大象传媒

I was six years old when the Second World War started. We lived in Antwerp, where I was born. My parents shared a house with my father鈥檚 parents, one of his brothers and wife, and his only sister and her husband. But we did not all live as one family. We lived on the ground floor, my Uncle Gene and Aunty Emma lived on the first floor and Uncle Charles and Aunty Clothilde lived on the second floor. My grandparents more or less lived in with Aunty Emma and Uncle Gene, except that they had a separate kitchen and a bedroom in the attic. They looked after Aunty Emma, who was an invalid and unable to walk unaided. I was the only child, not only of my parents, but the only child in the house.

Although the war broke out in 1939, I was not really aware of it until May 1940, when the Germans invaded Belgium. I did hear talk about war from the adults, of course, and I even recall picking up my grandfather鈥檚 newspaper and reading about how Miss Unity Mitford, who was connected with Hitler in some way, had attempted to kill herself in Berlin by shooting herself in the head, but I didn鈥檛 know what it all meant.

The invasion disrupted my life. I had started proper school the previous September 鈥� this as against the kindergarten I had attended the year before and hated as we didn鈥檛 do what I wanted to do : learn to read and write. The day our school closed before of the threatened invasion was to have been the day we visited the zoo, taking packed lunch. I had been very much looking forward to this outing and was most disappointed to have it cancelled.

But this was, of course, nothing to the other things which were about to happen. The weather, if I remember rightly, was pleasantly sunny, for it was spring. Yet there was a general atmosphere of tension, a 鈥渟omething is going to happen鈥� feeling. My elders spent much time listening to bulletins on Uncle Gene鈥檚 radio 鈥� he being the only one in the family who owned such a thing. They were rightly worried. Although my grandfather had become a naturalised Belgian, Father and Uncle Charles still held British nationality and so did I. Aunty Emma was married to a Belgian and so Belgian by marriage, but Aunty Clothilde, who unlike my mother had not opted to retain her Belgian nationality, was British by marriage. It would probably have been sensible for us to have left Belgium much earlier than May 1940, given all this, but my grandparents and aunt were naturally very reluctant to see us go. They feared that quite possibly they would never see us again 鈥� in the case of my Aunt Emma, these fears did not prove groundless as she died in 1942.

When it was decided we had no option but to leave, it was almost too late. Fathers and Uncle Charles鈥� passports were out of date. Aunty Clothilde had never obtained a British passport. I had not been entered into my father鈥檚 passport. There was a last minute rush to the British Consulate, but the staff had already evacuated. Only a caretaker remained. We were advised to take any transport available and make of Ostende. Not much was still available as trains and buses had stopped running. Finally my father found a taxi drive who was willing, be it reluctantly, to drive us to Ostende. My mother hurriedly packed a few clothes but Aunty Clothilde was by now in such a state of panic that she refused either to go upstairs herself or let her husband go up and pack for them. So they left in only the clothes they stood up in. I was permitted to take one toy. I took a baby doll.

It was indeed almost too late, we left on a Sunday. On Tuesday German soldiers came to our house to arrest my father, my uncle Charles, Aunty Clothilde and me. But by then we were in Ostende, though not yet out of Belgium.

The drive to Ostende was uneventful. We stopped at a village in Flanders to buy some buns 鈥� not a lunch I was keen on for I never have cared for just sweet things and the buns seemed insipid 鈥� but that is all I recall of the journey. Some of my father鈥檚 cousins, who had also left it very late, were not so lucky. They travelled to the coast in the back of a lorry and were forced to throw themselves in a ditch when German planes machine-gunned traffic.

Ostende seemed very bleak and windy. I have since discovered that it is a very windy place. I had rather looked forward to seeing the sands and the sea, which I had never seen before, but no one was allowed on the seafront, which was cordoned off with barbed wire. We found a hotel but we were not allowed to stay there long as the Belgian government moved in. we then moved to another hotel. I am not really sure how many days we waited to embark for England. As I was very young, it all seemed to take very long and I was already plaintively asking 鈥渨hen can we go back home?鈥�

One day we boarded a cross channel ferry. It was very crowded and I am sorry to say that people were not always very nice to each other. A man rudely told my mother, who had me on her lap, to get out of his chair. A young Jewish woman with two small children was almost turned off the boat because her papers were not in order but mercifully, in view of what was to happen later, was eventually allowed to stay. Though we never sailed on that ferry. It lay in Ostende harbour all day and all the following night. During that time Ostende was bombed and a German paratrooper landed on the top deck. I fell asleep but it seems at one point panic nearly broke out. We were almost trampled on. When morning came we disembarked, still in Ostende. There was not a pane of glass left whole in Ostende Railway Station.

We were sent back to our hotel but during the afternoon word came that we were to make the crossing on a troop ship. We sailed as part of a convoy, surrounded by destroyers. The Belgium Government were part of this party as they sailed into exile. For me it was both a miserable and frightening crossing. Women and children were allowed below deck but I didn鈥檛 feel happy. We were in a small saloon 鈥� I should have said it was a ferry that had been converted into a troop ship and it still had some fairly luxurious accommodation. I was afraid down there that we would sink, that the water, cold and horrid, would suddenly rush in and drown us. We had been told the ship had special apparatus to enable it to go over mines with blowing up but there were still bombs. And we felt it when we hit a mine 鈥� the whole thing sort of lurched. The sea was by no means calm either and mother and another passenger were being horribly sick all over the place. I didn鈥檛 feel too good myself. Aunty Clothilde was not sick, just scared stiff. But father was quite brave, going onto the top deck to watch planes being shot down into the sea. He came and told us about it. He assured us nothing would happen to us as they wouldn鈥檛 dare sink the Belgian Government which was taking gold bullion with it. I was not so sure of that. And they sank the ship on its next crossing.

The crossing seemed to take forever, but at last we arrived in Folkestone. I was most relieved to know we would soon be on dry land again. I had never been on a boat before and what with bombs, mines and all the rest of it, it seemed a most precarious mode of travel.

In Folkestone, after passing through immigration and customs, I suppose (though I was hardly aware of the details) we were allowed to board a train to London. It was quite dark by now and must have been quite late. I soon fell asleep and did not wake up till we arrived in London鈥檚 Victoria Station. I liked this station immediately and still retain a kind of warm affection for it. We were met by a warm welcome in more ways than one: kindly ladies serviced us with hot tea and slices of Madeira cake, which I thought most delicious. We were then sent to a reception camp of some sort where they served tea out of what appeared to be gardening water cans to me. This seemed most peculiar.

From the reception camp we were sent to a bed and breakfast hotel near Victoria Station. This was only temporary accommodation once more. We used to get an English breakfast at the hotel and eat in a caf茅 across the road. I quite liked the English breakfast but one morning we were served sausages which were 鈥渙ff鈥�. No one except father ate them 鈥� he declared we were all fussy and that the sausages were perfectly all right. They were not. He was son sorry as he got food poisoning and was quite ill for two weeks.

I have never quite understood why my father decided to stay in London. The natural thing would have been for us to travel on to Sheffield where we had relatives. It is true that his cousins, who did not quite get on with us, lied to him saying they intended to stay in London. But there was no need for him to have followed their supposed example 鈥� as it was, they went to Sheffield very quickly, vanishing all of a sudden and leaving us behind. And I disliked London. It was too big; there was no end to it. I felt trapped.

We found a couple of rooms in a boarding house, still in the area of Victoria Station 鈥� our address was WC1 but I forget the name of the street. It was one of those streets full of Victorian houses with pillars on the porch and a basement. I wished we could have had the basement but it was already occupied by a fat lady with a parrot. The house was owned by a lady known as Bonnie. She was from Kent and had been a nurse. She was in love with a young doctor 鈥� a Greek Cypriot. He treated my father for the food poisoning. There had been an older woman who had been part owner of the house 鈥� she was older than Bonnie and had died suddenly of a heart attack in a chair in the front room. Bonnie was superstitious about the chair and would let no one sit in it. I think she feared it was haunted in some way.

When he had recovered, father went to the labour exchange to find a job. At home he had run his own painting and decorating business but here he would have to work for an employer. His reception at the Labour Exchange was not a pleasant one. The employee there threw a newspaper in father鈥檚 face and shouted abuse at him on account of the Belgian kings surrender to the Germans, which was not fathers fault. And in any case, father was not Belgian.

Bonnie was most indignant and up in arms when father told her what had happened. And father was not one to take it lying down either. Bonnie told him to file a complaint to the Minister of Labour, which he did. I believe the man at the Labour Exchange was dismissed. But father did not get a mob immediately so he had plenty of free time, which was nice for me. Those first months in London were pleasant enough and I got over my dislike of the place to some degree. The weather was fine and we visited all those places tourists visit 鈥� at least, I recall visiting Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. We went too look at Buckingham Palace, of course and watched the changing of the Guard 鈥� although this was not as colourful as usual since the guards no longer wore their traditional uniforms but plain khaki instead. And I liked to go and play in the children鈥檚 playground in St James鈥� Park 鈥� and I would go on one of those big swinging planks (I don鈥檛 know what they were called) and have two big boys take me as high as we could go.

There were things we liked about London. I liked riding on the top deck of double Decker buses, which were a novelty to me. We got very fond of tinned jam from Australia and South Africa. But we were astonished to see so many beggars and poor people in the streets. We had never seen such miserable people in Belgium. And one certainly did not see them in London in later years. From one such beggar who was sitting in Westminster Abbey, I caught a bug which bit me. My parents were quite horrified.

I did not again start school that year. We went to look at a school near where we lived. It looked most dreadfully depressing. I was glad not to be sent there. I am not sure why I wasn鈥檛 鈥� possibly my parents didn鈥檛 like the look of it either and as there was not much of the school year left, before the holidays, they may have decided not to bother though I was taken a few times to a small Belgian school run by refugees in a private house. I would have quite liked this school for I could speak only Flemish still, but as I was technically British, it would possibly not have been permitted.

In any case, the good times were about to end with the start of the Battle of Britain. The first air raid seemed quite exciting. We all went into the basement, all the people in the house. And it seemed quite cosy. But it soon stopped being any kind of fun. Non-stop air raids with only breaks in between are no kind of fun and I feel sympathy for all people living in a beleaguered city. I know what it feels like. My parents could have had me evacuated. It was even suggested I should be sent to Canada. But my parents did not want to part with me and I didn鈥檛 want to leave them. I am sure if I had been sent away, it would have been as traumatic I still did not speak a word of English.

When the raids got worse we stopped sleeping in the house but spent each night at an air-raid shelter built under the local bus station. In some ways this was quite fun and I felt much safer there than in the house where I always feared to be buried alive. Even in the basement you could hear bombs come whistling down. You could hear the rumble of houses collapsing. I feared one day to see the door at the top of stairs burst open and bricks come tumbling down the stairs to bury us. Under the bus station it was quiet. You couldn鈥檛 hear anything that was going on in the world outside.

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