大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lin Freeman of Radio Derby CSV on behalf of Pearl Webster and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I had my eleventh birthday in August,1939 and lived with my parents, my only brother, and my sister who was two years older than me. I was the youngest child of my parents' 'round dozen' - eleven girls and one boy - although two of the girls died in infancy. The four oldest girls were married and the other three were away, working in service. My father and brothers were miners, working at Whitwell and Markham Colliery.
The immediate effect of hostilities on daily life as far as we children were concerned was the disruption to our schooling. Clowne's schools were single sex, i.e infant and junior girls in one building and senior girls in the adjacent building, with a large playground with lavatories right down at the far end. These lavatories were water closets, housed in a well-built brick building. A row of about eight or ten very small ones for the infants and juniors, each in its seperate cubicle with a door, backed onto a row of slightly larger ones for the seniors. There were two lavatories for the teachers which were kept locked. Each teacher had her own key. Toilet paper was handed out by the teacher when a child asked, "Please may i go to the office?", although we were not encouraged to use these facilities during lesson time.
The boys' schools were divided in the same way, but I believe the infant and juniors had a separate play-ground from the senior boys. The senior boys' school was commandeered as an ARP First Aid Post on the outbreak of war, and although the girls' schools were never used for such purposes, we did not attend school for many weeks after war was declared.
I cannot remember how we were notified, but eventually my class, Mrs Hardy's Standard V, would go each day to Mount Zion Methodist Sunday School Room to collect 'homework' which we took to be marked next day before collecting the next assignment. My best friend, Ivy Walker, and I always did our homework together, helping each other. She was good at arithmetic - known to us as 'sums' - and I was considered to be bright at English, History and Geography, so between us we maintained a pretty high standard.
After a while we attended school five half-days a week, alternating mornings and afternoons weekly with the senior boys. We were given 'Pack Boxes'- large cardboard boxes with lids - in which to keep all our exercise books. These were kept in the desks which the boys also used. We soon learned to take pens, pencils, rulers and india rubbers home each day as the boys would raid our boxes and the teachers said they could not replace anything that was missing.
I believe we were back to normal schooling by the time the evacuees arrived in Clowne. They came from Lowestoft, a place few of us had heard of, on the train one Sunday. It must have been quite early in 1940, but I can't remember the precise date. They were boys from a senior school, aged between eleven and fourteen, and their teachers were evacuated with them. I seem to remember the Headmaster had a daughter named Vanessa, a name new to Clowne ears, who was about ten or eleven years old.
I remember the Billeting Officers coming along Barlborough Road, past our house, with one or two boys who had not yet been placed with families. People had been canvassed a few weeks beforehand to see how many children they might be able to take, and those who had offered accomodation had gone down to the railway station and had 'selected'their charges on the spot. Had they been girls my parents would have welcomed one - or perhaps two - but in a three-bedroomed house, with a son of twenty four, and two daughters of almost twelve and fourteen, boys were not an option. Our eldest sister, Nell, came to live with us early in 1940 with her three small sons, so it was as well we hadn't taken in any evacuees. Nell had married a regular soldier who had been posted to Palestine in early January 1938, when their third son, Geoff, was just six weeks old. Their two older boys were Frankie, then aged almost seven, and Les, then aged five and three months. Nell and her two children had had to leave their home in married quarters in Bullford- or Tidworth when Frank was sent abroad, but was hoping that they would be able to join him in the Middle East later. Meanwhile they went to live with my recently married sister and her husband in Birmingham. When the air-raids began on Birmingham my fahter insisted that Nell and her boys must come to live with us.
With four adults, four growing children and a toddler, it might be thought that our home would be overcrowded, but it never seemed so. Sleeping arrangements needed a bit of sorting. 'Our Stan' kept the small bedroom that had always been his; Nell, Ruby, Frank, Les and Geoff shared the big bedroom, with Nell and Ruby in the big double bed with the brass bedsteads, Les and Frank in a single bed, and Geoff in his cot. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but in those days children didn't have their own bedrooms to disappear into with T.V. and computers. We were not encouraged to use our bedrooms for anything but sleeping in. I had a single bed in my parent's room until Ruby left school in July, 1939, and went to work 'in service' with a family in Sheffield; then I shared the double bed with Nell. My father worked nights at Markham Colliery six days a week - Saturday was his only night off - so we were only three in that room on one night a week. I'm sure there were people in far worse circumstances than us.
Having Nell to live with us had its advantages. She had the ability to conjure up, or concoct, a delicious meal from almost nothing; although nine ration books helped to swell the essential ingredients. I still remember her pilchard fishcakes and cheese and potato cakes, and still have her recipe for egg-less boiled fruit cake. She had been cook - general for an Army Officer's family, and Captain Thorne was a friend and fellow officer of the then Duke of Gloucester who was often entertained to dinner at the Thorne's home; but I don't think for a moment that he ever partook of these culinary delights. Nell made, and iced, wedding cakes for three of our sisters during the war; no mean achievement when every ingredient had to be begged, borrowed and hoarded.
It wasn't long before Nell was able to rent a little two up, two down, house in a terrace of four, in a sort of cul-de-sac called New Barlborough. I always felt a deep sympathy for this place as a child because it had a sign declaring it an 'Un-adopted Road'. There was a longer row of slightly larger houses on the opposite side of this road, which was quite un-made, with partly buried, large smooth stones strewn along its surface which consisted mostly of black grit-like dirt where the men sometimes played marbles. They would place about twenty or so glass marbles in a ring and then see who could knock the most marbles out with one of their own, fired from the hand by movement of the thumb. At other times they would play a game called 'Peggie', where they balanced a small plank of wood on a log, one end just touching the ground, on which would be placed a small cube of wood, about two inches square. A piece of wood about two foot long and about two-and-a-half inches wide, with a roughly shaped handle, would serve as a bat with which to hit the end of the plank which was tilted up in the air. As the cube was projected up into the air the batsman would give it a mighty whack, sending it as far as possible. The spot where it had landed was marked and each contestant took a turn, the one sending the cube the farthest distance was declared the winner. Of course, when the men weren't playing these games we children took over, playing our versions of the adult games with hastily contrived equipment.
By the time Nell moved into New Balborough the evacuees were settled into their new surroundings and were using the Technical School -'Clowne Tec'- for their classrooms. This was not as grand a place as it sounds. In those days it consisted of one brick-built building where mining studies were taught. It was also used for 'Night School', as it was known then, before Evening Classes and Further Education became the norm.
Frank now insisted on being called by his given name. As a baby he had always been called 'Little Frank',his dad being known in the family as 'Big Frank'.He had then graduated to 'Frankie' but now, at going on for nine, he'd had enough of that. He and Les were now settled into their new school, Clowne Junior Boys' School, and doing very well, making new friends and losing their southern accents, soon picking up the broader Derbyshire vowel sounds.
On the domestic scene there were one or two highlights in our week. The 'Beano' comic came out on Tuesdays, I think, and 'Mickey Mouse' on Fridays. Nell bought these for the boys; we never had comics. The nearest we came to a comic strip was Rupert's adventures in the 'Daily Express'! Before Dad changed his allegiance to the Beaverbrook Press he had used to take the 'News Chronical' and we read about the Noah Family in the Ark. With pocket money at one half-penny per week - known as the 'Friday a-penny', and doled out by Dad after he had been to 'reckon' - the miners' term for collecting their wages - we couldn't afford such luxuries. 'Our Stan' bought the 'Rover' each week and swapped it for the 'Hotspur' with Dick william, his friend from next door.
The Gascoigne children from two doors away took 'Tiny Tots' and Ruby and I would go round to their house and we would read it together, leaning up against their fire- guard. The Millards, at the last house in the row, took 'Bubbles'. This, I am sure, was the comic that had 'Peter the Paleface' on the back page. Peter was a white boy brought up by a Red Indian tribe. I must have come to this comic late, because I never knew how he got to be there. The eldest of the three Millard daughters, Irene, took the 'Girls' Crystal' and this was my favourite weekly read. It was not, strictly speaking, a comic, but a collection of stories about girls in boarding schools, with such plots as those involving hooded monks, secret panels and passages in the old buildings in which the schools were housed. Most of the stories were in the form of serials and I would count down the days to the next Friday's edition. One story might feature a new-comer in the fifth form, named Truda or Maria, or some such name, who had been shunned by her form-mates because her surname was Schultz, or Schmitt, until the day when she saved the day- and the vital match- by hitting a mighty six off the last ball of the last over. It turned out that her father had defected from Germany and was engaged in very secret work for the Brits. None of us questioned how Truda - or was it Maria? - had learned to bat like that in a country not exactly renowned for its cricketing prowess. Innocents we were in those days - and gullible. Now and then I was able to get hold of a copy of Enid Blyton's 'Sunny Stories', but they were tame after the stories of 'Ship-board Sally', another heroine of 'Girls' Crystal'.
What we most looked forward to, Frank, Les and I, was the weekly ritual of 'Getting Geoffrey used to his gasmask'. This was no ordinary gasmask, but a contraption made of what I took to be solid rubber and celluloid. We would put this onto the big table in the room which we called 'the house', where the black leaded fireplace was with the side oven and hob, where we ate, did our homework and played our board games, and where Mum and Nell pegged rag rugs, and where they sat to write their letters; Nell to 'Darling Frank', Mum to her daughters - those married and those 'out service', and to her sister - our 'Rich Auntie Ethel'. Dad would write to his mother, his only sister and his brothers. He had the most beautiful hand-writing, although he had left school at the age of eleven, and had no problems with spelling and grammar.
On the days we did the gasmask drill the table was cleared for action. We had to lie Geoff in this thing, but I'm afraid I just can't remember if the whole of him went in or just the upper part of his body, from head to waist, and then we tightened straps round him. There was a concertina-like pump on the outside which had to be pumped continuously to keep the air supply fed to the entombed child. We would take it in turns to work the pump, Frank, Les and I, and would sing songs in time to the pumping. One of our favourites was 'My cups full and running over'. one of our Sunday School songs. Strange as it may seem, Geoff appeared to enjoy the whole performance. We were quite sad when he was issued with a Mickey Mouse gasmask. I remember it had a red tongue which hung out from it, and which vibrated madly as Geoff breathed out. For a while we found this quite funny, but it never came up to the excitement of ' getting him used to' the first one. Thank God we never had to put him into either for real.

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