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A Wartime Childhood — Recollections of John Payne — Part One

Whilst I and my young brother Richard (always known as Dick in the family) were born in Wiltshire we moved with our parents to Finchley in North London in 1937.

Great Gidding
For our summer holidays in 1939, Dick and I went to Auntie Gladys and Uncle Bert at Chapel End Farm, Great Gidding in Huntingdonshire, about 70 miles north of Finchley. Although both were Wiltshire people, they had moved to the farm in 1936 and Auntie Amy, Gladys’ sister also lived with them.

About the time we were due to return to Finchley in late August 1939 it became apparent to Mum and Dad that the situation in Europe was becoming very serious and war seemed likely. Accordingly they asked whether we might stay at the farm as it would be safer from aerial attack. Auntie Gladys and Uncle Bert readily agreed and so Dick and I stayed on.

On 1st September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and both Britain and France demanded a complete withdrawal by Germany or war would be declared. The Prime Minister broadcast to the nation on 3rd September to tell us that Germany had given no undertakings to withdraw its troops from Poland and that therefore Britain was at war with Germany.

Dick and I loved staying on the farm, there was so much to do, helping to round up the cows and bring them down the road for milking and afterwards they had to be returned to the field. There were a dozen or so cows of quite a mixed pedigree and colour, some had horns, some didn’t. There was always the same leader and a couple or so who always brought up the rear. It was also harvest time and we would spend hours in the fields of wheat, barley or oats, quenching our thirst with lemonade. This was not the fizzy stuff now on sale but was made by dissolving yellow crystals in cold water - it was very refreshing.

On Sunday morning and evening we always attended the Baptist Chapel where Uncle Bert played the organ, this was our first taste of regular churchgoing. In the afternoon we went to Sunday School. The Chapel was run by two lady Ministers, Miss Goodwin and Miss Davidson. We found Miss Goodwin rather stern but Miss Davidson was a lovely gentle lady with a delightful North-eastern accent. Although I did not appreciate it at the time, the Chapel at Great Gidding was one of the older non-conformist places of worship, it had lovely box pews, sadly removed in the 1980s.

I started school at Great Gidding, I have since seen the School Log Book and discovered that I was admitted as a pupil on 25th September 1939. The school was, and still is, a Church of England school and the Vicar attended occasionally to put the children through the catechism, even at that young age I did not see the relevance for those children who did not attend Church. My teacher was Miss Colbert, who lived in Sawtry and travelled to school on a motor-bike! The Head Teacher, Mrs. Beardmore lived next to the school and her husband was, I believe, verger or sexton or some sort of gardener/handyman to the Vicar. The School Log Book also shows that on 23rd January 1940, special arrangements were to be made for Dick and I to be inoculated as we were both absent with colds. It was about this time that my anathema of music at school began, something which would haunt me throughout my school years. We were sitting in class singing, the teacher was walking amongst us and when she got to me said, ‘Oh, it’s you it is! Shut up!’ or words to that effect. From that day forward I had a dread of being asked to sing solo. I remember too the Vicar coming into school and that we were supposed to have learnt the catechism, but I never did, perhaps my young mind reasoning that we went to the Baptist chapel and not the Vicar’s Church.

The war had little effect on us children save that our games often had a wartime ring about them. There was great excitement one day when we found a Tiger Moth training aircraft had made a forced landing in the field opposite Chapel End Farm, the aircraft was nose down in the soft soil but there was no fire and we believed the pilot was relatively unscathed.

Although toys were in short supply, we amused ourselves in a variety of ways, there were trees to climb, of the two favourites, one was in the hedge boundary of the field opposite the farm, the same one in which the Tiger Moth force landed, whilst the other was at the bottom of Uncle Bert’s paddock at the rear of the farm, the tree overlooked a lane. We also used the cow pond in the field opposite for our naval battles, each of us would construct our harbour in one of the muddy areas the cows used to access the water. Small pieces of wood became our warships and then we bombarded each others harbours with mud, we must have been quite filthy when we went home. One of our occupations was to collect birds eggs, mostly they were found and not taken from nests. Although I could never manage it very successfully, some of the lads were quite adept at blowing birds eggs. My collection was quite small with nothing other than the then common birds of the countryside.

Return to Finchley
On 15th March our names were removed from the register as Auntie Gladys was ill and Mum had taken us home to Finchley. We went back to Northside school, I remember only a little of that time. I do recall however that the children were given instructions that if the siren went when we were on our way to school, we were to continue to school or return home, whichever was the nearest. On the only occasion it happened Dick and I were only just round the corner from school but we raced home like scared rabbits. Once or twice we were in school during a raid and spent a good part of the day in the air raid shelter, a long, low brick and concrete structure with no windows but lit by electric lamps. Although it couldn’t be described as pleasant, we children were heartened somewhat by being allowed to read comics.

Later, presumably to shorten the distance to school and to create smaller groups, we were sent to Gordon Hall by West Finchley Station for our classes. The only clear memory I have is learning the hymn, ‘The King of Love My Shepherd is’, it still remains a favourite.

During May 1940 the Post Office issued some special stamps showing the heads of both King George VI and Queen Victoria. These were to commemorate the centenary of the issue of the first postage stamps in the world. The event started my interest in stamp collecting.

One weekend I remember meeting Morag’s boyfriend, home on leave from the Army, he showed Dick and I the workings of his rifle and then, with Morag took us to the children’s Saturday morning matinee at the Odeon at North Finchley. I can’t recall very much of what we saw but I do remember Sexton Blake and, of course Mickey Mouse and company.

Later in the summer we started to get a lot of air raids and there was an anti-aricraft gun mounted upon a specialised railway wagon, this travelled up and down the Northern Line where it was above ground, i.e. from East Finchley to High Barnet. It must have necessitated continual attention by the platelayers to maintain the track in gauge, as the shocks transmitted when the gun was fired must have been considerable. For some reason we did not have a shelter at home, most people had either had an Anderson shelter in their garden or a Morrison shelter in the house, the latter being a large reinforced table under which one could take shelter. As a result whenever there was an air raid, Dick and I were shoved under the stairs, not the most comfortable place during a long raid. When the raid was in the daytime, which they usually were that summer, Dick and I would be fascinated watching the condensation trails of the aircraft. I was getting quite good at aircraft recognition and had three or four of the paperback handbooks on the subject.

It was sometime in the summer that I had a most memorable experience, I sat in the cockpit of a Messerschmidt 109, it had apparently made a forced landing probably because the pilot had been injured, because there appeared to be very little damage to the aircraft, other than two or three bullet holes and a bent propeller. The experience was thrilling but because I was only seven and had no parachute to sit on, I couldn’t see out of the front. I could however gaze in wonder at all the controls and instruments and soak up that very distinctive smell of a petrol engined aircraft, with which, although I didn’t realise it then, I would later become very familiar.

Great Gidding Again
As the ‘Blitz’ as the aerial attacks were called increased my parents became concerned for our safety, they accordingly wrote to Auntie Gladys and Uncle Bert to ask if they would take Dick and I again. Immediately they received the letter, Uncle Bert cancelled a dental appointment, rode his motor bike and sidecar to Finchley and took us to Great Gidding. That night our house was damaged by a shell exploding just outside and there was a piece of shrapnel about five inches long on my pillow, thanks to Uncle Bert I survived to tell the tale.

At that time Great Gidding had several shops, there was Fred Rowell the butcher half way up Main Street, Mrs. Brawn’s general store at the bottom of Main Street at the corner of the Luddington Road. There was another general shop at the top end of the village run by the Vesey’s who also ran a weekly bus service to Peterborough. There was a baker in Main Street who also went out on his delivery round with a pony and trap, the poor man stuttered and we kids used to mimic him, it was said the poor chap had suffered shell shock in the 1914-1918 War. The Peterborough Co-Op grocery van visited the village once a week and Auntie Gladys bought much of her groceries there. A fish delivery can also came weekly as did the ‘Oilman’ who delivered paraffin oil for the lamps. Also in Main Street was Johnnie Smith’s garage with a petrol pump which was hand operated, Johnnie also ran a private hire car. The public house was, and is still I believe called ‘The Fox and Hounds’ but I never knew of Uncle Bert setting foot inside, it was I believe a spit and sawdust sort of place. In addition to the Parish Church next to the school, there was a Wesleyan Chapel on the East side of Main Street a little further up from the Church and lower down on the East side and set back behind its Manse was the Baptist Chapel where Uncle Bert played the organ and Aunties Gladys and Amy attended regularly every Sunday morning and evening and Dick and I went to afternoon Sunday School. The Chapel had lovely to look at box pews, but with their plain wooden bench seats and vertical backs they weren’t at all pleasant for a small boy to sit still in for an hour or so.

On my birthday in 1940 Mum arrived at Chapel End to give us a nice surprise, she brought my present, a tinplate ‘O’ gauge train set comprising an 0-4-0 loco and tender and two four wheel coaches, I am not sure of the maker save that I know it wasn’t Hornby, by today’s models it was very basic but I thought it was super.

To defend Great Gidding from a possible German invasion, I constructed a field gun from an old farm mowing machine, I found a suitable pole to act as the barrel and, by means of the gearing to adjust the cut of the grass, I was able to adjust the angle of fire of the barrel. During the evenings a great crowd of children seemed to gather at Chapel End Farm, where we would play various games, invariably these had war background. Often Uncle Bert would join in and I remember one particular occasion, it was getting dusk, when Dick found Uncle Bert (playing the German spy) very close to the dairy and the back door of the house. At the time the rest of the gang were round the back behind the barn and out of earshot of Dick who was calling that he had captured Uncle Bert, so Uncle Bert said to Dick, ‘You just run off and find the others, I’ll stay here.’ Off ran Dick to find the rest of us. We came running back to find no one there. Uncle Bert had climbed up to the roof space of the oil house opposite the dairy and listened with great amusement to Dick explaining to the rest of us that he had captured Uncle Bert there. An interesting sequel to the story occurred - one evening just after Dick and I had left the farm to return to Mum and Dad, several of the children called at the farm to ask Auntie Gladys if Mr. Dell was coming out to play.

Christmas at the farm was very enjoyable although there was food rationing, Uncle Bert raised his own geese so there was a good bird for Christmas dinner with plenty of home grown vegetables and a Christmas pudding with both cream from the dairy and silver threepenny pieces to be found. I remember amongst our presents, Dick and I each received from Mum and Dad a Number 1 Meccano set, these were to provide hours of pleasure during the long winter evenings.

1940 was a very cold winter with lots of snow, the farmhouse was thatched so it kept warmer than a tiled or slate roofed house. The kitchen was particularly warm and we spent most of our time there, the two ‘front rooms’ being only used on Sundays and holidays. The kitchen was heated by a range which also heated the oven and boiled kettles, etc. on its top. In the evenings the oil lamp on the table provided a soft light and considerable warmth. There was no electricity or gas in the village. To go to bed, there was no form of heating at all upstairs, we took candles to light our way and Dick and I were provided with a small oil night light. We slept in a double bedstead with brass knobs at the top of the bed head frame, I would often fiddle with these, unscrewing them and screwing them up again. We had feather pillows and eiderdown, blankets and in the winter a sort of flannel sheet, all of this was warmed by a brick which had been in the oven for a couple of hours, wrapped in an offcut of flannel sheet. Although facing East, the window was small and did not let in too much cold air, we also had the benefit of the morning sun rising over the spinney at the rear of the opposite field.

One morning I saw a young colt in the field. I opened the window and imitated a horse’s whinny, the colt came running over to the gate opposite the window. On another occasion I saw a rabbit petrified with fear by a stoat, I was dressed so I ran downstairs and across the road to the field yelling, the stoat run off but the rabbit stayed quite still for some time. Eventually it ran off and got caught in some undergrowth in the hedge on the North side of the field. I pulled the rabbit out and took it back to the farm where I put it in an unused chicken run and proposed to keep it as a pet. When I looked the next morning the rabbit had gone. Uncle Bert said it must have escaped but, although I didn’t say anything, I think it had some help.

One day the Army pitched a large bell tent on the green at the corner of Main Street and Chapel End, opposite Mrs. Brawn’s shop. The following day a huge convoy of military vehicles passed through Great Gidding, there were lorries, armoured cars, scout cars, field guns and motorcycle escorts. The soldiers who occupied the tent gave directions to the convoy as it passed through.

The owner of The Repetition Tyre Company for whom Dad worked, a Mr. Harvey was a member of the British Fascist Party. Some time after the start of the war, but I don’t know when, Dad told his boss what he thought of fascism and lost his job in so doing. After a while, probably in late 1940 Dad got a job with a rubber company in Huntingdon and Mum and Dad lived for a while with Uncle Fred and Auntie Nell, their daughter Brenda was away serving with the A.T.S.

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