大象传媒

Following the phoney war, the second evacuation started in 1941, and about the same number of kids gathered outside the school dressed as before and surrounded by weeping mums including my own, who was not coming with us this time. We were taken to Central Station and loaded on to the trains which were named Cheshire Lines. The usual procedure, but this was a shorter journey. We got off the train at a place called Hartford, which might as well have been Timbuctoo for all we knew, and taken to the local school and through the now usual procedure, except that now our teachers chose where we were to be billetted. We were taken to all I can describe as a boarding house, called the Beeches, and introduced to Mrs Kinnerley and her family who owned the place. It was here that we found out that there were two other brothers billetted in the same place. They came from the same school as us. They were named Richard and Joe Oulton. They were about the same age as me and my brother and we all slept in the same room - me and Joe Oulton in a nice bed and the other two boys in a camp bed. When we awoke the next morning we found thst our teachers were billetted in the same place. This was the reason for some of the pranks we played and most of them were directed at the teachers. But nothing could compare with the morning we woke up and found a 60ft articulated RAF waggon. And what was on the waggon? Nothing else but a war damamged Stirling Bomber being taken in for repairs. The RAF blokes who were looking after this wonderful machine were staying in our place, so this gave us the opportunity of two hours playing ona real warplane - absolute heaven for us.

As things turned out the Beeches was temporary billet until the permanent one was found. This was going to be on a farm in a place about seven miles away called Delamere Forest. I meant that we were separated from our own teachers and schoolmates. Fortunately the Oulton brothers also moved at the same time and they were billetted at Delamere Railway Station, but apart from us going to Oakmere School, we hardly ever saw them. Mr and Mrs Walker, The farm belonged to Mr and Mrs Walker and was called Stud Farm. They were very good at showing us how the farm was run and as it turned out I loved everything about it, even got myself interested in the animals, like bringing the cows in for milking before I went to school and even learning a bit about milking the cows. Mr Walker told me that this was very unusual for city kids to rake an interest as they were usually frightened of the cows. I'm afraid my brother Booby took the other view - he didn't like it at all and was soon making plans to run away and go home. I found it very hard at times like harvesting, when we had to follow the harvesting machine and pick up the sheaves and stand them into stooks to enable them to dry quicker. Then there was the threshing in which they used an old type of steam engine. More hard work but at least we slept well at night. This happened during the summer holidays, but it was no holiday, believe me. It was during this period that I woke up one morning and Bobby was gone., never to return. Mr and Mrs Walker gave me some money to go home for a week. That's when Im found out the we had moved house.We had three bedrooms, gas lights and our own water - luxury indeed. I was told that we had to move because the old houses was bomb damaged.

Sadly my dad had died a few weeks previously from a heart attack, brought on while he trying to put out an incendiary bomb. My poor dad. Life could never be the same.

I returned to the farm about the end of August to find two new boys had moved in - they were twins. Sadly this was the end of an era for me. I now realise that I had the run of the farm, with just myself and the children who lived on the farm; Ronnie was sixteen and Winnie was thirteen and we got on very well together. I forget whether I mentioned it before, but we had to walk to school - three miles there and three miles back. Of course being a scouser I found a short cut through the forest. Mr and Mrs Walker told me not to do this
as there were Italian prisoners of war working in the forest, and I had to be very careful but I must say that I found them a decent lot of blokes, always singing and seemingly happy at their work and I rather sympathissed with them, they wee as far from their families as I was. My mother used to visit me whenever she could afford it and that made me feel good because she always brought goodies.

There wee other kids who lived around and about, mostly locals, and they wee quite easy to get along with, about twelve of us altogether, and whenever we could get time off from working on the farm we all played the usual games kids of that age do. Of course, being country kids they knew much more about the facts of life than I did, but it was interesting finding out.

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