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I was 13 when war broke out, an only child living in Newcastle upon Tyne. Evacuation was an adventure and we prepared for it. We were taken to Newcastle central station, with gas masks and name tags, for a ‘dry run’ by train. Only when we were really evacuated were we told where we were going — Whitehaven in Cumberland. Two teachers came with us.
When we arrived it was half-dark and we waited uncertainly to be chosen by our hosts. Two of us were taken by the local grocer. He and his wife were a most caring couple, and very devout. Whilst I was there, I remember singing hyms with them in the street. I enjoyed it — they had a large house and we were taken to school in the grocer’s van.
The local children went to school in the morning and we went in the afternoons. It was a technical school, similar to the one I attended in Walker, Newcastle, We learned to mend shoes and although we were only 13, we made parts for aircraft on lathes.
Evacuation only lasted three months, as this was the phoney war and there was no action. By the time I was 16, there were bombs in Byker and the goods yards. I had a certificate from the College of Praeceptors and gained an External Certificate of Chartered Surveyors.
When I was 18, I was called up and hoped to go into the navy, but there was more need for soldiers. I was sent to Carlisle for infantry training, and after a testing procedure, was marked as OR1 — officer material. My training continued in Belfast. Our course was shorter than that of the pre-war army officers, but we had the same passing-out parade.
Suddenly, I found myself, at just nineteen, as a 2nd. Lieutenant in Wales. The regiment I had chosen was the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. We wore ‘trews’ and short jackets, known as ‘bum freezers’.
The OCTV was like my university. There was a lot of map reading and planning of operations, including high-level training on Cader Idris in Snowdonia, and I rapidly had to learn the duties of a commissioned officer. I recall a night-time exercise, marching from A to B, and being informed that the commanding officer had been killed and I had to lead the section. I remembered everything — except the synchronising of watches — which was vital. Had this been a real battle, some of my men would have been killed by what is now known as ‘friendly fire’.
VE-day arrived in May ’45 and I was commissioned in August. I was sent to India where we were attached to the 14th. Punjab in Lahore. My duties consisted mainly in dealing with demobbed soldiers, although we did have to quell some civil unrest when Nehru visited.
Officers must buy their own equipment, and before I went to India, at great expense and some difficulty, I acquired the regulation ‘topee’, which I had been told I must have. This was huge and took up an inordinate amount of space in my luggage. On the troop ship going over, a major sharing my cabin laughed and said that this type of topee hadn’t been used since well before the war. A fellow officer and I took them out, stamped on them, and buried them at sea.

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