大象传媒

The stillness of the bedroom was suddenly shattered by the piercing, wailing, undulating sound that was soon to become an everyday occurrence in the lives of millions of Britons.

But the seven year old boy lying comfortably between the clean, cool sheets in a small country town that seemed a million miles away from his home in London's East End thad no idea what it was.

After all he had never been out of London. The country was a strange, new experience and as the sound continually grew, then reduced in intensity, he turned to his fourteen years old brother in the other bed and asked in all seriousness: "Is that a cow mooing?"

"No you idiot" came the reply. "It's an air-raid siren".

That little boy was me. The date was Sunday, September 3rd, 1939 and the previous day my brother Alfred and I had been part of the mass exodus of evacuees from London.

With our jackets labelled with our name and school and holding a carrier bag of food and clutching our gas masks thousands of us travelled by train to towns and cities all over Britain.

Some of us came to Biggleswade, which was then little more than a village,in Bedfordshire and me and my brother were billeted with a fairly young couple, Mr and Mrs Lancaster who had two children, the eldest a boy the same age as myself.

I think we were there about a month before we were turned out.

Mr and Mrs Lancaster told my brother that they could not stand me upsetting their children any longer. Apparently I kept making them cry by pinching their toys - no doubt the result of a deprived childhood.

But worse still I developed a rather annoying habit of pinching the seven years old boy - hard and often on the legs and arms.

Arrangements were made for us to go to another family at the other end of the town. I remember that as we arrived at the house, a girl about my age who lived across the road, ran up to the billeting officer and asked, "Mum says please can we have the evacuees?".

That typified the spirit and attitude shown by thousands of families all over the country who were only too willing to do their bit in taking in children like us.

We were happy at the home of the Davies family.There was Mr Davies, Vince or Vincent, I think was his first name,a tall, strapping man who I believe worked as a fitter for the local gas board. I think they had two daughters, too grown up to be pinched and Mr Davies' mother who also lived with the family.

I vaguely remember going to the makeshift school that had been set up for the evacuees in the town and I also remember looking forward to the Saturday morning "flicks" with a choice of two cinemas.

You could pay four pence to go to the Empire or two pence to the other cinema, the name of which escapes me but which was nicknamed the "Tuppney Rush". As the name implies it was the most popular of the two.

It was the time of the phoney war and my parents who had gone with my eldest brother Sydney to the Surrey town of Reigate at the outbreak of the war decided there was no longer any danger.My mother was missing us, so after about three months with the Davies's we rejoined the rest of the family in Reigate.

As it turned out it was a bad decision. A few months later the London blitz started. Reigate was on the German bombers' flight path to London and we spent most nights for the next couple of years in an air raid shelter - a deep, massive underground area carved out of a hillside and fitted with bunk beds and toilet facilities. Hundreds flocked there night after night from Reigate and the surrounding areas.

From what I remember there was a wonderful community spirit with everyone mucking in and making the best of it. Lasting friendships were formed and I am still in touch with Malcolm who was five years old when I met him and his parents in the shelter.

Despite the pleadings of my parents, my two brothers absolutely refused to use the air raid shelter and slept every night at home which was a flat above a Montague Burton billiard hall later turned into a British Restaurant, one of many opened by the Government throughout the country providing meals at a shilling a time.

Sydney and Alfred were not going to knuckle under to Hitler even when some of the windows were blown out by a bomb which landed nearby. Sydney was awakened by the blast but he swears that even though Alfred's bed lifted a good four feet off the floor before crashing down Alfred never stirred.

They both survived and are still going strong as are thousands of others from that period. When I look back I can still see, in my mind's eye, that little boy lying in bed listening to that air-raid siren. My greatest wish at the age of 72 is that none of my four grandchildren will ever hear that sound.

Stan Solomons

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