大象传媒

This story has been added to the People鈥檚 War site by Margaret Cowell with the permission of Miss Mabel Ulliot who fully under -stands the sites terms and conditions.

Before the war and for many years after, I was the housekeeper and jack of all trades to the Reverend and Mrs Storer. Reverend Storer was the Vicar of Hutton and Cranswick, two adjoining villages about 20 miles north of Hull, near Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire. During the War I was in my twenties.

The evacuees arrive
It was lunchtime on Friday 1st September 1939. War would be declared on the following Sunday. The Vicar was notified that the church schoolrooms had been taken over for the arrival of children from Hull who were being evacuated that day. On the way to the hall, he met the local carrier who said that he had the people we were to house. There was a mother with two girls of 5 and 7 years, a young lady and four 5 year olds. The children had gone to school that morning and each had been given a bar of chocolate and a tin of corned beef. Then they were picked up and put on the train to where they were to be evacuated..

We had two spare bedrooms at the Vicarage with a double bed in each. We sent the visitors for a walk around the village, keeping the Church in view till we got ready. First it was somewhere to put the dog for safety as it was not used to children. Then we got some bedding sorted, a mattress on the floor for the children in one room and a double bed in the other for the women.

Our first teatime
We used some of the tins of corned beef they had brought for us to give them a meal. There was no baker in the village so we used the bread we had in and we had milk from the farm. We grew our own lettuce and tomatoes so we had them with the corned beef for tea and stewed apple to finish. What buns we had were homemade.

Unpacking
They had all brought washing things. Some of the children had come from poor families. One little girl had brought no change of clothes, just what she stood up in: pants, dress, coat and sand shoes and no night clothes. I went up into the attic where we had some things left from a rummage sale. She was tiny made and I used a baby鈥檚 pram suit to make her something to wear to bed. Another little girl screamed when we tried to make her sit at the table. According to one of the women at home she had eaten her meals of bread and whatever else on the roadside curb. Some of the children had head lice and fleas.

First Sunday
We were in Church when war was declared. One small child, called Beryl Brackstone was called for and taken away on that Sunday. Her mother and father came and brought her a black doll. They walked up and down the drive.The mother told Reverend Storer that her husband had been called up and was to leave the next day and she felt that she had to have the little girl for company. Of course, in those first months there was nothing much doing. The young woman who was to help the other mother with the children, went home the same Sunday after a phone call to say that her mother was ill.

Life with our evacuees
I don鈥檛 remember how long we had the others but it must have been some time for one child went down with scarlet fever and I helped nurse her. We kept the little girl who had arrived without a change of clothes until nearly Christmas of the following year. She was only five when she came, a sweet little thing that called me 鈥淣urse鈥� and would do anything for me. She would carry little bits of things and reckon she was helping with jobs around the house and garden. At first she had some trouble with an abcess which we found had festered in her ear. Then she came down with whooping cough and I nursed her until she was well again. She settled in well.

One dark wet night I had bathed her in a zinc bath in front of a good fire and got her ready for bed when there was a knock at the door. Her mother had come from Hull to take her home that night. I had to get her dressed and then I walked down with them in the pouring rain into Cranswick to catch the bus. The bus was crowded with people standing on the platform and the conductor said he couldn鈥檛 get any more on. I said 鈥淭his lady has to get back to Hull with this child鈥� and I paid and made sure that the little girl was inside out of the weather. Later in the war when we saw Hull on fire from the Vicarage garden I wondered about where the little girl was and hoped that she was safe.

Making do
Sometimes we were very short of food and fuel. We dug up all the garden for vegetables. The Vicarage was a large house with six bedrooms but we got the same fuel allowance as the cottages 鈥� one bag of coal a week. We had to keep two fires going but sometimes it was very cold indeed. I was often up very early after an alert but I didn鈥檛 dare to put the fire on too early as we hadn鈥檛 enough coal. Sometimes I went into the garden and sawed a branch down.

We had a bathroom upstairs but we hadn鈥檛 enough coal to heat the water so we boiled kettles and used some zinc baths we had got.
Paper was at a premium and I didn鈥檛 have a diary like you get today. However, I kept a record of the nights we had an alert and important events like the Italian surrender.

Alerting the ARP
Right at the start of the war before there had been any bombing, I was told that when I heard the alert I was to go to the Church gate to see if anyone was about. Early on, I saw an old lady from the village. She said that there wouldn鈥檛 be any enemy planes because her son Alfie, who lived in Hull, said that they would be shot down before they got over Flamborough Head!

I used to take messages on the Vicarage phone and run in and out to the ARP people. There were two women who acted as cycle messengers. The ARP had a warden鈥檚 post in the harness room at the Vicarage, nicely sandbagged in, next to the stables. There were two camp beds and a fire. I used to take over tea, and milk and sugar for them to have with the sandwiches they brought. Most of the ARP people had jobs so after a night of being on alert they would have to go off at 6.00am to milking or other work.

With the ARP workers and the police I went for training sometimes to the cinema in Driffield. There would be a two hour long film on what to do and what not to do in an air raid. They told us about butterfly bombs that landed like butterflies and exploded if you went near them.

The Army used to be moving about from one place to another. They wouldn鈥檛 stop on the main roads but get tucked in somewhere. Sometimes they would pull under the trees on the green outside and rig a camouflage net up. One time they were stopped near the Vicarage and I remember feeling so hungry when I smelt the bacon. I thought if only I could have a bit of dripping on some bread!

Our first air raid
When we had our first air raid, I had to run and put out the bonfire I had burning in the field. The dog went under the desk and wouldn鈥檛 come out though we wanted him to go down into the cellar. There were all these planes about. We weren鈥檛 sure if they were ours until the bombs dropped. They were bombing the aerodrome at Driffield, a market town about 4 miles away.

Mrs Storer and I went down into the cellar but it was so dark I had to run back and get a candle. I had a job to light it as my hands were trembling. The candle didn鈥檛 give much light. My only thought was what if the four storey house came down on us. How would they get us out, they wouldn鈥檛 know where we were? We had only our bare hands to dig ourselves out and I felt responsible for Mrs Storer. I was shaking like a leaf all the time. I couldn鈥檛 make myself go up the stairs to the attic where all the blankets and emergency supplies were.

However, though I was very frightened then and at other times in the war I was never panicky. Well it didn鈥檛 pay to. I tried to keep on an even keel.

Other alerts
We got to know when there was going to be an alert. The dog heard the planes first and shuffled under the desk, often before we got the warning. We knew there were Jerries about. They used to come over Flamborough Head which must have showed up well [The East Yorkshire coast has chalk cliffs of several hundred feet]. We would hold our breath as sometimes they would go north towards Middlesbrough.

Other times they would fly over us and down the coast to Hull. Whichever way they went we couldn鈥檛 relax because we knew that they would come back our way and jettison anything they had left. We got a doodlebug over once. It sounded like a heavy tractor going overhead. I dropped down and laid along the house wall outside as they had told us to do in the training.

Sometimes we would stand on our big lawn at the south end of the house. We could see Hull on fire to the south. In the terrible raids we could see every time they dropped a stick of incendiaries as they blazed up into the sky which was all red. At these times I wondered about our evacuees who had gone back to their homes there.

Gardening in my tin hat.
The Vicarage had a very big garden that was dug up to grow vegetables. Sometimes I was up at four in the morning and working in the garden. There was an alert about 5.15am one beautiful sunny June morning. I was up and dressed. I stood at the field gate but there was nothing doing so I went to weed the garden in my tin hat. I looked up and there was one plane. It went round and round and came back again. This time I watched him and he came lower and lower until I could see the swastika. It was only a light plane but I thought I鈥檇 better get under the trees. He circled round and round and I wondered if he thought that there was a gun hidden under the trees. I got back in by going round by the stables and back into the house.

A builder who had been bombed out of three different houses in Hull came to the village looking for somewhere to stay. There was a little house down near the railway. The owner said he could have it if he tidied it up.He had spent the night air raid watching when he lived in Hull. He told us about someone he knew very well who had helped get people out of the wreckage after the bombing raids in Hull. One time they handed him a dead baby. He just stood with it and didn鈥檛 respond when his colleagues started shouting at him to carry on. They had to send him home. The builder built the Vicarage garden wall up in gratitude to the village which had been so kind to him and for getting him the little house.

Air Raid
The evening we had the blitz was very dark with no moon. We got the alert and I went out as usual. The Vicar saw the wardens on their round to make sure that no lights were showing and to warn everyone as it was only a whistle they blew. There was a bell for all clear.

I could hear the roar of the planes by then. The sky was full of lights. Then came the incendiaries. There were fires all over. One was near the kitchen window. I tried to put it out with soil and gravel. The Vicar came to look for me as by then the church lead roof was on fire and there was a call to get the garden hose out and to connect it up indoors. It was a big hosepipe on a reel and I added another short piece to it while the bombs were whistling down. I had buckets and two zinc baths to fill and the men kept coming with more buckets. It seemed to pass in no time. Then I had to go to see if the Vicarage had any incendiaries through the roof and I was pleased to find that there weren't any.

We had no phones. A man on a cycle went round and he saw the fire appliance coming back to base at Driffield as there were bomb craters along the road leading to where they had been called out. They hacked all the burning wood down to put out the fire.

By the time we finished we were all black. Tired and faint, I had half an OXO in a mug of smoky hot water. Then I got a cold wash and a change of clothes and started on the next day鈥檚 work as most people did. The enemy said that they had a direct hit on the water works along the road. In fact it was on a farmhouse close by where a family of four were killed.

Later we dug up a lot of incendiaries. They had a fin about 8 or 9 inches long that made them spin as they came down. The bomb itself was a cylinder only about 2.5 inches round and 3 inches long.They would drop something and the incediaries would scatter out, hundreds and hundreds of them.

As my younger sister was moving around England with the army, I was responsible for our home and grandparents in Driffield, walking 3 miles each way at least once a week to see all was OK. Looking back at 90 years old I feel it was a duty done for our country of which I am proud to be a member.

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