大象传媒

To begin with I must emphasise that there are many gaps in my memory about my young life as an evacuee, and some events can never be recalled. However I will endeavour to write as a (young) 72-year-old, who realised, as he became an adult, how he had born a deep scar since he was ten years old!

Evacuation to Saffron Waldon

My mother's four children were born between 1925 and 1933. Julia (also called Jules or Julie) was the eldest. Annie (only known as Ann) was next, I am Joseph (called Joe), and Philip (Philly or Phil) was the youngest - and therefore his mum's shnooks.

At the outbreak of World War Two, I was eight years old. By 1940, along with my brother and two sisters, I was evacuated to Saffron Waldon in Essex. The four of us were expecting to go to Ely or (I think) Cambridge, because my mate Raphie Solomons went there with his mother. However, as we had no parent with us we were not allowed to go on to Cambridge, and we were dropped off at Saffron Waldon.

I remember the four of us with gas masks and suitcases being ushered into a church hall and given a brown paper bag containing chocolate and other goodies. My sister Ann was howling, 'I wanna go home' - which she is reminded of to this day. I was too young to know what was happening to us at the time but I do now!

In Saffron Walden we were allocated to a family whose name I think was Spurges. Opposite was an area we named the 'Hilly Bumps'. It seemed almost immediately that we were to be separated. Jules and Ann were sent to the house of a young couple (who were very fussy), and they were not happy there at all. My Philly and me were sent to a Mrs Smith in Castle Street. I seem to recollect that she was elderly and plump (remember, I was only ten). We seem to have been happy there.

Evacuation to Buckinghamshire

The unhappiness of my sisters prompted a phone call home (we had a phone at home in those days), and soon we were taken back home to Hughes Mansions in Stepney, London. Some time later Philly and I were evacuated again, to a town in Buckinghamshire. My sister Ann took us to the gas works near Hartford Street, Stepney, to be picked up, and so we were evacuated for a second time.

I suppose Buckingham in those war years was a typical country town. The hotel there was called the White Hart. We were taken to a nice house in School Lane (no. 1 or 2), with Mr and Mrs Bourne and Margaret (Margery?) their daughter. Mr Bourne worked in the local petrol station, while Mrs Bourne worked at her sewing machine by the window. She smoked at least 100 Craven 'A' Black Cat cigarettes a day!

I remember them as quite elderly, and I believe they had a son in the Air Force - he became a victim of the war. I also recall that I had an air rifle, which my father brought to Buckingham for me on one of his visits. When we finally returned home I left it behind for some reason. I can only remember being quite happy there. Philly was too (by the way in case I forget, when my younger brother was later to write for a London taxi magazine, I gave him the pseudonym Filly).

Mitre Street, and family tragedy

After some while in Buckingham, we two boys were taken from the Bourne's home to stay with Mrs Allen at no.13 Mitre Street. She had a young girl (perhaps only one or two years old then). Mr Allen was away in the army. Mrs Allen was a lot younger than the other people we had stayed with. She had a sister, who lived a few doors away in Mitre Street, and I remember that her sister had only one and a half arms. Looking back we must have been very happy there, but something was to happen that would change the life of my family forever.

One day my father arrived at Mitre Street unexpectedly. I noticed he had a diamond black patch on the sleeve of his coat, and I asked him what it was for. He replied that it was for Grandma Liza (my mother's adopted mother), who had died. Grandma Liza had taken my mother in when she was six months old and so my mother, who was of Jewish parentage, was brought up by my Christian grandma and her son, Uncle Willie - a wonderful kind man. But that is another story.

Looking back to that day when my father arrived with the diamond patch on his coat, I am sure it was the beginning of the way my thoughts on life began to take shape. I would look for reasons for everything; it was the start of the shaping of my personal scar.

To this day I can't remember who told me that my mother was killed, aged 35, at no. 1a Hughes Mansions. I am told that my family - including my father's mother, my Grandma Kate, uncles and aunts, cousins, my two sisters and friends (maybe 12 in all) - were all sleeping on mattresses in a two-bedroom ground floor flat, which had the ceiling propped up with wooden columns, when it happened.

My mother's home was open to all. She was, I am told, the epitome of an East End mother, wife and woman. A bomb had dropped outside the street door, and I am told that as she walked from the kitchen into the passage the bomb exploded, and she was hit by shrapnel. As she lay dying her last words were for my father, Morry.

Strangely, as I recollect my Buckingham town days, I remember having a fight in the playground at the school with another boy, who had told my brother Philly that my mother had been killed. Yet I cannot remember who actually told me. Maybe it was the headmaster of the school. Another strange fact is that I understand that the Blitz on London ended on the night of 10/11 May 1941 - the night of my mother's passing.

Third, and last, evacuation

Some time after my mother's death, my brother and I went back to the East End. There were still air raids, but not like the Blitz. It was the beginning of the VIs (the Doodlebugs). Philly and I were now told that we were to be evacuated yet again. My cousin Sid was evacuated to a camp school in Hertfordshire. I wanted to be sent on my own without my brother (I don't know why). Following a row with my father (there were many throughout his life with me), it was decided that I would go on my own. Philly was to stay with friends of the family in Pinner, Middlesex. My cousin Sid left the camp school a few months later.

My third evacuation was to be my last - I was sent to the Nettleden LCC School, St Margaret's Camp, Great Gaddesden (near Hemel Hempstead), Hertfordshire. This to me was the beginning of my becoming a man before my time. The school was strictly regimented. We lived in dormitories named Shaftesbury, Lister, Wren, Gordon, Shelley. There were two women called 'sisters' (like matrons), who inspected our beds for tidiness and cleanliness. We were given points, which were added to the points gained for our classroom behaviour, and a pendant was given to the dormitory that had the most points - all the dormitories competed against each other.

The school and classrooms were in the compound at the camp. We were allowed to see a film on a Saturday evening at the camp, and we had our own kitchen there. During the summer we had school in the morning and evening, and the afternoons were for sport and recreation - like looking for golf balls that one schoolmaster, Mr Wade, had knocked all over the grounds! We also worked on the local farms during the school holidays.

A tough regime

Mr Wade was well over 6ft tall (or so it seemed to me). He wore plus-fours on occasion, and his favourite words were, 'BOY, what are you doing?' - then whack! Once my cousin Sid had a fight with him in the dining room.

Each night we had to have vitamin tablets, given to us when we had gone to bed. In the dormitories we had double bunks. While administering the tablets one master knew who the weak boys were, and his hand would often stretch under the bedclothes - but not mine, luckily - he knew who was who!

Mr Jones (we called him Yonser, I don't know why) was our music teacher. Mr Nelson had only half a chin - we think he had it blown partly off during World War One. Mr Golding was our sports master (I was in the cricket team). He had also been one of our teachers at our school in London - called Robert Montefiore. And then there was Mr Ernest E White the headmaster, a nasty piece of work, especially when he used the cane!

The masters had their own room at the end of the dormitories. Sometimes we used to overhear them talking on the veranda, and we suspected from what we overheard that one of them was a communist, - or had left-wing views. I recall that two of them, Mr Bellinger and Mr Golding, were good looking men - funny the things that you remember when you look back.

I remember a history lesson given by Mr Nelson (the one with half a chin). He told us that during World War One, to keep awake whilst on sentry duty, he would light a fag and put it between his middle finger and the one next to the little finger. The fag would not fall out, it would eventually burn his fingers and wake him up. When I went to do my own national service in 1949 I did try this, and it actually worked. So much for history lessons at school.

Mr Morgan was known as Moggy Morgan. He was paralysed down the left side of his arm and leg. His hand was withered, and obviously he felt no pain. When we were naughty (which I suppose was quite often) he used to bang his withered arm on the top of our heads.

To give some idea of the type of school, which was full of evacuees - we had 30 (average) in the classrooms. The last term at school I came 27th out of 30 for arithmetic, but overall I came third in the class - can you imagine what the rest were like! But despite this, and despite all the trauma that we went through, we all went on to earn a living in one way or another. While we were there we had to join the Boys Brigade or Scouts. I joined the Scouts, and played the fife (or tried to) in the band.

The last V2 strikes at the East End

In March 1943 my father remarried, I was at the camp school, and after that, life changed. I won't go into this any further, as I am supposed to be writing about the experiences of an evacuee. When I left school in April 1945 the war was still on, and tragedy had struck in my world once more, just before I was due to return from my evacuation.

It was planned that I would start work (aged 14), as a trainee cab mechanic at a London tax cab garage, when on 27 March 1945, at 7.20, the last V2 to land on London hit Hughes Mansions, Vallance Road, Stepney. This was during the time of the Jewish Passover, and 134 innocent civilians were killed. My father and two sisters survived.

We were re-housed in a dilapidated house in Pelling Street, off Burdett Road E14, in an area known as Limehouse. We stayed there for a while until the mansions were repaired. We then moved into no. 3 Hughes Mansions. My father took me to the site after I had left the camp school - a couple of weeks after the rocket had devastated our wonderful community of East Enders. The dust and rubble was still in the air. The war was coming to an end, and this had to happen!

I have a list of all the East Enders who were killed in Stepney and Bethnal Green during the war (these two boroughs are only a small part of my East End) and it makes grim, traumatic reading - with whole families, including babies, lost. Young people and old, people of different religions, the very honest, those who were less so - all lovely East Enders, people from a vibrant community - were no more.

I started my story emphasising that there are certain gaps in my life as an evacuee, and there are some memories that I wish I could remember. I wish I could remember my mother's voice, I wish I could remember if she ever cuddled me. I only have the words of my father's family, who have remembered down the years and tell of a wonderful, lovely woman, wife and mother. What wonderful memories this evacuee has missed. Does life make sense?

Maybe I am making a point! Everyone who lived through the war will have carried their own scars with them. My family have carried their own loss of a mother. I personally have carried my scar for so long that it is now a part of me. My personal consolation is that I eventually found a diamond of a wife and a diamond of a son.

Evacuation was followed by postwar rationing and austerity. The children and grandchildren of evacuee parents do not realise how lucky they are. Let's hope that their luck continues.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.