大象传媒

And so, away again. Part 4.

Stories of an evacuee.

Later on, during 1944, the Americans were travelling through the New Forest on their way to embarkation for D-day. They had K rations for food, all wrapped up in sealed waxed boxes. They contained tinned meat, biscuits, dextrose tablets and other eats. Also some American cigarettes. The food was much nicer than the school food, so I used to try to find discarded half empty boxes by the roadside or feel or look into containers around their trucks, find a quiet lane or shelter under a tree, and then tuck into my dinner. The cigarettes I sold to older boys at school.
One day I managed to get my hand into a large box on the tailgate of a lorry and lifted out two what looked like large candles. They were not K rations so I dropped them back in the box. When I talked with some friends later on, they had taken two, and planned to use them later, remotely in the New Forrest. They were sticks of dynamite !
Every boy that travelled by train had to have with him one of those keys that you use to wind up large tubes of glue or mastic. These were a perfect fit into the door locks of every carriage on the railway, and if you didn鈥檛 have one, then you were likely to find yourself locked in your compartment when you arrived at your station. One could of course use them to lock in the girls who were travelling to school, or the Americans who were travelling to London for a short break. I think that we were a real problem to the guards on the railway at times ! I had a small pack of cards and sold them to some Americans on the train for 陆 dollar. ( Worth 2 shillings and 6 pence then ). I took that money plus other cents that I had cadged from other soldiers to the local bank in Brokenhurst and changed it into English money. I cannot remember what I bought for this as sweets were not available or toys. Perhaps I bought some comics.
Once a month or so I went home on a weekend, when my mother had sent me some money for the journey. I was expecting the letter and the money one time, but it hadn鈥檛 arrived. I must have told Mrs.Goddard that I had got it and would be going direct from Brokenhurst on the Friday afternoon to Portsmouth. I had the train ticket to get onto Brokenhurst railway station and then caught the train to Southampton, Eastleigh and thence to Fratton station in Portsmouth. I had to pretend to the ticket collector at Fratton that I lost my ticket out of the window. ( Most boys spent a lot of time hanging out of the windows collecting steam train numbers.)
My mother was more than surprised when I turned up that Friday. I got into a bit of trouble and of course had to forgo my next trip home and a bit of pocket money to pay for the ticket back to Brokenhurst.
I always remember standing at this level crossing, where the big steam trains stopped while passengers got off and on; looking up at the huge driving wheels, the steam hissing from pipes, the smoke from the chimney and perhaps a blast from the safety valve. Then the train, perhaps Lord Nelson ( my favourite train ever ), would start off. The steam would be louder, the wheels might slip a bit, and the sheer majesty of this huge engine would show all it鈥檚 power as it gradually pulled the long line of coaches behind it into motion.

In the forest, and I think between Lymington and Brokenhurst there was an Italian prisoner of war camp. They all wore brown overalls with large yellow diamond patches. There didn鈥檛 seem to be much in the way of guards for them when they worked in different parts of the forest.
Some boys who were billeted at Lymington got into trouble for taking the bulbs from the carriages of the little side train that took them there from Brokenhurst, and using them as missiles from the windows. But with all these goings on, there were no more expulsions or canings.
There couldn鈥檛 be detentions because of the difficulty of everyone getting back to there billet. The teachers were all elderly, and probably in their 60鈥檚,( though at that age, anyone over 30 was thought of as elderly ).

One weekend in mid May 1944, I went home and met my father, who was now a commando sergeant in the Royal Marines. My mother, father, sister and I all went to Bursledon, on the River Hamble near to Southampton. There we went to my father鈥檚 group of tanks, ( I think that they were Churchill tanks ) all lined up in a country lane. I climbed all over them and Dad gave us some chocolate to eat. At the end of the day, my mother and sister returned by train, and my father and I returned to Portsmouth on a tandem bicycle, which he had bought for my mother and himself to use. I am now 12 years old, not all that big, my father was quite a big man, 6ft., and of course very fit. I think I did my best on that cycle ride although my father did seem to have rather a different centre of gravity to me, and I found the angle that I had to peddle at rather strange. On D-day he was one of the first to land at Juno beach with his tanks, accompanying the Canadian鈥檚. He got as far as Caen in France before losing all the tanks and then returning to England.
Later in the year and at home for a weekend, we got a large map of the world and marked it up with time co-ordinates along one side and along the top. This was because he was away again not knowing where; and by mentioning some times in his letters home we could work out where in the world he had got to. From this we found out that he was on the east side of Australia; and later on that he was part of a team to island hop towards Japan. I think that having managed to survive this long in the war, it would have really stretched his luck to have survived this as well. So you will have to imagine what I felt about Japan surrendering because of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Eventually, now the war was over, we could all return to our homes. Unfortunately, my school buildings had been destroyed during the blitz, and there were three grammar schools wanting to return with only two school buildings available. Portsmouth Southern Secondary, Portsmouth Northern Secondary and Portsmouth Grammar School were classed as grammar schools now. There was large meeting in the Wesley Central Hall at the end of Penhale Road to discuss this and eventually to have a 鈥渓ucky dip鈥� to see which two schools could return. Portsmouth Southern Grammar was lucky and we all returned to go to school at Highland Road, Southsea.

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