大象传媒

I was born in February 1931 in Buckinghamshire, one of twin boys together with two younger brothers (one of whom died in very early infancy) and four elder sisters. At the outbreak of the Second World war in September 1939 I and my twin brother were living with foster parents (Mr. & Mrs. Ralph Whitcombe) at Stock Hill in the then very small village of Chilcompton (Downside) in rural Somerset. To a small boy of 8, which I then was, the threat of war (I had already been thrilled to see film of the Spanish Civil War) and its eventual outbreak was exciting.; the fitting and issue of gas masks in the local village hall, seeing soldiers in uniform around the village (they were proud of themselves and the villagers were of them), much talk of air raids and air raid shelters, and most importantly the issue of a special set of cigarette cards entitled 鈥淎ir Raid Precautions鈥� which depicted actual war situations i.e. searchlight beams stabbing the night sky, bomber planes approaching a town,
diagrams of incendiary bombs and how to douse and retrieve them once they fell to the ground, and windows criss crossed with adhesive tap to prevent glass shards flying when the window was shattered by bomb blast. Not very long after the outbreak of war, German planes appeared over the Firth of Forth in Scotland. What their objective was, and whether or not they achieved it I cannot recall, but the incident stimulated my latent journalistic instincts, and with the assistance of Miss Emery my favourite teacher at the local village school I wrote an excited account of the whole incident in a letter to my biological Mother.

In November 1939 my twin brother and I were removed to new foster parents (Mr. & Mrs. Higgins) who lived immediately adjacent to the village school in Mendlesham, a small village in rural Suffolk. By then the reality of the war had become a lot more apparent - the night sky was criss crossed with the beams of search lights (very exciting to watch peeping through blacked out windows in the bedroom), service personnel who could be seen everywhere, and the newspapers and news bulletins on the radio (called 鈥渨ireless鈥� in those days)were full of accounts of how the German pocket battleship 鈥淕raff Spee鈥� had been chased into Monte Video harbour in Argentina by the Royal Navy and subsequently destroyed when it emerged after urgent repairs.

In mid December 1939 we were transferred to a residential home for children in Newmarket Suffolk. The house belonged to the Derby family of horse racing fame (the walls of all the rooms were completely covered with pictures depicting famous race horses or scenes of horse races or hunts for foxes and other animals) and was called Stanley House after Lord Derby鈥檚 eldest son Lord Stanley who was very occasionally to be seen visiting the place in his uniform as a Captain in one of the Guards Regiments. The children鈥檚 charity who were our guardians had taken the house for the duration of the war, and transferred to it some 60 of the boys in their care with relevant staff from premises in Woodford Essex on the outskirts of London, as a refuge from the expected air raids. Until early 1945 we attended a school specially created for us, by commandeering the
church hall of nearby St.Agnes Church in Bury Road Newmarket, dividing it into two classrooms by hanging a curtain across the middle of the hall and staffing it with two teachers. The war impinged upon our lives in many ways, and was always present in some form or other because; firstly Newmarket was situated in the centre of an area heavily occupied by British and allied service personnel,
particularly airfields for bomber squadrons of the RAF and the USA Army Airforce (the Rowley Mile, the traditional venue for the Derby had been converted into an RAF bomber base) and secondly because of the nature of the establishment in which we lived (children who were essentially evacuees from Greater London and in the care of a children鈥檚 charity) we had a relatively high profile in the town. Once the bombing by night of London and other towns and cities in the South of England became routine from late 1940 onwards we had to spend every night cooped up like battery hens on wooden racking in the cellars of Stanley House. The warning sirens began their nerve jangling wail on or before 9 p.m. after we had all gone to bed, and this then was the signal for us all to tip out of bed (I can remember that often I was only half awake and moved purely by self
preservation instinct) and by the light of a few battery driven torches held by the staff proceed down the main staircase from the first and second floors to the main hall on the ground floor, file through the dining room and long stone tiled passages to the cellar entrance and thence down the steep wooden steps to the bowels of the dank cellar ( I do not recall any form of heating or air ventilation) where stood the rows of wooden racking for beds without the benefit of mattresses. This was our home until about 5 or 6 the next morning when the all clear siren would sound. Notwithstanding this kind of daily routine, which must have lasted for some eighteen months to two years, I do not recall that we were particularly tired for the rest of the day, although the ordeal was obviously more of a problem during the winter months. On one such night, as we were proceeding through the dining room, the French doors very suddenly opened and there in the moonlight was the dark silhouette of a man, the light reflected from
his helmet. For one awful second I thought it was a German parachutist (we had like all the civilian population been warned of the real possibility of a German invasion, which would most likely be spearheaded by parachutists, and if such occurred the church bells would be rung) and remained rooted to the floor in terror. The man in question turned out to be an ARP warden, wearing the traditional British round tin hat!! Most of the nights we were cooped up in the cellars, one could, between bouts of fitful sleep, hear the German bombers tracing their paths across the sky, en route to or from some town or city they had raided. The engines of German planes were very distinguishable from British aircraft, the former had a heavy diesel throb, and once you could hear them up in the sky a distinct feeling of danger set in. This feeling was particularly heightened on the night that a lone German aircraft circled around immediately
above us for what seemed hours, at an unusually low altitude, and eventually dropped it鈥檚 load some few hundred yards away from the house beside a military establishment. The cellar shook and vibrated as if struck with an enormous hammer, and needless to say we were all inwardly terrified, although I did not hear one single cry of distress - and many of the children were very young.

Life at Stanley House, at least until mid 1944, was not particularly happy, for reasons not connected with the war, but I do recall a number of events arising entirely out of the wartime situation which had the effect of making life more bearable and produced some particularly happy memories. The first of these relate to the many parties we attended, not always, but usually for us exclusively, given usually around Christmas time by military personnel stationed in the area. The parties given by American forces were especially memorable because of the warmth of their welcome and the personal involvement of individual officers and men, the mountains of food made available which had a special appeal to children (ice cream, fruit and cookies) and the presents handed out before we left. In my case there was also one special ingredient in all this - I was given my first cigarette!!. Another party I particularly remember was given by some allied servicemen from Poland, France and other European countries then occupied by the Germans. It was a wonderful afternoon, made the more poignant for me because I was of an age when I understood to at least a limited
extent what these brave men had suffered and how uncertain was the future for them. I had especially long discussions with a Belgian flyer, and as we were leaving he personally inscribed the book I had been given as a present with the words 鈥減resented to a typically gallant English boy鈥�. I kept the book for many years, but at sometime around 1981 I very unfortunately lost it. The boys who were my contemporaries at Stanley House included a small number of refugees from continental Europe, including Germans, among whom was one some three years older than me named Alfreid Mayer, whose parents lived in Munich. As far as I know, Alfreid had been sent to England by his parents just before the outbreak of war, presumably because they feared for his future in Nazi Germany. During the war he occasionally received letters from his parents via the Red Cross. I always admired, loved and respected Alfreid as only a younger boy could, mainly because he was very handsome, had a very sharp intelligence, was the finest athlete/sportsman in the home, and had to withstand a lot of cruel and unnecessary jibes from some of the boys and a few of the staff because of his nationality. We became good friends, but after leaving the local Grammar School he went to the S.W. Essex County Technical College in Waltham Forest London to study as a prelude to becoming a professionally
qualified architect. He was very successful, but not long after the birth of his first child following the settlement of he and his wife in Montreal Canada, he died of cancer. Needless to say, when I too was given the opportunity of studying at the same college, but for a business qualification, some three years after he left I grasped it with both hands.

The outward signs of a global war in progress were very obvious most of the time and always excited the interest of any boy. The following incidents come to mind; bombing of the town centre by low flying German aircraft in broad daylight, constant manoeuvres by military personnel of many nationalities in long conveys of tanks, bren gun carriers and lorries pulling guns covered in camouflage netting in the local countryside (whom we cheered with all our might as they passed us on the road), construction of tank obstacles and machine gun pill boxes (often festooned with barbed wire) at strategic points in the countryside and at road intersections, bombers returning to the local airfields at any time during the day or night, some badly damaged and only just managing to fly, and others exploding on landing, surrounding fields and hedge rows covered in strips of silver foil dropped by aircraft as part of a radar defence system, and the exhilarating sight of hundreds of aircraft in the evening sky pulling gliders en route to Arnhem in Holland. One particular incident which was less exciting occurred one bright summer鈥檚 day, as we were as usual playing on
the large lawn located at the rear of the house. Suddenly there was the strong smell of pear drops, and many of us began to feel faint and found it very difficult to breathe. It turned out that the military in the area had been holding an exercise involving the use of an anti personnel gas for which no doubt gas masks had been issued. Unfortunately the wind had changed, and we were the unintended guinea pigs but without our gas masks to hand. We were quickly carried or helped to the bed rooms at the top of the house to lie down and hopefully have access to the greatest quantities of fresh air let in through the hurriedly fully opened windows. A number of very worried military and other civilian personnel appeared on the scene, but as far as I remember not one of us suffered any short or long term effects, but at the time it was quite scary. A further distressing experience occurred whilst we were out walking in our usual crocodile formation when one of the boys (named Hedges) quite accidentally walked into barbed wire coiled around concrete tank traps constructed on the
pavement of the main road through the town. He lost his eye, but what incensed me at the time was the total lack of sympathy shown to him by those responsible for his welfare.

Looking back on my total experience of the war, which completely dominated an extremely formative period in my life, two particular comments immediately come to mind; firstly I never had the slightest doubt about the eventual victory of England ( at that time, in my mind a reference to England encompassed in one word all the nations ranged against Germany and Japan - with my own dear country in the lead) and I never heard anyone ever express a view to the contrary, and secondly it was remarkable that notwithstanding how tired and
fatigued the adults around me were obviously becoming, cheerfulness and good humour ruled the day, which often took the form of ribald songs and jokes about our enemies and their leaders. I also realise now that during that period I formed very fixed attitudes on the subject of loyalty to one鈥檚 country and people, the need to think for yourself and not follow the herd; and an absolute abhorrence of bullying in any shape or form. This latter arose I am sure through the depiction in really graphic form in a boy鈥檚 comic published in 1940 (possibly the 鈥淗otspur鈥�) of little Finland defying the might of the Soviet Union - of such minor incidents in one鈥檚 life can the future be shaped.

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