大象传媒

Evacuation
I can't recall any of the activity at the station;waiting around on the platform,gas mask,getting on the train, nor the journey.But one thing definitely has stayed,very strong:walking in the twilight,street after street,until quite dark,stopping innumerable times whilst,I assume, someone knocked at another house.Just two kids waiting, and then just me!And still street after street,house after house.No standing at an open doorway-I'm out there on the pavement,me and my gasmask.I don't remember having a case of clothes,or the proverbial toothbrush!I was only a tot,not a very nice experience.
I really wish I hadn't been taken in.I have no memories of the first sight of the family.The kid's bedroom contained a double bed alongside a single bed.Me and the youngest boy "top'n tailed" with a much older boy.Their sister occupied the single bed,and top'n tailed with a young Jewish girl evacuee.We ,at that time,must have been the loneliest people in the world.We didn't know each other.We held hands across the beds,in the dark,for a fair number of nights.If I met her now I could break her heart!There was a swing in the garden,she would sit on the seat with me standing on the seat on the back, not swinging,not speaking.I don't remember talking to her.
My mother knitted me some gloves,which I must have got wet one day.That silly woman put them on top of the kitchen range to dry!Within seconds they were a bubbling mass of black porridge...it caused a lot of laughter for them.I never saw my foster father sober!I never wrote any letters,but I guess someone must have done.My mother came and took me to Canterbury where she had moved to be with her mother.

The Bombing
I had gone to my friend John's house after school.In fact I had spent some time there and had left by the back door, and had reached the pavement via a little alleyway between the buildings when I remembered a comic I had left behind.As I opened the back door my friend's mother literally threw me into the metal air raid shelter - the house exploded and we were buried in bricks and dust!However, my strongest memory of that moment was being hugged to a heaving breast to the words "John, oh John,oh John!".And thinking,if not shouting,"Git orf!I'm not John!"
Very much later, that evening,having repeated that last bit to the family at home a number of times my mother said "Are you saying the Smiths are bombed out?".And remembering her pedalling down the road a couple of miles to fetch them back to the house for the night.

Victory in Europe
I had left home and was working in a factory(Crompton Parkingsons)in Chelmsford.We lived at Brightlingsea,where I had worked at a couple of shipyards;strange term to use to describe the occupation of a small boy of some thirteen and a half years old!My mother worked in the town where her wages included the cost of my food and lodgings at Chelmsford.The news of the end of the War filtered through the factory by the middle of the afternoon.I was told by the men I worked with,to "get off home,no one will notice."I must have clocked off -I don't remember.I ran like mad through a small park alongside the railway,dived into the ticket office,bought my ticket and flew up the stairs.The barrier was closed,the train was in the station and slowly moving off - there was a small half gate in front of me,which I vaulted and ran towards the train which was,by now,picking up a fair speed. A door was opened by a passenger and as I ran alongside a hand grabbed me and dragged me in.All this activity was accompanied by a loud voice from behind me shouting, " You can't catch that train!".After I'd got my breath and sat down I suppose I could have had the thought,here I was,I'd been told,at fifteen the youngest full Welder at the factory,I had left home,I had started night school and even had the nerve to join a dancing class at the local Corn Exchange.What I did fill my mind with was, "I'm going home to my Mum".

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