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My first memory of evacuation is of my mother preparing a shoulder bag and trying it on me, saying that we were to go away because of the war. It must have been at the beginning, when I was six, or before the war because I seem to remember that we did not go away then because no hostilities developed.

The first evacuation was with all of my family to Selsea Bill on the south coast, we were billeted in an old railway carriage that had been converted for use as a home, (it was called ‘Bel Air’ but we all used to call it Belair) on the edge of a cliff, with just a shingle road between us and a huge drop to the beach. No fence or protection of any kind. I remember quite clearly the milkman delivering milk from a churn on his horse and cart, using a ladle. He used to give us rides on the cart while he was delivering the milk. On day we were on the cart when the milkman was serving a customer, we played with the reins, the horse bolted along the road, the beach being long way below us. We were terrified, but luckily a man ran out and grabbed the horse’s reins.

We were there with my Mother, her brother’s wife, my two brothers and my cousin John. Mrs Jenkinson who was a close friend of the family was there with her son Robert. Robert showed us how to leap into bed through the carriage window as the door was fixed shut. Mrs Jenkinson remained friends till long after the war. My father and my uncle continued to work in London and came to see us at weekends. I remember making sand castles on the beach and I was very proud of a small battleship that I made with the sand. It was enjoyable with all of us together. I went back there with my Mother immediately after the war to see where we stayed, the road had disappeared completely and the railway carriages were all on the beach where they had fallen because of the erosion.

I had my seventh birthday there. The beaches became very dangerous places during the war and were all fenced off and guarded against the enemy, so we came back to London to face the danger there. Later on, we all acquired an old thatched cottage with no facilities at all, just four bare rooms no toilet or kitchen. My parents and uncle scrounged old furniture from neighbours so that we could live in it. I helped to dig a pit at the end of the garden to use as a toilet. I saw a huge rat running across the garden. . I have no idea where this cottage was, but it was near the sea because we found some bombs that were washed up on the beach and brought them back, but Mum made us put them back. My brother Doug has reminded me of a lady who gave us a ride in her old, small and very tatty car, which had these huge dogs in it. I don’t know where we were going but she was incredibly untidy and she had some sticky stuff on her hand which I think came from the dogs, I was amazed when she licked it off. Doug says she was a failed channel swimmer.

Dad went home from work in Tooting one winters day, the pipes had burst and the house was flooded. He did not do anything about it then but came out to us and we went back later with Mum to fix it.

It was in junior school that we were all issued with gas masks and we had practice lessons putting them on and they were also tested for safety. We kept them in a square cardboard box with a bit of string we put around our necks. We had to carry them at all times. When the blitz got heavier it was decided that children should be evacuated to ‘safe’ areas. It was from school that we were ‘dispatched’ we had labels tied on us and were led in groups to the railway station. I don’t ever remember saying goodbye to my parents.

I don’t remember much about this journey except that it involved just my brother Doug and me. My youngest brother Bill was still too young to leave Mum. I think I was just 8 and I had to look after my brother who was 6. I can remember standing around with all the other kids in a local school waiting to be picked out by local people. As we were brothers we had to stay together, nobody wanted to take two little boys, girls yes or just one boy. We were standing around for hours not knowing what was going to happen to us. We stayed at various billets one of them was a farm ‘Bigg’s Farm’, I had a ride on a horse the was going out to pull a plough and I cleaned out a gully in the milking shed, that was full of cows dung, with my bare hands. I was quite proud of that. One billet was a little old lady (Mrs Watson) who used to fry bread for breakfast, after soaking it. I can remember enjoying that. We made plastecine kayaks there and played with them for hours. Because there was no where else to put us, we spent some time in a hospital and had to spend all the time in bed, it was one room with three beds one each for me and my brother and the other was a little girl who’s company I enjoyed. I often wonder who made those decisions. After weeks or months we were eventually put into a billet that was so traumatic that it affected me for the rest of my life, I still have nightmares about it now.

It was a blacksmiths house with the forge adjoining the house. The wife was a thin bossy woman and the blacksmith was a thickset man with one eye. There was already an evacuee staying there who seemed to get on with them very well, they were obviously forced to take us. This other boy was from a rich family and his parents I think had paid for him to be there. He was given the best of everything and treated like a lord and set up as an example to us, whilst we were humiliated from the start. We were called dirty London kids, there was never a kind or encouraging word said to us. We were not allowed in the house at all unless it was for meals and bed. If we even dared to look in the window we were beaten. I can remember not being able to eat some tough gristle (as food was scarce we were expected to eat it) I was beaten with a whip and forced to swallow it. Whilst on one of our wanderings around the fields, I had diarrhoea and made a mess in my pants, I tried to clean it up as best as I could but it was impossible. When it was meal time, I sat down at the table but they could smell it. I was hauled out from the table and beaten. I was then dragged across the fields which was a short cut, He (the Blacksmith) threatened me with the bull there and I was taken to the headmaster’s house. This was evening time and school had finished. The head master was told what I had done and I was immediately taken into a class room and caned on my bare backside with a long stick (this stick I remember quite clearly was used for holding up black out curtaining). The next morning there was thick snow and ice and all my school chums were called round to watch me wash my dirty pants in a bucket of cold water in the yard. I was not wearing any trousers, this experience has done nothing to help my self esteem. The day times at school were no better as we were treated like second class citizens by the local kids and the teachers. We were told how clever the local kids were and how stupid we were. Life was unbearable all the time.

Whilst walking in the fields we ate some raw Brussels sprouts picked from an allotment, as kids do, we told the other evacuee in the house in confidence. He immediately told the blacksmith, who promptly dragged my brother to the forge bench and stuffed brussels sprouts down his neck until he was choking. From that day the nickname ‘Brussells’ was added to the other insults that we received. We wrote letters home and were watched over by the woman, so we were unable to convey these experiences to our parents. I can remember crying myself to sleep every night. I kept saying that I had not heard from my Mum and that I thought she might be dead from the bombs. I was told that she was OK. We received a telegram from her saying she was OK but I did not believe it as it was not her writing. (telegrams were hand written then). As this was in Buckinghamshire it was not too difficult for our Mum to come and see us, but for some reason she did not. It must have been years (or seemed like it) when she eventually came to see us. Whilst out walking with her we told her all about or experiences. She packed our clothes and put us to bed fully dressed. Next morning she threw the cases out of the window, I had peed the bed during the night and my clothes were soaked in pee but there was no time to do anything about it and she took us back home to the blitz, without ever saying goodbye to those awful people.
My brother Doug and I stayed in another billet, which was an old country cottage that used to get the water from a well. They had a son who’s bike I was desperately wanting to ride, but was not allowed to. We used to explore the fields, catching moles etc. On the other side of the field was a reservoir, we used to play there regularly, which was very dangerous. Once when we were playing there, my brother got very adventurous and ran out onto the mud in his wellies. He got stuck and gradually sank into it. We could not reach him, as we would get stuck as well. I ran for help across the field, there was an older boy crossing the field and I told him. I carried on to the house where I took the bike out of the shed and rode it up the road to a nearby farm to find someone, I could not find anybody. I cycled back to the reservoir and was relieved to find that the boy I had passed in the field had had the sense to find a plank nearby and pushed it in front of my brother, Doug climbed on to it and was OK, leaving his wellies behind in the mud. I was worried that I was discovered using the bike.

Back in London we had to attend a Catholic school as it was the nearest one to us we could not choose where we went, All lessons were preceded and ended by prayers, usually we had to say ‘Hail Mary Mother of God’ ten times. I think they considered us sort of heathens as we were protestant kids. (I didn’t even know what protestants were). Lessons were not structured and we never had homework. The boys used to have competitions every morning to see how much shrapnel, (which appeared as a result of previous air raids) they could collect on their way to school, some of this shrapnel was so big, that it could have killed somebody.

The night times were spectacular as during air raids the sky was lit up by search lights, panning the sky for enemy planes. When one was caught in the light the Ack Ack guns were fired, and the noise was incredible. On Tooting Bec common which was not far from us, were the Ack Ack gun stations, searchlights and barrage balloons, Which were always part of the sky line. The doodle bugs started bombing us, we saw many of them flying over in the day time with smoke coming out of the tail. We were all aware that if you heard the engine stop it was about to fall nearby, but if you heard it screaming down it was meant for us. It was awful when we thought that all those bombs we saw flying across, somebody was going to cop it. We used to sleep regularly in an ‘Anderson’ shelter, made of corrugated iron and half sunk into the ground. Everybody with gardens had them. Those people with no gardens had a ‘Morrison’ shelter which was like a huge steel table in the middle of the living room under which everyone slept. No air raid shelter, was a protection from a direct hit and we all knew this. We were also aware that the blast from a nearby bomb could kill us so we built a blast wall in front of the shelter it was made with wooden floor boards filled with earth. We were in the shelter one evening when we heard a doodle bug flying over, which was normal, but this ones engine stopped and we heard it screaming down towards us. I can remember how terrified I felt. The next day we discovered that it had landed in the next street, just a few yards from us. The families were all killed, but I did not know them.

It was decided that the children would again be evacuated. The train journey seemed to go on forever, especially as we had no idea where we were going it was kept secret until we arrived it could have been anywhere in the world. (Some were shipped to Canada and the ship was sunk). There were no toilets or corridors on the trains. The train stopped at stations for everyone to relieve themselves. We were all aware that the train could leave, with someone still in the toilet. I can remember how uncomfortable it was. It was the three of us this time, and we all travelled without our parents, we still had our labels attached to us. We had arrived, when someone told us it was Wales. There were no road signs or station names or any indication or anything that could give information to a spy. So we did not know we were in Wales until we were told. We were in a reception centre for a long time. We were three brothers and had to be kept together. We were eventually separated, My middle brother Doug was taken in with a school teacher, who had two boys of his own and from what I can remember they had a good time. My youngest brother Bill and I were billeted with a doctor and his wife. I suppose they thought that I was more able to look after my young brother.

This billet was a big house (I have always called it a mansion). They had two maids, Nancy and Maisy, the kitchen was huge with a stone floor, a massive table in the middle and a double sized Aga cooker, this cooker was amazing, it was heated by coal which was loaded in through the hot plate twice a day and it never went out. I particularly liked the welsh cakes that Nancy used to cook on a special flat steel plate, that had a handle like a bucket handle for lifting it on and off, this went on the hot plate, I used to help her make the ‘Curds and Whey’ which they called ‘Junket’ it was delicious . The house had large gardens attached to it, one was a garden with a huge lawn which we had to take turns mowing, it was a push mower and the lawn was full of moss and extremely difficult to mow but we still had to do it. (everybody had their little jobs to do (veg prep etc).). There was a kitchen garden and another garden with chickens, we used to collect the eggs. We had quite a good time there, but can I remember missing my Mum. The doctor used to take us in his car whilst he did the rounds, this was a nice experience, but he did not know what we used to get up to in his car whilst he was seeing the patient. We nearly caused it to run backwards down hill by taking off the hand brake.
We ate with the maids, (who always wore their uniforms. Nancy, who was the cook and the older of the two and Maisy, who did the house work and waiting at table) at a huge table in the kitchen. This was nice and informal, we were fascinated by the things they talked about at meal times. The were both quite young and single and used to go out with US service men at a base nearby, there were never any details but that seem to be their only topic of conversation. There was a period when the Doctor and his wife (who was high up in the WVS) had us dine with them. We were waited on by Maisy, we used the best silver and were taught how to behave. This did not go on for long and we were reverted back to below stairs. I did not mind, as it was more informal.
There was one thing that bothered me more than any other. We had to be in bed by seven every evening, whilst my brother Doug, who was billeted with a school teacher and his two sons, was still raking the fields and doing exciting things until late.

There was a village school, which only the local kids went to. All the evacuees classes were in a church hall and we were all taught by one teacher (who was an evacuee herself). We were all ages and the big kids taught the younger ones. The teacher was Mrs Plunkett a big domineering woman. She had a grown up daughter who came to stay for a while and taught us drama. The daughter produced a play that I was in, called ‘The Grand Cham’s Diamond’. After the war she became quite a famous film star, Patricia Plunkett.

We learned a couple of words of Welsh but did not learn much because the local kids talked among themselves in Welsh, but to us in English. The village was Llangadock and half way between Llandilo and Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, South Wales.

When coming home after the war I remember thinking how small our house was in Tooting after living in that big one. Dr and Mrs Lawson came to visit us after the war as they were seeing friends in Dulwich. My mother gave them tea and cakes, she cut some French bead into slices and buttered every one and said that we weren’t to eat them as they were for Dr and Mrs Lawson.

The VE day celebrations were marvellous, everybody went mad. .Every street had a bonfire (we took all the wooden bunk beds out of the air raid shelters and burnt them). Rationing was still on but the parents managed to find something for the street parties, it did not stop people from enjoying themselves. My uncle Charlie played a piano accordian. There were so many getting drunk and hoards of people roamed the street, cheering and holding up the trams and buses. Everybody was out on the streets, celebrating, I have not seen people enjoy themselves as much since, except for the VJ day celebrations which followed soon after.

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