大象传媒

When the war began I was a fourteen year old pupil at an East London grammar school. On September 1st 1939 the school was evacuated to Sussex, the juniors to Hassocks the rest of us to Brighton. I stayed evacuated until I finished the sixth form exams at eighteen when I went back home to await the call-up.

Over the years I lived in several billets. The first was with a family of 'strict baptists' who asked for me to be removed when they heard me discussing a lesson on Darwinism which we'd had at school. They were afraid that I would corrupt their son with this blasphemy.

After Dunkirk we were moved away from the coast to Camberley in Surrey and I lived for several years with a very nice family in a little cottage at the back of the town. The father of the house was a warder at what was then called Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. They looked after me very well and I was very friendly with their son who was a year or two older than me. When he went into the army the family felt that they had done their duty by me and asked that I be found another billet.

By this time billets were becoming hard to find. The Council's billeting officer took me in his car to a large house on the Portsmouth Road which was approached by a long tree lined drive. He posted me with my suitcase at the front door, put a piece of paper into my hand, said "Give this to whoever opens the door", rang the bell and left. By the time the door was opened he was out of sight.

The paper was a compulsory billeting notice. The door was opened by a maid in uniform who panicked when she saw it. "Just a minute." she said and slammed the door. I waited outside for about twenty minutes. Eventually the door was opened by a formidable looking middle-aged woman in a white overall. She glared at me as if I was something she had scraped off her shoe. "You'd better come in." I followed her through a green baize door into the kitchen. She sat at the table while I had to remain standing and studied the billeting notice carefully. "Why have they sent you here?" she asked. "Madam has already explained that she hasn't got the staff to take evacuees." I later discovered that Madam, Lady -----, lived in the house with her eleven year old daughter. Sir John ----- was a Colonel in the Army. The staff consisted of the middle aged woman who was the cook-housekeeper, a lady's maid, a maid of all work, a nursery maid and a handyman-gardener. Five servants were needed to look after a young woman and her child.

I was given a tiny attic bedroom and was allowed to bath every Friday night. I lived in the servant's quarters and was never allowed on the other side of that green baize door. I didn't mind too much. Exams were coming up and I would soon be going home.

Three or four weeks before the end of term the cook- housekeeper asked to see me. Normally I was completely ignored. I went into her office where she was sitting at her desk. "Madam understands that you are leaving school soon." I nodded. "Well she normally wouldn't consider anybody under five foot ten and certainly nobody who wore glasses but under the circumstances she is prepared to offer you a post as an under footman." She leaned back and looked as if she expected me to kneel at her feet and kiss her hand. Her expression when I fell about laughing made me laugh even more. When I recovered I explained that the exams I was taking were to prepare me for university entrance and although I would be going into the forces before long I would eventually go to college. These people had never heard of working class boys aspiring to the university. All the servants thought I was crazy. It was a wonderful offer and if I behaved myself I could be a butler by the time I was forty.

I left Camberley a few weeks later and was no longer an evacuee. I was called up into the Navy and was eventually demobbed in February 1947.

I had been an evacuee for four years living with strangers and I was soon taken from home again for service in the Navy. I left home at fourteen and didn't get back to live permanently until I was nearly twenty two. I had spent seven years learning how to look after myself. My mother found it difficult to acclimatise. To her I was still the fourteen year old that she had tearfully kissed goodbye in 1939. One morning I told her that I would be late home and don't wait up. "Where are you going?" she asked. "Oh, just out with a friend, perhaps the pictures and a meal." "What friend?" She wasn't being inquisitive, just interested. "You don't know her." I replied. She looked thoroughly shocked. Her fourteen year old son staying out late with a GIRL!!!!! Eventually she realised that I was a grown man although a few years later when I announced that I was getting married.... But that's another story.

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