大象传媒

INTRODUCTION.

It has long been taught that one should never begin a letter with an apology.

Since this is not a letter, I shall make an apology beforehand, if my start point appears to be somewhat off the initial subject.

For many years I have had the hidden desire to write down the various experiences of my life. I have written little episodes over the years. But these have proven to be of a sporadic nature.

I have found it very difficult to merge the little snippets into a consistent form.
Most of the time I seemed to have questioned myself as to where I should make a start.

The result being that I constantly shelved the idea, of making any attempt to organise my various notes into one concise document

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THE BEGINING.

My family moved to the flats just after my 5th. Birthday, I found out many years later, that mum and dad and us six children were living in Granny Casey's house before moving to the flats.

Apparently mum and dad were married in 1924 and it wasn鈥檛 until 1939 that the family were offered alternative accommodation. The first offer was somewhere in Carshalton, but this was too far away from dad's work place,
consequently this location was declined.

The next offer was a new block of flats named The Henry Prince Est. Wandsworth, this was a brand new estate almost in completion, we actually moved in whilst the rear blocks were not completed.

My younger brother Less aged 3 yrs. and I were playing marbles in one of the brick walled squares, that was located at the bottom of each porch of each block of flats.

Suddenly our game was interrupted by a loud noise (later to be established as an air raid signal). A young girl carrying a basket of shopping came running through the archway. She fell over and the contents of her basket spilled over.
When eventually she collected herself, she noticed that bro. Less and I were playing in the square, she screamed at us to go home straight away.

When we arrived home and told mum about the young girl we had seen and what she had told us to do. Mum grabbed hold of us to her bosom, tears flooded from her eyes. Her explanation to us was that this was just an experiment from the local police to be on our guard.

At our young age we did not know anything about a war, then in the September we were told that we were all going on a holiday. Since we had never been on a holiday, we never knew what a holiday was like.

My uncle Harry was an Air Raid Warden and he delivered to the family gas masks for everyone, we all had a laugh when trying them on, because when you breathed in and out, they made an awful noise.

Young baby brother Ted was too young for a gas mask and had to use an incubator, young lass had to use a Mickey Mouse Mask, so I was the youngest to wear a gas mask.

This particular morning we were raised out of our beds early, all had to get washed and dressed in our so called Sunday best.
My best was the hand-me downs from my eldest brothers. My best shoes were a pair of second hand boots, of which studs and tips were added by dad.

My dad had never been a tactile type of person, but this day he crushed and kissed us all in turn, his face was a deathly white of which I had never seen the like, he bade us farewell before leaving for his work.

When we were all dressed, mum lined up all of our gas masks on her bed and started taking our few clothes from our chest of drawers. We all sat in the front room looking bewildered at each other, elder sister Gwen and mum put everything into an old battered suitcase.
Our clothes were in parcels tied with string, sandwiches of jam and dripping were placed into the basket ready for our then unknown journey.

Everyone that was old enough had to carry a parcel and a gas mask, elder brother Bill had the duty of fixing a label to our coat collar displaying our individual names.

We left the flat and walked to our local 'Wandle' school where everyone had to be assembled, there were hundreds of children (Never would the word kids ever be mentioned) many mum's and grans were present but very few fathers.

ON FIRST THOUGHT YOU MAY THINK, WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH EVACUEE'S?

YOU SHALL LEARN IN DUE CAUSE!

Best wishes.

The Ray xx

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