大象传媒

It was as a result of a friend of a friend's child, who lives in Taunton, Somerset, wanting to know what it was like to be an evacuee during the 1940/45 war, I believe it was part of her school project. My friend, knowing that I had been an evacuee, got in touch with me and this is the result. I undertook this opportunity to write these memoirs and wondered whether others might like to enjoy some of my experiences.

1939 鈥� 1945
The war years of an evacuee

By W. Allchin better known as Bill

In 1939 I was 7 years old, it was September and war was declared on Germany. At the time it didn鈥檛 mean much to me but the adults seemed to be quite excited about it all.
It all started to become clear when workmen came to our home and started putting up an air raid shelter in the garden.

Soon afterwards the bombing of London began. As a youngster I found this really exciting and never realised the full extent of the damage being done and the injuries being inflicted on people. All I wanted to do was to be able to find the biggest piece of shrapnel to show off to my schoolmates.

At this time our schooling was reduced to just one and a half-hours per day and most of this time was spent in the air raid shelters. So the powers that be decided evacuation to a safer area was necessary.

One morning, all of the children were herded together and taken to Paddington station. At the time I was 8 years old, my brother was 6 and my sister was 5. Before boarding the train, my mother drummed into me that I was not to let them (the authorities) split us up when we reached our destination and that we were to remain together.

We eventually arrived at Taunton station and were assembled together so that prospective foster parents could decide who they were going to have.

This part was quite upsetting to me, as there were two ladies who had decided that they would take us but not all together. They had decided that Mrs. Morse would take my brother and me and that my sister would be billeted with Mrs. Woodman.

We all went to Mrs. Morse鈥檚 house and all my fears soon disappeared when she offered us some home made apple dumplings. They were absolutely scrumptious and I thought that life here was going to be all right. We then went to see where my sister was going to stay.

Mrs. Woodman, who lived with her mother and father, soon made me realise that my sister would be very well looked after. My only concern then was to get back for some more of those dumplings.

Life at Thurlbear was very different to what we had been used to in London. The silence at night was so very strange. During the summer nights, with the bedroom windows wide open, I could hear the cows in the field biting off the grass, the owls hooting and the bats screeching. All of these were all sounds that I had never heard before. At first I was a bit nervous, as I didn鈥檛 know what was happening and pictures of ghosts appeared in the mind.

I found it very strange that there was no electricity, gas or mains sewage. Using a bucket for a toilet after being used to flush toilets took a bit of getting used to. Washing in freezing cold water in the morning wasn鈥檛 too welcoming either and cooking on a fire grate was really something that only now I can admire and fully appreciate the difficulties of living in the country in those days.

Our foster parents were really good to us and we grew to be very fond of them. Mr. Morse, who I called uncle Albert, was so patient and kind; he was just like my real father, Mrs. Morse didn鈥檛 go to work and really moved heaven and earth to make sure that we were well fed and clothed. She would tell us off if we were naughty (and being boys, I have no doubt that we were) and sometimes smack us if we were really bad. We used to laugh it off when her back was turned, because she never really hurt us.

As time went by we explored our surroundings and began to feel really at home. We lived across the road from a farming contractor A. Shires and Sons.

On the farm they had great big steam engines, some of which were not being used and my brother and I played for hours on them pretending to be driving them all over the country. We learnt how to feed the calves, and how to turn the grass over (that had been cut in the fields) to make hay. This was used to feed the cattle in the winter months. It was great fun during haymaking time, we used to get rides on the hay carts and they let us get up onto the hayrick.

Jim Shires was crippled and I used to accompany him when he was visiting the workmen, as they were threshing, on the different farms. I used to hold his wheelchair by the car door so that he could get in and out of the car.

I remember when they experienced their first air raid in Taunton, Mrs. Morse made us get out of bed and come downstairs to take shelter under the table. I tried to reassure them that they might just as well stay in bed, I was used to air raids and couldn鈥檛 understand what all the fuss was about. A few days later we were trying to catch minnows from a stream and we found an incendiary bomb. Rather stupidly we pulled it out of the stream, threw it around the field and, as it didn鈥檛 go off, decided it was safe to take home. Mrs. Morse nearly had a pink fit, while later, when Uncle Albert came in from work, he put it in his pocket and took it to PC Marks, who鈥檚 wife, in turn, made him dump it on his compost heap at the bottom of the garden.

Another of the enjoyable experiences was to sit on the tractor mudguard while Mr. Payne drove up and down the field ploughing. I liked harvesting the corn best because we used to try to catch the rabbits that ran out. If we caught one, then it was delicious rabbit pie for supper.

Every Sunday we were sent to Sunday school in West Hatch. At Christmas all the children who attended Sunday school were given a book. The thickness of the book was dependent on the number of attendance鈥檚 one made. Mrs. Morse could never work out why our books were always quite thin. We were quite naughty really, because we didn鈥檛 always attend when we should have. Usually, after playing in the fields or whatever mischief we got up to, we would always pick a bunch of primroses, cowslips, or bluebells depending on the season, and present them to her with an innocent look on our faces. In those days the meadows were full of primroses and cowslips.

The village school that we attended as very small - just two classes with a total of about 36 pupils and two teachers. Of course, there was no central heating in those days, so the classrooms were kept warm by a big stove in each room. We used to take a large potato to school for our lunch and leave it to cook on the stove while we did our lessons. After a few years, we did have hot meals delivered to the school by van. It was quite a distance to walk to school and the route was full of horse-chestnut trees. You can imagine the fun we had collecting conkers. We even collected them for the war effort. I believe they wanted them for the glucose that could be extracted. We also collected rose hips from the wild roses that grew in abundance in the hedgerow. These were made into syrup to give to babies, as it was rich in vitamin C.

When I was twelve I became eligible to go potato picking. That meant that in the morning we went to school and then we would go to a local farm to pick up potatoes. For this we got paid, but the best thing was that we got a little extra dinner that had been delivered to the school. I also spent some time digging the school garden and planting potatoes, cabbages, peas, broad beans and all sorts of other vegetables. At the school we also kept and bred rabbits, we had Chinchillas, Belgian Hares and Flemish Giants.

It was about this time that I experienced nature in the raw, A sheep was having problems giving birth and Cheddar Coles the farm labourer asked me to help him deliver the lamb. My job was to keep the ewe calm while he did the delivery. I remember cradling the ewe's head on my lap and while I was talking to her and stroking her he delivered the lamb, a really wonderful moment in a young boys life, one that I have treasured all my life. All this took place in the field where the sheep were kept; we then took mother and lamb to a barn so that she could recover in peace. It was fortunate that in those days that it was the norm for sheep to have only one lamb.

During the long winter evenings, Mrs Morse used to make fur lined leather gloves that were eventually destined to go to the forces. One of my jobs was to thread the needles and wax the cotton for her. She often told me off for making the cotton lengths too long. It was quite a fiddly job and if the thread was too long it would tangle as she was sewing.

Sunday mornings, Uncle Albert was on Home Guard duties and I used to load his Sten gun Clip with bullets ready and then unload it again when he got home.

Another reminder of those days came back to me recently, when my sister presented me with a sideboard runner: I had made this whilst at school; it was to be a birthday present for her foster mother. It was made from silks on a four-shuttle hand-weaving machine. Mrs Gunningham, our headmistress, set it up for me and I was allowed to make it during school periods of alternative studies. This was made around 1943/4 and, although the colours are not quite so bright, it is in as good a condition today as if I had just completed it.

After school and at weekends in the autumn, my brother and I picked blackberries. When we had filled our rather large basket with berries, we would take them to West Hatch, where we were given sixpence (2 陆 p) a pound for them. The walk home through the woods in the late evening, just as it was getting dark, was quite scary at first.

I distinctly remember our first Christmas when Lady Manderson invited the local evacuee鈥檚 to her home. We had lots of food, and the highlight was the sleigh, complete with Father Christmas coming to give us presents.

Eventually the war ended and it was time for us to return to our own parents. I can assure you that the tears shed that day were very real, both by ourselves and the people who had taken care of us for five years. They had grown to love us as if we were their own children. We in turn came look on them to be as much our parents as our real ones.

It was quite a struggle to readjust to life back in London and to be really close to my parents again. My Father often remarked very sadly 鈥渢hat we were no longer their children鈥�. Having now had a family of my own, I can only now fully understand just how he must have felt.

My parents worked so hard to ensure that we had a good start in life, to the detriment of their own life. I don鈥檛 remember them ever having a holiday or even going out for an evening. They put everything into the family unit, only to have Hitler and his war machine take it away from them. Dad was 鈥淐alled up鈥� into the Royal Engineers; serving most of his time in Germany clearing minefields for the advancing forces. After the war, he was a Foreman Carpenter for John Shelbourne Building Contractors and worked mainly along the river Thames, building and repairing the jetties, meanwhile during the war Mum worked in the Woolwich Arsenal and then in the school canteen after the war.

A lot of evacuees were not so lucky; many returned home within weeks of arriving. Invariably they could not fit into country life and the stricter discipline that was practised there. I had no such problem - I wanted to stay forever.

I am now retired from the Post Office / British Telecom, whom I worked for from 1946, to Christmas 1987, with just a break in 1950/53 for my conscription into the RAF.

I feel I could write for hours, about the memories I have of living at Thurlbear during the war. I got to feel that I didn鈥檛 want the war to end. I was very lucky to be cared for during that time by such wonderful people. Unfortunately both Mr. and Mrs. Morse are now no longer with us but the memory of them will never fade. I still keep in touch with my foster sister Peggy and her family, who now live in St. Austell, Cornwall. In 1997 I was able to attend Peggy鈥檚 Golden Wedding Anniversary, which she held in Taunton. It was really wonderful to see so many of the people I had known during the war but did not recognise their faces after fifty years, and yet, they all seemed to know me. It was quite an emotional meeting but the tears were now of joy.

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