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August 1940, Britain was at war and being attacked, I was a child living in the heart of the great military camp of Aldershot in the South of the Country, an obvious target for the bombs of the Luftwaft, or so everyone thought at the time. Evacuation of children was the order of the day and groups of labelled kids were leaving their homes bound for all corners of the country, indeed for all corners of the Commonwealth. I and my two older sisters Jean aged 11 and Mary aged 13 were amongst them, we were duly processed, labelled and with our gas masks in their little cardboard boxes slung across our shoulders and suit cases clutched in small hands we boarded our first train, to London then on to Liverpool where we boarded the Dutch passenger liner Volendam. We set sail the following day, our destination was Canada, before we had even left the Mersey we had our first emergency practice. Alarm bells were sounded we were herded to our appointed Assembly points and it was impressed on us that whenever we heard the bells we had to make our way to this part of the ship immediately. At this stage I was separated from my sisters and found myself sharing a cabin with three other young boys. Packed into my little suit case was my first pair of long trousers, my parents had learned that young boys in Canada wore long trousers, in England in 1940 boys wore short trousers. The trousers had been made for me by a cousin who happened to be an Army tailor. They had to be specially made because it was impossible to buy long trousers for a small boy in England in 1940. I was to wear the trousers for the first time on arrival in Halifax, I couldn’t wait to put them on.

I met up with my big sisters at meal times and sometimes when we were playing on the deck, it was exciting being at sea for the first time and I remember looking out over the grey Atlantic at all the ships in our convoy. Every day we practiced our alarm drill and by the third day we knew our way round the ship and could find our Assembly point in double quick time from wherever we happened to be.

Three days out from Liverpool and we turned in early, the next day was to be a party to celebrate the birthday of the Queen of Holland, an event that we looked forward to in eager anticipation. We hadn’t had many parties in wartime England.

I didn’t hear the explosion as the torpedo tore through the side of the ship but I did hear those blessed alarm bells, and I remember thinking oh no, why do we need to practice in the middle of the night. However we had been fully trained by now and I rushed to the assembly point clad only in my pyjamas, but this time it was different. We were issued with buoyancy aids and told how to strap them on, then led out onto the upper deck to a lifeboat and actually lifted into the boat. It was at this stage that I first learned that this was no practice, the ship had been torpedoed and we were to abandon it. The lifeboat was lowered to the water and released into the sea and the boats crew rowed us away from our stricken vessel into the darkness of the night.

It was cold, I was sea sick, I was wet, it was dark, we were being tossed about in the middle of a large Ocean, I had lost my precious long trousers and I was without my big sisters, where were they, were they safe, they weren’t in this lifeboat, this one was full of boys, I was a bit frightened after all I was just nine years old.

Thankfully this state of affairs lasted just a couple of hours, out of the darkness there loomed the side of a large vessel and our crew took us alongside the rescue ship. The problem was how to get a boat load of small children at sea level onto the deck of the ship some twenty feet above sea level. The rescue ship turned out to be Norwegian and a banana boat, I don’t remember her name, but whenever I see the Norwegian flag I think of her. In 1940 bananas were loaded in the Caribbean from small boats just about the size of our lifeboat. The bananas were loaded into baskets which were then hauled up onto the upper deck of the boat using a winch. We children became bunches of bananas, we were lifted into the baskets, three at a time, and hauled up to safety. Once I was aboard the sea sickness went like magic and we were hustled down into the warmth of the lower decks and fed with hot cocoa and biscuits, issued with a blanket and a spot on the deck to curl up and go to sleep for the remainder of the night, my spot was on one of the stairs of a companionway leading from one deck to another. This was to be my bed for the whole of the voyage, the ship being overloaded with young children. The next day I wandered around the ship seeking my sisters, but to no avail. They were not amongst the survivors on this ship. The Norwegian crew were kind but few of them had any English, I was worried about my missing sisters and disappointed to have missed the birthday party on the Volendam, but this latter was compensated for when I mentioned it to one of the crew. He went away and returned with an orange which he presented to me, this was the first one I had eaten in almost twelve months, it was truly delicious.

It only took us about 48 hours to return to dry land, we were put ashore in Greenock on the river Clyde. Here we were bussed to a local school, still clad in pyjamas, and with bare feet, but the kindly Scots soon provided us with warm clothing socks and shoes.

The school only housed survivors from the Norwegian banana boat, so I didn’t search for my sisters, but I was very worried about them and could get no news of them, but we were told that other children had arrived in Scotland and were at another school, and that all the children had survived, so I was hopeful that we would meet up soon. Meanwhile I was safe, being well looked after but longing to get home, and sad that I had lost my precious first pair of long trousers.
We were told that a special train was being organised to take us to London in a few days time.

So I know found myself safely ashore in Scotland but without my sisters or my precious first pair of long trousers, and waiting for the special train to be organised.

I think we spent two days in Scotland and on the third day we went by bus to the railway station to board the famous steam train the Flying Scotsman bound for London and home.

On the train I again searched for my missing sisters and this time I was lucky. I found them both safe and well, it was quite a reunion. They told me how they had been picked up from their lifeboat by an English oil tanker and returned to Greenock, but housed in a different school. I learned from them that the Volendam had not sunk, but the crew after abandoning her had returned and the ship was being towed to Ireland for repairs. In fact the evacuation at sea in the darkness of night had been almost 100% successful, all the passengers, mostly children, had been saved but one crew member, the Purser I believe, had unfortunately been crushed between lifeboat and ship and had drowned. I spent the rest of the journey talking to them about what had happened to us. Jean had a narrow escape, when boarding the oil taker from the lifeboat she had slipped and had been dragged aboard by a sailor grabbing her hair as she fell between lifeboat and ship.

Our mother was waiting for us when we arrived in London, the first she had known of the Volendam’s fate was from a photograph of my two sisters wrapped in blankets as they came ashore in Greenock, she was worried because I wasn’t in the picture. With mother was a gentleman from the B.B.C, who wanted to record our story for a ten minute ‘survivors’ program that was being aired after the one o’clock news every day. Thus at the age of nine I was a wartime survivor and had my first B.B.C. interview, as I recall I was not very articulate. A happy home-coming ensued , and a satisfactory outcome from an adventure that could have been, and on the ‘City of Benaeres’, the next evacuee ship to Canada was, tragic, most of the children on board, including two survivors of the Volendam loosing their lives.
In December 1940 just in time for Christmas a battered suitcase was delivered to our home, it was mine, it came from the Volendam and contained amongst other things, my first pair of precious long trousers, but I couldn’t wear them, in 1940 in England nine year old boys just didn’t wear long trousers and by the time I had reached a age when I could wear them, they were much to small.

(People in the story Patrick Rogers (author), Jean Lucas, Mary Emery)

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