大象传媒

Evacuation to a Welsh Farm

(Transcription by Medway library staff from an interview with Mr Cumberworth held at Gillingham library on 7th. July 2005)

Before the war

Before the war I was living in Ivy Street, Rainham (No.53). My school was in Solomon Road, just two hundred yards down, on the left hand side. I can remember some of the teachers鈥� names, and in those days we used to get the cane. When I went up to Secondary School, at the age of eleven, we were still subject to the cane on the hand, but if we were really naughty, we were sent to see the Headmaster! He was only a little fellow. We always called him Golly-Smith. He eventually married the Headmistress of the same school. They were opposites. She was twice the size of him! He used to have to stand on a box, because he was so small. I wasn鈥檛 very well educated, because I鈥檇 been to so many different schools, so I never settled down into an education.

First Evacuation

I鈥檇 just gone from junior school up to senior school at the age of eleven. Several weeks after that, war was declared. I, with a lot of Rainham people, was sent to Deal with a little cardboard box with a gas mask and a bag full of clothes,

I could hear the Royal Marines band practising, and I can remember the fishing boats came in with their catch. I can remember being on the beach with the enemy aircraft coming over, the ack-ack, and shrapnel was all around me, I could hear it now, even though I was only eleven at the time.

The people I was billeted with were two elderly sisters and I remember the standard breakfast I had was cream crackers and tea. They were Salvationists, and I had to go into the Salvation Army, and the Deal Band, who I must say were very good, but it was against my wishes because I was Anglican.

I remember Deal pier - one of the ships called the Nora, broke away from its anchor, and went through Deal pier at 8.30 a.m. in a rough sea. She had hit a mine at anchor, and when I got back to school in the morning, or lunchtime or something like that, I said to the teacher, Deal pier has been cut in half! And he didn鈥檛 believe me! I think he gave me the cane. So that鈥檚 what I remember mostly about Deal.

Off to Wales

However, what no one realised was how quickly the Nazis would overrun Europe. I was then packed off to Wales. I remember going through the Severn Tunnel, sticking my eyes out, but of course it was full of smoke and soot! But eventually I got to a little place called Redwick near Magor, Monmouthshire.

I was sorted out and I was billeted on a farm, where I was a farmer鈥檚 boy. Basically, most people were interested in having your ration book for extras, and in some cases some of the youngsters had a bad time, the hosts didn鈥檛 worry too much about who they got as long as they got an extra ration book.

Life on the farm

I used to milk a couple of cows before I went to school, make the swill for the pigs, collect the eggs from the chickens and the ducks. We had our own bull, it was a pedigree, and the surrounding farms brought their cows in to be serviced. I can remember going up to a cow who had just calved, and I had to run away because this cow attacked me! We had sheep and two Lassie dogs; they used to round up the cattle, the sheep, the ducks and all sorts. It was the first contact I鈥檇 had with dogs, especially at that age, I was only about twelve, but they really knew what they had to do.

We had three hundred acres and I can remember hay making, sitting under the cart, and drinking loads of lemonade. We had a horse that did basically most of the work, we had a tractor but it wasn鈥檛 used much because of the fuel costs. I can remember going by horse and trap with the farmer with two or three sheep to sell at Newport market. He was a typical farmer, with gaiters and top hat and all the rest of it, and I was brought to the sale. He was a widower, but he had a daughter and two sons.

The toilet was outside, and it was a wooden affair with three holes 鈥� one for the lads, one for the women, medium sized, and one for the little kids!

Once I discovered a duck had hatched some ducklings under a willow tree, and they named the duck Rusty after me because I was full of freckles and a redhead! That鈥檚 a part of the story, but there鈥檚 much more I could say about what went on at the farm.

In a neighbour鈥檚 field were two horses. Bristol could be seen going up in flames after bombing. Incendiary bombs were all around us and the poor horses were terrified. The field was surrounded by barbed wire and the state of the bodies was horrible to be seen.

News of the war

I remember us all gathering around an old valve radio in the farmhouse. We listened to Winston Churchill making those famous speeches, about fighting in the fields and on the beaches and the Battle of Britain speech; they stood out in my mind. Now to my idea, he was the man that won the war. Chamberlain would never have done it. I remember those speeches vividly.

Joining my brother

My brother had been evacuated to Deal, but he was taken ill and brought back to Rainham, and then he went to a place called Llanharen, near Bridgend, which was a mining community.

The teacher of the village school that I used to walk over the fields to after doing my milking and feeding and collecting, said to me, there are only about fifteen or twenty in this village school. Would you like to go and live with your brother? And I said yes, naturally, but looking back, I should have said no, because I was put up with a miner. They weren鈥檛 very worried about myself, I don鈥檛 think at all, and he used to come home from the pit, and the bath was in the kitchen. Of course they had free coal. I was left to my own resources, young as I was, and went roaming the streets. My mother got to hear of this from the people who had my brother, and she came up to Wales and gave them such a rasping! I went reasonably clothed and I was nearly walking around in rags, so of course I was brought back to my home in Rainham.

Life at Home in wartime

I had a good bit more schooling to do, before the age of fourteen when I left school. I worked for the Co-op as a butcher鈥檚 boy, and I remember two penn鈥檕rth of corned beef and tenpenn鈥檕rth of so called fresh meat, which mostly came in Hessian, frozen stiff, I believe from Australia. I can remember being a firewatcher, for the buildings of the Rainham Co-op.

We all had ration books for groceries, with clothing coupons and that. Of course we had to register with the butcher鈥檚 for our meat and all that. I remember the identity card, and I can remember my number; DHIB302/5. I also remember my mother鈥檚 Co-op share number which she used when she went shopping; it was 1544, I鈥檒l never forget, I had to use it.

I remember the Doodlebugs, or the V1s as they were called, going overhead. We used to go to the top of the cellar in our terraced house. We also had an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, so when you heard the air raid warning, my mother and my brother and myself went down. There were four bunks down there, and of course when the all-clear went; back up to the house we went.

I remember VE Day. We had a street party.

Call Up

I can remember being in the Air Training Corps as a cadet, I can remember doing a spot of Observer Corps, and I stayed with the corps until the age of eighteen, when I got my calling up papers in 1946.

My father was in the navy, all his life; First World War and Second World War. My envelope dropped on the mat, 鈥淥n His Majesty鈥檚 Service鈥�. My father said, 鈥淵our calling-up papers have arrived鈥�. In those days you didn鈥檛 have any choice. You didn鈥檛 know what you were going to be. I was in the Air Training Corps, thinking I was going to be a pilot. So I opened the envelope and gave it to my father, and he said, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e following in my footsteps鈥�. He was a Chatham sailor; so I became a Chatham sailor! My Navy Number was CJX809667, sir! You had to put your hat out like that, and your hand, with your pay book, and you got paid into your cap. So I went to do my National Service. I did my training on the Royal Arthur - I can remember standing in the sentry box with my 303, 鈥淗alt, who goes there?鈥� And I鈥檓 not sure, but Prince Philip at that time was courting the Queen, and I鈥檓 sure, having heard his voice, he was the one to say, 鈥淐arry on鈥�.

My brother was two years and two months younger than me and he joined the Navy straight from school. He was Fleet Air Arm, a Petty Officer straight away. He got married to a local girl from Lee on Solent, Sussex.

My father, as I said, was in the Navy and was a boy at the Battle of Jutland. When he came home on leave, I remember saying, 鈥淢other, who鈥檚 that man walking around the house?鈥� Because in those days they were away for two and a half or three years, hence the expression was, have you left a bun in the oven? Which mean the children were spaced out every two and a half or three years! When he came out of the navy, he never spoke of all those years. He was due to come out in nineteen thirty nine to draw his pension, twenty two years, but of course they kept him in. And he鈥檇 been mostly on sea time all his life. Some people at Chatham (sailors), they never went to sea.

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