大象传媒

When WW2 broke out I was just four and a half years old, the earliest part of account is a result of family discussion.
It was the grammar and private school children who were first evacuated, then it was the working classes turn, our family was dodging bombs up until late 1940, this was mainly due to the fact our father insisted his six children and wife were sent away together, further delays was due to the local evacuation committee's attitude to our father's demands!
Undeterred our father put us all in the back of his firms lorry, after a particuarly heavy incendary bombing raid in south london, and took us to paddington station, where he dumped us in the evacuation office, reporting our house had been destroyed last night.
As one might expect the self-opiniated evacuation officers, took a very dim view over our father's actions, it was several hours later and second air raid before they accepted that our father was not coming back, to collect his brood.
The children had been scrounging food from who ever all day, as our mother had little money, some ten hours after our arrival, we were put on a train to Plymouth, the journey was to last some 16 hours due to diversions delays and finally by a sustained air raid on Plymouth.
We were given two sandwiches and bottles of water for our journey, to be fair the evacuation officers did not know we were going to be delayed, for so long on this particular journey, but I also suspect they were not unduly concerned.
On arrival at Plymouth station the wonderful local WI, had sandwhiches and ice cold water in milk churns awaiting the passengers.
Devon's evacuation committee members however, were at a complete loss on knowing what to do withour family, also the the London office had not informed them of our arrival, but they gave our mother a letter just before we left Paddington?
We were eventually were split up and sent off to sleep overnight with volunteer families, I followed a woman to her house, she put me half comotosed into her bed, later her husband came home, and I spent the next two nights in the garden shed, sleeping on some old carpet.
When the husband went to work, the lady washed me and gave me some clean clothes, then I had two wonderful soft boiled new-laid eggs with thick home made bread, and a cup of tea!
I never remembered the lady's name and I have never ever met her again, but one never forgets a kindness.
The family were given a small cottage with no running water, gas or electric, whilst the authorities looked for a bigger place, and if necessary requisition a property for us.
The unlucky absent owner had a luxury bungalow in Coverack, Cornwall, and to be fair to the owner, six back street kids,without the rule of their father was not going to be his first choice of tenants?
Despite all the owner's ranting, complaints and fears, to the unhearing evacuation officer, the bungalow was requisitioned, and he had us ensconsed into his property from late 1940 until just a few weeks before VE day.
When we left in 1945 the property had not been looked after as the owner would of liked!
Like the owner of the bungalow I do not think Coverack was ready for impact of us or the many other evacuees, the village school was built for thirty or so children. but this number swelled to almost a hundred.

Even at five years old I was expected to help the family budget, working for fishermen collecting their boat's fuel allocations, from the village garage, I also went out with to raise crab and lobster pots.
My elder brother Peter worked on a farm, at 12 years old he was milking 20 or so cows twice a day, pasturising the milk, and taking out to the ministry collection point, plus helping out with mucking out etc.
My sisters worked on a flower farm, growing mainly daffodils, planting, weeding and harvesting, for the London market.
The fisherman and coxain of the lifeboat I mainly helped was good to me, he gave us fish for the table, paid for my pictures once a fortnight.
There was however, something I always wanted to do, and that was out on the lifeboat, flying down the ramp, crashing into the waves, then to have the powerful engine take the boat to the open sea, but try as I may, I never got my wish because once he took command of the lifeboat, he was a totally dedicated and a single minded lifeboat man.
My elder brother was asked by the farmer to bring me up to the farm with him to earn a couple of bob, on arrival I found out the farmer was going to illegally kill a pig, we and some others were used as look outs.
I was told to especially lookout for ministry men? if one fell out the sky on top of me, I still wouldn't know who he was.
About 10 minutes later taking up our positions I heard a terrible scream, my brother told me it was the pig, when we got back to the cow shed the pig was hanging from the rafters in two halves, and its innards and blood lay in a steel barrow.
I recieved a shilling (the two bob was between us). I was also given the pig's tail with about an inch of meat around the body end, at that time there was nine people in our bungalow, our mother made a stew out of it!
Dispite the school being grossly over crowded, the most active education officer in Cornwall was the local school board man; if he caught any child not at school they had to push his extremely heavy cycle up a steep hill to the village school.
I was the victim of this man without a kind thought in his whole body, when he first caught absent from school, I could barely reached the handle bars, half srarved tired I pushed that bike up that bloody hill more times than I care to count.
I was however, back in the village before he had completed his paperwork at the school, the teacher rightly so marked my brother absent on most days, after a vist from the school board man, my mother laid into the unfortunate teacher, telling her that her 10 yearold son was on war work, but defiantly the teacher continued to mark Peter absent!
One sunday I badly cut the flesh between my thumb and first finger, no one in the village would take me to the nearest doctor in St,Keverne, the doctor would not be called out, and there were no buses at the weekend.
With a sanitary towel over the wound, my mother and I walked the six or so miles, to St Keverne and back again, when we arrived at the doctor's, some hours later my mother said she was worried about lockjaw (tetnus).
This hero of the medicine world demanded 5 shillings before he did anything, but my mother only had a half-crown, he snatched this out of her hand, and on his doorstep made a cursory look and the cut, in my hand.
She was told to keep the wound clean, put on some germolene, he refused to give anti-biotics, dress or clean the wound for only half-crown.
As we walked away he said loud enough for us to hear, "effing London rubbish" all I can add to this is "thank god for the NHS".
I was taken to Helston hospital after the wound became infected, my mother said I then received proper treatment.
For a while our war passed pretty peaceful, especially after the nightly London air raids, our army costal guards were reduced from six to one, he was stationed near the village green and his girl friend.
The 20 miles of coast around Coverack and beyond was protected by a single sentry with a bren gun who was never on duty.
All the village kids used to play with the sentry's empty bren gun, which he left in a shallow trench.
For our fun the school children used to look for shag seabirds that may land in the harbour, if he was not busy the barber used to shoot the shags with his .22 rifle.
When the lifeboat went out, the lifeboat men washed it down, with a powerful hosepipe as it was slowly winched back up a long ramp into the boat house.
The kids used to shout "skeeter skeeter" at the life boat men, then they would turn the hose on us, soaking us to the skin.
Our war was watching the air raids on Falmouth and,Germans attacking the convoys way out in the channel, from our vantage point on the bungalow's veranda.
The lifeboat went out at times following raids by German planes, and occaisonally rescued seamen from all parts of the world.
This all came to end one really summers day, when a single German bomber attacked an unarmed fishing village, dropping a bomb on a small row of houses, and machine gunning the children and parents on the beach.
As the plane approached Coverack, I was as usual on the village green and playing with the sentry's bren gun.
Like a fool I ran toward the harbour and past where bomb finally landed, fortunately an off duty policeman arriving for a day's fishing, grabbed me and laid on top of me, behind some banking.
A few minutes later we went to the bomb site and heard a woman crying, she had managed to get under her stairs,the only part of the house left standing, I helped pull the wood and masonary away from the stairs and the woman was retrieved.
My saviour the policeman sent me home because he thought my mother might be worried, when I got home our mother was absolutely frantic, she thought the blitz had followed us to Cornwall!
I was perhaps most at risk near the bomb, but my brother and sisters were at work on their respective farms and the rest at home all some distance away.
Our brother Robin just a few months old was in a pram in the garden at the time of the bombing, with just a thin blanket and a string net to keep the cats from him, yet all around his head and feet lay small pieces of schrapnel, weighing about a pound in total, but he had nary a scratch on his body.
When I finally got home our mother was falling apart, her memories of the London blitz had come flooding back and she was unconsolable, a frantic letter was sent to our father, demanding he came down to Coverack.
Father duly came dome to Coverack and drove a tipper lorry for a civil engineering firm building military installations, control over us was also brought to bear, our family grew by another four.
The next thing I remember happening was a huge Sunderland flying boat, forced to land through engine failure, it was parked in the village bay whilst a multitude of men frantically working to get it back into the sky.
Sadly to soon the day had come for the Sunderland to leave, it's engine started, the village shook, as it slowly turned toward the open sea, engine went up to full revelutions, it fisrt went slowly then it gracefully went into the sky and was gone forever.

I went to school on the morning of June 6th 1944, this day has special memories for me because it was the day our teacher, as I thought went completely mad.
The lady was really, quite remarkable by teaching for as long as she did, both the number of children, and at primary and secondary levels. but I thought the pressure had got to her on this day.
She came bounding into the classroom holding her skirt high in the air, shouting screaming at the top of her voice, "THEY HAVE LANDED, THEY HAVE LANDED" she must said this a hundred times before she started to explain but at ten years old, most of us never really understood the real significance, of what she was trying to say.

As the tone of war canged and we were winning something at long last, the children were being thrown out of the village hall on picture nights, and the news was shown after the feature film, Pathe news reels had the horrific pictures of the Nazi concentration camps, and the unfortunate prisoners, I stayed behind one night and saw the the real horror of war, and that was enough for me.

The family were told by the evacuation office, to prepare for our return to London, as we suspect the owner of the bungalow was again applying pressure to the authorities, to help his case however, the allied forces were at knocking at Germany's door, and we all wanted to go back to London.
On May 8th 1945 we celibrated VE day in London, and our family's last child the eleveth was born.
My brother John was the first to go back to Coverack, strangely the bungalow owner let him see the place again, but let him know he thought he was to young at the time to be responsible for the way we left the place?
I went back to Coverack some 25 years after the war,I had a sandwich and coffee in the lifeboat house now a cafe, bought a painting of the village from the garage now studio, the house where my friend the lifeboat man lived was a cafe and the place where the bomb dropped during the war is now a public toilet, with a dedication plague, I met no one I knew, and never looked at the bungalow.
This story is dedicated to our mother and father Dollie & Eddie, our brothers Peter John and Robin, from the surviving members of the family Betty,Pat,Jean,Michael,Beryl,Ann,Linda & Richard.

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