We still had to milk the cows in the morning and the afternoon, but because there were not enough milk canisters, we distributed some to other households along with food and then had to throw the rest of the milk away down the drains. All the farmers helped each other and began digging in shifts, clearing the snow by hand. It was seven or eight days before the gangs from the Preston area linked up with ourselves from the Catforth village. No one in living memory had ever experienced such a heavy snow fall that had disrupted the everyday routines to such a degree that everything literally ground to a halt.
All the ponds and canals in the area were frozen solid. With the school being closed, all the children enjoyed skating on the both the ponds and canals. The metal base on the clogs were ideal for skating and much fun was enjoyed skating as well as much snowballing and snowman building, The only casualty during that stands out in that cold spell were the swans that became trapped as the water began freezing. Once the ice became thick enough, they were released by breaking away the ice from the trapped feathers, There were of course bruised posteriors' and elbows as skaters lost their equilibrium, but luckily, no fractured bones.
Although there was rationing in being, the people living on farms were far better off than the populous living in towns and cities. The odd pig was slaughtered on our farm, cut up and salted and distributed to surrounding farmers. There was a general understanding of sharing as each farm took it in turn to kill some of the livestock on a rota basis. The Sunday dinner always consisted of chicken which was killed the day before. A plump hen was chosen, after 鈥榥ecking鈥� and then bled over the grid. It was then plucked and cleaned out internally - always making sure the gall bladder was not disturbed, because if it was, this left a bitter taste in the meat if it was broken.
The 鈥榥ecking鈥� was done by holding the hen firmly under the arm, holding the lower part of the hens neck with one hand, then by pulling hard away from the body and then by twisting quickly in order to break its neck. The hen always jumped and jerked and attempted to run around for a quite a few seconds after the dastardly deed was done.
One Saturday the farmer said to me, 鈥淔rank, you and Ronnie go and pick a nice fat hen from one of the coots and see if you can 鈥榥eck it鈥�, pluck and clean it ready for Mrs Cornell to cook for tomorrow鈥檚 dinner鈥�. So off we went to duly choose a prime bird in order to be initiated into the process of 鈥榥ecking鈥� that we had often seen done previously.
Very apprehensively I managed to get the bird held firmly under my left arm, gripped the neck and proceeded squeamishly to pull and twist as hard as I could, but unfortunately, not hard enough. The bird fluttered and struggled hard until eventually it escaped from my grasp. We chased it, caught it again and a second attempt was made, again unsuccessfully. Not to be thwarted in our third attempt after catching the hen yet again, Ronnie held the birds neck over a wooden block, whereupon I chopped its head off with an axe. Needless to say we both rushed away as the blood spurted and the headless hen ran round and around, in what we thought was in pursuit of Ronnie and I. Eventually the technique was mastered after a little more tuition from the farmer.
As a lad of thirteen and being unexpectedly introduced into the farming customs taught me, in some respects, an awful lot about life in general and also inured me to some degree to the vagaries of the cruelty inherent in the human and animal kingdoms that are 'all part of life鈥檚 rich pattern' as the saying goes.

In the shippons, the pig sty鈥檚 and the various other outbuildings on the farm there was a warren of rat runs that one became accustomed to. Even to the extent that when the pig swill was poured out of the bucket into the trough on the floor within the sty, there were rats as well as pigs having their fill. In one particular sty the rats used to run along a wooden joist that the wooden walls were nailed to, just about level with the bottom part of the split door. The bottom part could be closed with the top half open. The local 鈥榬at catcher鈥� used to pay for each rat tail, so this encouraged the catching and extermination of the vermin.
In the farmhouse was a double barrelled shotgun that we children were forbidden ever to touch or use. One day when the farmer and his wife went into Preston, I had the brilliant idea of shooting a rat with the gun as it ran along the wooden joist in the sty. So stealthily loading the gun and resting it on the lower part of the door, it was aimed at a particular point on the beam just waiting for the rat to pass by this spot. Kill the rat, cut off the tail - money for the asking.
The cumbersome gun stock rested against my shoulder, the rat duly appeared, the trigger was pressed, the recoil knocked me backwards on to the farmyard floor along with the gun. Picking myself up, I looked over the half open door in horror. There, where there should have been a solid wooden wall, was a large gaping hole about two foot square where the spreading shot from the gun had shattered the wooden boards, leaving a shot peppered beam running across the middle of space where you could see the open fields. No sign of the rat or its tail.
Pure panic set in. It was never envisaged that so much damage could be caused by a gun. At the most, I thought, a small hole might have appeared in the wood from the bullet after it had passed through the rat was to be expected, but for a two foot wide circular open window type hole to appear was unbelievable. More knowledge had been gleaned and a lesson learned. It was mid afternoon when we put the gun back in the kitchen. I left the farm to go to a friend on the next farm, afraid of the consequences of my foolishness and frightened to go back. When I did return to a telling off and received a thorough good hiding that I can remember to this day, there was no tea or supper and an early bed on that particular day.
We used to lay cage like traps with home made cheese in to tempt the vermin inside. These were collected each morning from various parts of the farm and taken to the horse trough to be immersed, still in the cage, until they drowned. When the rats were held over the water in the trough, they used to emit a high pitched scream as though they had a premonition of what was to come next.
Their tails were cut off and the bodies buried in the dung heap. On the next farm the farmer kept a ferret in a cage to combat rats or any wild weasel that ventured near the hen cotes to devour the poultry. Weasel's always killed indiscriminately once in the hen house, twenty to thirty hens at a time. Once tracked down, the ferret had a length of string, knotted at foot intervals, tied to its back leg and then sent down the hole to fight and kill the weasel. The knots on the string were then counted to ascertain the distance from the entrance of the hole, where the digging commenced to retrieve the ferret and stop it staying there to eat its prey.
To feed the ferret and to keep it alert, it was occasionally placed in a barrel with a wire netting covering the top. A captured rat from one of the cages was then dropped into the barrel. Once the rat saw the ferret, it used to start running round the wall of the barrel (like motorbikes on the wall of death - which it literally was for the rat) while the ferret sat in the middle, watching it run, but never moving. Eventually the rat began to tire and had to stop from sheer exhaustion. Once this happened the ferret pounced, killing the rat with one bite to the throat, tossing it from side to side to ensure it was dead before feeding off the carcass.
To teach the young pups into the art of 鈥榬atting鈥� one of the young rats caught in the cage had its back legs tied together with wire and then tied to a rope strung over the pulley and pulled up to near the top. The young pups were waiting and yapping down below. Eventually the rat would knaw through the rope and drop to the ground stunned, whereupon the pups would kill it. This was done, as it had been done over the years, to teach them to 鈥榬at鈥�, because an unencumbered fully grown rat would probably have attacked the pups, killed them or made them afraid of their ferocious adversary.
Once a year all the surrounding farmers and helpers gather at one farm to have a 鈥榗ull鈥�. When it was our farm's turn, all the rat holes are blocked off bar for two. A hose pipe was put down one of the holes, while all the people formed a double line at the exit of the other. All had sticks and at the end of the line sat the dogs. After a short while, a number of rats began to emerge, one by one, running down the line, with everyone trying to hit it with their sticks. If it did manage to run the gauntlet without being hit, then the dogs finished it off. Up to thirty rats or more were caught that day and of course we benefited by selling the tails to the local 鈥榬at catcher鈥�; not the 鈥榬odent exterminator鈥� or other fancy phraseology often used nowadays.
Farm life opened the eyes of many a 鈥榯ownie鈥� to a lot of experiences that were everyday occurrences to country folk. Watching a new foal being born in the field without any assistance from any human and the mother licking it all over before it tried to stand up on splayed legs, falling back a few times, before eventually succeeding to stand up and then walk - all in the matter of minutes.
Once we were all aroused from sleep in the early hours of the morning to help the vet, who had been called out urgently, extricate a calf from a cow in difficulties giving birth. How can one ever forget the arm plunged in up to the elbow, withdrawing a leg and then pulling as hard as you could on a rope tied to the back legs of a calf until it was dragged from the womb of the mother who was bellowing loudly at each tug. The sound echoing within the confines of the straw strewn floor and whitewashed walls of the shippon. the cow licking it鈥檚 offspring as though nothing untoward had taken place. Then we all crawled back into bed after a warm drink following a discussion on other similar incidents that had occurred in the past - a revelation to an uninitiated boy from Hulme.
Other memories that remain clear after all those years ago was looking for a heifer stirk that had gone missing. A tour of our own fields looking for the young calf had been unsuccessful, so the search was widened to the fields of surrounding farmers. There was a hollow in one of the fields on the next farm and lying at the bottom of the incline was, what I thought was the missing animal. Gripping my stick I rushed down the slope and gave, what I thought was the grown calf, a few hefty swipes to the back side to make it stand up. It stood up allright, but turned out to be a full grown bull, complete with ring through its nose. It just stood there looking at me, with its large hypnotic eyes, as we stood face to face just a few feet away from each other, mesmerised.
I turned away intending to run, but my legs would not respond to the ever urgent commands given to them from my frightened adrenaline raddled brain. Pure fright had by now taken hold of my senses as I quickly dropped on to my knees and began to try and scramble, as best I could, to the top of the slope, communing with nature as I fled. When I looked back, the bull was staring at me in sheer amazement. What made it worse, was that some years earlier the farmer had been gored on his buttocks by his own bull and spent some time in hospital. In my overwrought imagination I could visualise myself tumbling through the air after being tossed by the bull and landing back on the bull鈥檚 horns.

The farm house was plagued by a swarm of wasps in late August, early September. These were curtailed somewhat by punching a hole in the lids of a nearly finished jam jars and leaving them on the window sills and other various places. The wasps crawled through the holes in the lids, but after feeding on the jam, could not escape until the jar became full. The jam jars were then immersed in a bucket of water to kill the wasps.
The farm had a large pear tree in the field next to the house and an apple orchard some distance away. The wasps nest was eventually tracked down halfway to the orchard on the side of the path the cows took on their way from the shippons to the grazing fields. On the toss of a coin it fell to me to obliterate the nest. I was informed that first of all to get a spade and dig into the ground at the entrance of the nest to lever as much of the soil as possible away in order to widen the entrance.
I rolled by school socks up above my knees and tied my short trousers at the bottom with string as well as hanging a large hairnet over my face and wedged under my hat as a makeshift form of protection. Thus equipped, and wearing gloves I ventured down the path to undertake the dastardly deed. I got the spade in all right but when I began to lever the spade, literally hundreds of wasps poured out of the nest and followed me in a swarm as I ran as fast as I could towards the farmhouse outbuildings leaving the spade stuck in the ground.
Suffering from a few stings, the farmers wife began administering 'dolly blue' to the stings. On my right leg just below the knee it felt as though a hot needle was being inserted, so more wet 'dolly blue' was applied. A little lower down another hot needle, so more 鈥榙olly blue鈥� as I rolled my stocking down, only to find as the stocking reached the ankle, with numerous stings on the leg by now, that a couple of wasps were actually in the stocking having their revenge.
Needless to say, I immediately 鈥榰nvolunteered鈥� as the scourge of the 鈥榳asps nest annihilator鈥� and promptly handed the job over to the farm hand while I ministered to the various battle scars that had accumulated on my right leg. After a short wait the farm hand poured a mixture of petrol and paraffin down the hole in the ground; then a second dousing before stuffing soaked rags into the hole and setting the rags on fire. It appeared to do the trick as the number of wasps depleted considerably.
The sojourn on the farm was mostly enjoyable. One of the large wooden hen houses that had never been used was used as a makeshift theatre where we put on not very good home made 鈥榩lays鈥� that occupied some of our playtime. Riding the pigs in the orchard was another pastime, the winner being the one that could stay on the sow the longest. This was not very long; there was nothing to hold on to and they bucked and jumped once anyone landed on their backs.
Better results were obtained with the farm horse and a makeshift circus ring, a plank and a bale of hay. One leading the horse the others taking it turn to run up the plank and jump on, holding on to each other. As there was no saddle, the first one on tended to begin sliding, as each extra rider was added, ending up hanging on to the neck, upside down, afraid to let go and probably end up by getting trampled on.
The horse was used for ploughing, which I was allowed to try out, but not very successfully, 鈥渁ugh鈥� if you wanted the horse to go to the left and 鈥済ee鈥� to the right. Riding it bareback to have new shoes fitted at the smithy and driving the cart during hay making was also experiences to be relished and remembered fondly. Many new jobs were undertaken during evacuation; muck spreading, tarring the hen pens roofs, taking calves and cows to Preston market to sell and buying new stock. Collecting the eggs from the geese to sell at Preston market. Much larger than hen eggs and harder to obtain. The gander had to be shooed off its nest situate on a small island in one of the ponds and then kept at bay, along with the goose, while the eggs were collected. A nasty nip from one or the other if you were not quick off the mark.
In the village there was a very large poultry farm owned by Tom Baron, one of the few men in Great Britain that could sex chickens. To make some extra pocket money, Ronnie and I used to go over to give a hand with the chores. The different enclosures with cocks, hens, geese, turkeys and all manner of fowl were all in orderly rows with a path down the middle.
We used to stand on the back of an open backed lorry loaded with feed with two shovels. One of the farm hands used to drive slowly along the line of pens on both sides while we shovelled the chicken feed over the top of the pens until the lorry was empty. Then back to load up again and off to finish off all the other rows of pens.
In the barn there were two huge incubators that held large wooden trays that had holes in the base ready to be filled with eggs. A powerful hand lamp was then passed underneath each tray of eggs to show the outline of the yoke. This revealed all the fertile eggs by showing a number of dark spots. When the trays were full up with eggs they went in to the incubator on a rotating centre wheel. The incubation period spread over a few days until the eggs began to hatch out.
When the day came that the incubation period was up Ronnie and I along with a farm hand and Tom Baron used to look through the windows of the incubators, watching the trays rotate inside the heated compartment and waiting for the hatching to begin. Then as you watched first one chick would break through its shell, followed by another and then suddenly all the eggs began breaking open with the chicks walking about inside the ridged trays.
The incubator stopped. The big doors opened and the trays taken out one at a time. On long tables there were fairly large cardboard boxes with air holes in the side stacked up. Each tray was then placed on to the table ready for sorting. Tom Baron then used to pick up each chick in his hand, turn it over and decide which box it went into with a quick flowing movement. Hens to the right and cocks to the left. Eventually all the trays were empty and all the chicks neatly ensconced in the printed cardboard containers. The boxes stacked into a waiting van that then took them to the railway station. His different customers in various parts of the country received the boxes of chicks.
Our job was then to clear the trays of egg shells and wash them in water and disinfectant, leaving the trays to dry and then made ready for the next batch of eggs to be processed. The two incubators operated in sequence so that as one finished, the other one was half way through the hatching process. Evidently the knowledge of how to sex a chick is a closely guarded secret and not imparted to anyone other than close family. It ensures that a high price is paid for the guaranteed sexed boxes of chickens when being sold,
Another of the jobs that will always remembered was holding a bowl of 鈥淚zal" disinfectant and a large handful of cotton wool when a large litter of piglets were born. The farm hand used to take a small wooden stool into the sty, sit on it, while I caught the piglets' one by one and pass them to him with much squealing. They were each castrated with a razor and it was my job to apply the disinfectant with the cotton wool and disinfectant. Living on a farm taught me a lot, widened my experience of life and in many ways assisted my journey into adulthood.
The one thing that we had in Hulme that the farms were not 鈥榩rivy鈥� too was water flushing toilets. On the farm there was a wooden plank of wood with a hole in the middle. There was a large bucket underneath and this was emptied by removing a large slate from the back of the building. There was a second one, never used while I was there, with two holes in the wood - a tandem loo ! How and when used, I was never able to find out.
Ronnie and I used to wait until Marjorie was going on the loo and he used to give me a signal from the corner, whereupon I removed the slate and thrust up a handful of nettles. On one occasion, as a joke, he gave me the signal; I removed the slate, up went the nettles, but only to find to my alarm that it was the farm hand sat there. This custom stopped immediately and my backside was sore and stinging for quite a while, but not from any nettles.
I have very many happy memories of my life on the farm until I left school and returned home to Manchester - just in time for the first bombs to fall on our great City - but that鈥檚 another story.
The evacuation of schoolchildren from Manchester was some sixty years ago. I am over seventy three years of age now, but the pleasant memories of 1939 and 1940 are as clear today as if they only took place yesterday - an enjoyable experience, never to be forgotten. I think I could still manage to milk a cow today. Know anyone with a three legged stool, a pair of clogs, an old hat and a bucket to lend me ?

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