大象传媒

33 鈥� Michael Warner, born in 1932, moved to Stratford from Birmingham early in the War:

"I was rising seven when the War started; I started school in Selly Park Infants, Birmingham, first of all, and then of course it was whilst I was attending that school that the war broke out; when that happened there was a big panic, everybody thought all hell was going to break loose, and I was evacuated to a farm belonging to friends of friends in Gloucestershire for a few months; that was where I had my seventh birthday. I went to school, I went to the village school,in Gretton near Winchcombe, but my progress at Selly Park had been such that I was ahead of what was happening in the village school. It was old fashioned, with two rooms, and the whole juvenile population of the village was divided into two, so I didn鈥檛 actually learn anything new while I was there,and when we eventually fetched up in Stratford, my mother said well [we were living in Tiddington at that time]..well, he鈥檚 not going to another village school, and I was enrolled at Broad Street. And after I鈥檇 been there a few days, one of the teachers said to my mother, where鈥檚 this boy been? He鈥檚 way behind, and so I had to do some catching up.

Some of my teachers were Mrs Morgan, Mrs Kedwards, and a Miss Neighbour, I think she鈥檇 been pulled out of retirement. Anyway about this time, I sometimes cycled into Broad Street School from Alveston actually, because we were only at Tiddington for a short while and then moved to Alveston, and I cycled in from Alveston at the age of 8 or 9 on a 15 inch wheel bicycle; not a lot of traffic on the road but some of the traffic was military traffic and some of the vehicles were left hand drive, and of course they drive very close to the kerb and I had my eye on these vehicles coming up behind me, and more than once, I leapt off my bike into the hedge thinking that I was going to get mown down! I only cycled when the weather was right and the conditions were right, otherwise it was on the bus from Alveston.

While I was at Broad Street I took the entrance exam for KES, I was asked to attend KES for an oral interview, and one sunny late spring afternoon, I walked from Broad Street down Chestnut Walk, up Church Street to the school, to KES, and I remember there was hardly anybody about, and certainly no motor cars, I had the street to myself, I went to the little room off, at the head of the staircase, and I think I was interviewed by the then headmaster, the Rev. Knight, and somebody else. I only remember one of the questions they put to me - I was asked to name the war leaders on both sides, on the Axis side and on the British side, and I think I gave the right answers because I passed.

I think only about half a dozen of us went in for the entrance exam; I was the only boy, the others were girls taking the exam for Warwick, so out of a class of 30 only about six took the exam. Well Miss Neighbout asked us: put up your hand if you think you鈥檝e passed the exam. So I stuck my hand up, and she said , you can put your hand down, you won鈥檛 have passed! I am pretty sure that she didn鈥檛 like little boys, because she always had a coterie of little girls around her, and little boys, I think, she just tolerated, but I always remember that 鈥� and as it turned out I was the only one who did pass, so I hope that she was suitably sickened!

I started at KES in September 1943, and I was cycling to school then on a full sized bike as a reward for passing the entrance exam. It might have been that winter following that there was some hard winter weather and the canal basin was frozen over, probably about four or five inches of ice on it, and we used to run out of school, down Chapel Lane, across the Bancroft Gardens and leap on to the ice, and there could easily have been a hundred children on the ice, sliding about, playing about, and there were so many children larking that the ice was gently rocking, just very slowly and very gently; I don鈥檛 think there was any danger, it was too thick.

At KES there was a dedicated physics teacher called Dyson; I wish I could have been taught by him later on in my school career. I believe he did war work in some way, but he was remarkable in my eyes, because he made a machine to be used in the observatory in the quadrangle to keep the telescope trained on a particular point in the sky, so that the telescope rotated against the rotation of the earth, so it was pointing constantly at the same place in the sky 鈥� and he made this machine out of Meccano! Yes, Meccano.
I remember a teacher called Puddephat; he wore his hair unfashionably long, swept back, and a lot of the boys thought he was a bit of a pansy. And then one Monday morning one boy in my class, hey, he says, I saw Puddephat at the weekend with a girl in a punt! So we all realized that he wasn鈥檛 a pansy at all. But this is how boys think isn鈥檛 it?

At KES they were very keen on cross-country running, and we used to have to go running in all sorts of weather, generally starting at the playing fields in Manor Road. And on one occasion myself and two companions, we got lost, we were supposed to be following a course which was delineated by little red flags on sticks stuck in the ploughed field but we lost some of these and we finished up near KissingTree Lane, Alveston: we were way off course, so we were last I鈥檓 afraid! But we had certainly run further than the others.

I remember going carol singing in Alveston, and in addition to the usual places where we knocked on doors and sang a few carols, we would go to Colonel Brocklebank鈥檚 place, I think it was Alveston House, down by the mill at the bottom end of Alveston, and we were invited into the hall there to sing our carols in the hall, and we also sang carols at Hemingford House on the main Stratford to Wellesbourne road, and sometimes it was in the snow, very seasonal 鈥� we were all children, no adults.
For a time, before my parents acquired the tenancy of the cottage in Alveston we did live in Mrs Reading鈥檚 orchard in a caravan, and even after the move we still kept on the caravan in the orchard because we hadn鈥檛 really got a garden at Alveston. And in Mrs Reading鈥檚 field at the front, which had been pasture, it was gravel, the subsoil was sandy gravel, and the Air Ministry took the gravel for building local airfields. And of course when they鈥檇 finished it was like a moonscape, and this was a popular place for us children to play, to play all sorts of games. Some of them dangerous and some not so dangerous, but I think that was quite popular.

The river was quite an attraction as well at that time, and when we were in Alveston and I was probably about eleven, the proprietor of the pub, or tenant, was Frank Needle 鈥� he had a boat house, and he hired out punts, and at one period in return for keeping his path in the boathouse weeded and tidy, he let me take a punt out for nothing, and of course I鈥檇 paddle the punt up the river a bit, round the first bend, and that鈥檚 where my friends would be waiting and they鈥檇 all pile in, and we鈥檇 play landing barges and that sort of thing, you see. Frank Needle, I don鈥檛 know whether he knew about this or not, probably not. We also went swimming in the river, mainly from The Elms at Mrs Reading鈥檚 place, Tiddington. Quite regularly, but I think the river was a lot cleaner than it is now. We sometimes used to see German POWs working on the land on the opposite side of the river, and in the late summer evenings when they鈥檇 finished their work, they used to swim in the river, but we didn鈥檛 have any contact with them 鈥� they didn鈥檛 try to make contact, and as far as we were concerned they were the enemy, we didn鈥檛 really want to talk to them; they were people to be regarded with a bit of suspicion, as far as boys were concerned, so we just kept clear of them really, kept to our side of the river!

We weren鈥檛 always hungry, I think we had enough food, especially in a rural area like Stratford, there was always food available. There was a chap in Tiddington who had a licence to buy food for pigs, and the Ministry would know about four or five pigs that he was raising, but they wouldn鈥檛 know about the sixth which was for the village of course, so there was always the odd bit available.

There was a tuck shop at KES which was open mid-morning, and they sold sticky buns and hot sausage rolls, so when the bell was rung for break all the boys charged out of the classrooms all trying to get through the single door to the wooden tuckshop; the sausage rolls were very popular. Now thinking about food, near the end of the war, we were in a history period, I don鈥檛 remember the teacher鈥檚 name, but in my class we had two Baileys, there was Bailey the son of the ironmongers in Wood Street and there was Bailey the son of the greengrocer on the High Street, and the history teacher said to the greengrocer Bailey, Bailey, he says, I believe your father has some bananas. Yes sir, says Bailey: he says, go and get me some! So Bailey had to leave the history period and charge off and come back with some bananas.
I remember being with my mother queuing in Henson鈥檚 the butchers 鈥� in addition to your ration meat there were meat products that were not rationed, like offal, and sausages and so on, but they were still in short supply so you didn鈥檛.. in a way you didn鈥檛 have a right to these things, you had to queue and hope that you were going to be lucky when you arrived at the head of the queue. I also remember going to Noakes and Crofts, the grocers in Wood Street with my mother, and they actually delivered to the surrounding villages, somehow or other they got some petrol for their van and we did have things delivered by Noakes and Crofts.

Going back to my time at Gretton, after about 3 months, my parents realized that there was no immediate danger, and we went back to Birmingham for a while, and I did experience one or two raids whilst we were there, and of course that wasn鈥檛 very nice. And there was shrapnel about the morning after, and I do remember being a bit apprehensive when it was necessary to go to the shelter in the middle of the night. We did this a few times before鈥�, I think we went back to Gretton again, not to stay with the farmer but with the friends, mutual friends of the farmer and my parents, who had a weekend cottage at Gretton.

And then after that, that鈥檚 when we came to Stratford with my father who was moved by Alvis to Stratford, and of course when we eventually finished up at Alveston we weren鈥檛 far from Wellesbourne, so we did hear a lot of activity, 鈥榗os they had Wellingtons at Wellesbourne, and we could hear them revving the engines up, we could hear them just checking that their machine guns were clear, and the war did impinge to a certain extent in that way. Especially of course with the blackout, but also when one of the Wellingtons actually crashed in a field not far from the village centre in Alveston, and the crew were killed. I think by that time I was probably about eleven or twelve and it starts to mean more to you at that age, doesn鈥檛 it?
For long periods (Dad) was working seven days a week, but he did occasionally have Sunday off and then there would be household chores of various sorts that he would be doing, and I used to help him when I could.

Other memories 鈥� I mentioned before, sometimes we cycled to school, sometimes used the bus, and I remember waiting for the bus to go back home from Stratford to Alveston, at the bus station which was on the junction of Warwick Road and the Birmingham Road. And the queue, you had to queue behind a stand which displayed the destination, and when the bus had departed the destination board would be changed for the next bus and so on. And in the summer it could be quite an ordeal waiting in the queue in the summer sun, especially in your school blazer - you daren鈥檛 take it off, because if you were spotted by a prefect or a teacher, then you would be punished for not being properly dressed - so you sometimes had to stand in the queue and swelter in your blazer.

Around the outside of the bus station there was a continuous wooden bench where people could sit, and sometimes people would buy food in the cafeteria and bring it out to sit on the bench outside. One or two swans got to know about this, and they would come out of the canal, and you can鈥檛 really say they begged food off people - they demanded it! It was a brave person who would refuse to give a swan part of their penny bun! Of course the bus station has gone many years ago now, hasn鈥檛 it?

Over all it was a real change to come out from Birmingham to come to Stratford, and before that, to Gretton. We didn鈥檛 have much wild life or farm life in Stirchley. But children are very resilient, and although I was hardly seven when I first went to Gretton, I stayed with the farmer. He and his wife had three children, one of them was a boy about my age, and one of his jobs had been to take the cows in for morning milking, and I hadn鈥檛 been there many days before I was asked to take over that job. So at that tender age, I was going down to the cows鈥� field, taking about 20 cows from that field, down the road into the milking parlour for their morning milking, and it鈥檚 difficult to imagine seven year-olds being given that amount of responsibility nowadays; mind you there wasn鈥檛 much traffic, there wasn鈥檛 much danger for the cows. It was without surprise that I encountered rural life, because I hadn鈥檛 been there long when the farmer asked me to go up on the hill behind the house to look at his rabbit snares, and sometimes there would be a couple of rabbits in his snare, and of course those were for the pot. And I saw how easy it was to skin a rabbit 鈥� now it isn鈥檛 all that easy, but it looked easy the way the farmer鈥檚 wife did it.
And then one of our autumn activities was picking apples for cider making, the famer made cider for the village pub, and other people. And we were down in the orchard where the cider press was situated; he got most of his apples from other orchards, and we were down there one day, we were feeding apples into the hopper for chopping and so on, and one of the farmer鈥檚 daughters came down and said that mother wanted a chicken for dinner, so I and the boy who was about my age, had to catch a chicken, charging round this orchard trying to catch a chicken, and we caught the chicken, gave it to the farmer, and of course he wrung its neck straight away, took his penknife out, slit its gizzard and hung it up to drain, and this was completely new to me, but it didn鈥檛 shock me at all, not in the least, I just accepted everything, the same as I accepted the presence of the 12 bore shotgun behind the door of the downstairs toilet 鈥� it was just something that was there 鈥� we didn鈥檛 have a 12 bore at home!

The War had brought me a different life, but I accepted it without shock, without surprise. On VE Day (which signalled the end of our life in Stratford, with a return to Birmingham and my transfer to King Edward鈥檚 Five Ways) we were actually at the caravan in Mrs Reading鈥檚 place, The Elms. And looking to the north west, you could see the Welcombe Hill, with the monument on top. And as the sun went down behind the hill, the sun鈥檚 rays were rising in the form of a perfect V on that night 鈥� and that鈥檚 my memory of VE Day.鈥�

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