´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from CSV Berkshire on behalf of William Ives and has been added to the site with his permission. Bill fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

THE GRATEFUL EVACUEE - Thank you Mr Hitler!

At the beginning of the war in 1939 I was 7 years old and living in Colliers Wood, south London with my parents. On the first day of the war I was evacuated along with the school, Singlegate School. We caught a bus, with our gas masks over our shoulders and a small case of clothes, to Wimbledon station and caught the train to Haslemere. We then went by coach to a village near Petworth called Lurgashall. I am sure our parents felt differently but we thought of it as a bit of an outing. I remember putting my head out of the train window and my cap blowing away. We arrived at the village hall with name tags on and the local people came to take us into their homes. A game keeper and his wife, Mr and Mrs Coombes took me and a boy called Donald Leonard. They lived in a small cottage on Upper Barn Farm about a mile out of the village. Their son Ted, who was about ten years older than us, was the carter on the farm and he was very kind to us ‘townies’. They also had a lodger who taught us to fish in the pond on the farm and in the lake at the other end of the village.

I have happy memories of my time there, fishing with a cork and a goose quill and experiencing the pheasant shoots when ‘posh’ people came and gave us sixpence and chocolate for carrying their cartridge cases. I remember the midday stops on these days with bowls full of chunks of bread and cheese. One day Ted called for Donald and me, he had something to show us. Damson, the mare had produced a foal. It was wonderful to see. During that first year a Blenheim bomber made a forced landing in the field at the back of Upper Barn and while it was being repaired the aircrew lived in the barn and we boys were allowed to clamber all over it. We thought it was marvellous and were disappointed to come home one day to find it had gone. I often wonder if it and the crew survived the war.

At first we attended school in the village hall with our teachers from Colliers Wood but within the first year most children had gone home as the bombing was not as bad as had been expected and those of us who stayed joined the village school. Life was good there and I was helped by a teacher, Miss Marshall, I think. She used to come to school on a motor bike. Sadly, I have since heard that she died in an air raid. The only thing that frightened me was, on the walk to school we had to pass the geese and they were quite ferocious.

After twelve months, Mr and Mrs Coombes could no longer look after me and I went to stay with Mr and Mrs Percy Lillywhite in their bungalow. I believe Percy was a pigman on the farm for Mr Tetley. During my time there my jobs after school were to clean all the shoes and mix potato peelings for chicken food. I can still remember the smell. My father was working for Nestle’s at this time and often brought chocolate and Smarties for me.

I returned to London in 1941 but had so enjoyed my experience in the country that I decided I wanted to ‘go farming’. We were not too affected by the bombing in our part of London. Every garden had a shelter but it seemed that after about eighteen months everyone got fed up with the getting up in middle of the night and chanced staying in bed. Dad was a carpenter and worked for a builder. He was exempt from conscription but was in the ARP and did his share of fire watching. They used to meet in an empty shop and play darts, I was sometimes allowed to join them. I remember that in Tooting Broadway a row of houses was hit by a doodle bug. In their place they built some prefabs but then they, too, were destroyed by one of the V2 rockets. Mum and I were having a lunch time bowl of soup when there was a big explosion. The pains of glass seemed to come out of the windows and go back again.

Of course, there was no television but the radio was an important part of daily life, as was the cinema. I remember going to the Granada, Tooting and the Mayfair. We would meet Dad after work at the underground station and go to the pictures. It was a great night out. I cycled everywhere and had a paper round in Colliers Wood, for which I was paid 10 shillings a week. I started at 5.30 in the morning and we boys had great fun picking up the shrapnel and other debris of the raids the night before. We used to do swaps with each other. I also worked on a Saturday morning as a delivery boy for the local baker. Often my mother would send me off on my bike because she had heard that Greig’s the grocers had received a supply of eggs. I would sometimes queue for an hour only to be told they had run out when I reached the head of the queue. We used to enjoy swimming but had to get the tram to Wimbledon which cost a penny and to get into the baths in Latimer Road was another fourpence. We used to go round collecting empty lemonade bottles which could be returned for tuppence each and sell old comics to go towards these outings. We were often hungry when we finished swimming and would spend a penny on an apple which meant we had to walk home. There seemed to be no crime at that time and women were safe.

I remember no fear but a relative of my mother suffered with the bombing and her daughter, who was a baby in her pram at the time, still had glass in her cheek as an adult. Sadly her father went down in the destroyer, Harvester, when it was sunk.

VE Day was an exciting time. It would probably be called vandalism now but I remember all the wooden fences in the street were taken down to build a huge bonfire and the dancing and singing went on all night.

As far as I am concerned being evacuated was the best thing that could have happened to me. I just always wanted to farm. There was a scheme at the end of the war, the YMCA British Boys for British Farms, as there was a shortage of men to do the much needed work on the land. They had several hostels all over the country and I went to Pill near Bristol for six weeks. The first week we had to do the cleaning and make the beds. Then we worked for five weeks on different farms. We were taught to do various jobs - scraping the foot rot from sheep, hand milking cows and picking curly topped greens which were so cold our hands froze. It was hard but a good experience, learning to make do with very little and I am happy to say that from there I never looked back and am grateful to have spent the last 60 years farming with a wonderful wife, family and friends.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.