大象传媒

Our Evacuation 鈥� From an orphanage in Gravesend to a Stately Home in Devon

I was just seven years old and one of one hundred and twenty orphan boys, aged between five and fourteen ( the school leaving age in those days), when war broke out. We were looked after, taught, fed, clothed and kept in order by twelve Sisters of Charity,one schoolmaster, one woman teacher and a priest.

The first we knew that a war was imminent was when we were all lined up one day and fitted with gasmasks. I remember being envious of the five-year olds who had Mickey Mouse ones while the rest of us carried the orthodox masks in little cardboard boxes inside a canvas case with a strap for hanging them on our shoulders.

The next thing was that we had to pack up whatever belongings we possessed and get ready to leave the one address I could remember St Mary's School, Echo Square, Parrock Road, Gravesend.
We left early one morning on buses that took us down to the pier where we boarded the Royal Daffodil, a pleasure steamer that normally operated beteeen Gravesend and Southend. That day we were bound for Lowestoft.

As soon as the ship left the pier we were lined up and had a name tag tied on a string around our necks. In groups of twelve we were assigned to an older boy and told to keep in touch with him at all times. Then we were given a brown paper bag of food which was to last us all day. My recollection is of a small tin of corned beef with a key attached, various biscuits,an apple, some condensed milk, (which one of the adults had to open),some buttered bread and a piece of cheese. There was also a small piece of milk-chocolate.Water was available at a counter in the middle of the ship.

There is no need to describe the many and various ways in which the food was eaten, saved for later or hoarded. Suffice to say that there was a good deal of sea-sickness before we arrived in Lowestoft as darkness was falling. That night we were housed on straw in a large barn, given a cup of cocoa and told that we could wash in the morning under a tap in the yard. 鈥淔or now, keep your clothes on, say your prayers and go to sleep.鈥�

The following day, after a breakfast of bread and jam and tea, we were scattered among various farms and villages. I was among twelve boys and two nuns billeted at The Red House Farm, Wissett, Suffolk. School was spasmodic and haphazard. Some weeks all the boys in and around the area went to school in the mornings and the girls went to school in the afternoon. Next week the system wasa reversed. Later two elderly ladies took all twelve of us into their home and gave us lessons.Then a woman teacher came in the afternoon and read us stories and taught us poetry. This continued throughout the autumn before we were rounded up and all taken to Wells-next-the-Sea so that the school could be kept more or less together. We also resumed our education by the nuns who had taught us previously.

What I remember most was our arrival in Wells and the system of distributing us to various billets.
Looking back the whole event seemed badly thought out and the result swung between chaos and farce. We were taken from the station to a school not far away and turned loose into a large hall where women went amongst us with notebooks or bits of paper and pencils selecting who they fancied to take home and foster for however long they were required to. They would size us up, turn us round and ask, 鈥淗ow old are you?鈥� They would look at you again and make up their minds. Then 鈥淗as anybody got you?鈥� If you said 'No, they asked your name and wrote it down. From time to time one of our fellow school friends would ask 鈥� Who are you with?鈥� Or 鈥淢y one's nice. Come with me鈥�. So you went and stood in front of the lady until she asked 鈥淎re you his friend?鈥�
鈥淵es鈥� And your name went down alongside his. After a while it became a competition to see how many women you could get to write your name down. When the clergyman who seemed to be organising the whole thing called for order our names were called one by one and a number of arguments broke out as to which boy belonged to which woman, so the whole thing had to start again with the nuns deciding who was most suitable for whom regardless of what the women wanted.

I ended up along with Billy Smith, the senior boy I had been with since leaving Gravesend, but after a while Mrs Sutton, our foster mother, swapped him with the coalman's boy for a sack of coal and his boy.So Jackie Rowan left the coalman and came to live with us. Mrs Sutton had a daughter, Pamela, who was the first girl I had ever had any contact with. What I remember most about her was that she was hopeless at cricket.

We stayed at Wells-next-the-Sea for the best part of a year, after which we were on the move again.
This time to Ugbrooke House, Chudleigh, Devon. We were taught always to remember our the address of wherever we stayed in case we got lost on our travels or the Germans came.

We were all assembled at Wells station and put on a train to London. As before we were given food for the day, but this had been prepared by our foster mothers so it wasn't nearly as good.
Arriving at Liverpool Street we were lined up and taken to the underground and then to another railways station 鈥� I think Waterloo. Looking back it must have been a nightmare for those in charge of us, having to steer well over a hundred children across London at around mid-day in wartime.

We arrived at Exeter in the dark and were taken in various buses to Ugbrook House, the family home and estate of Lord Clifford. There we spent the remainder of the war.Those years were among the most formative and happy of my childhood. But that, as Kipling would say, 鈥渋s another story鈥�.

NORRIE HEARN

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