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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Odilia Roberts from the Derby Action Team on behalf of Mr W B Holgate and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Soon after the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939 my school, Pear Tree Senior Boys, in Harrington Street Derby had their first evacuation of some children and teachers to Ockbrook, as it was considered that owing to the schools proximity to Rolls Royce Engine Faculty and Leys Foundry it could be dangerous in case of air raids, therefore to keep our future generation safe the children were taken out of town to Ockbrook, I think this was during September 1939.
I stayed at home in Pear Tree Crescent and enjoyed life with the schools closed; however in October my mother Emily Jones took me to school one day. I don’t think I realised at that time I was also being part of the second evacuation, this one to Crich, admittedly still only 12 miles from home but in those days with not much in the way of transport and a long way away from bombs, it was deemed to be safer.
When I arrived at Pear Tree School as I remember only part of a single decker busload perhaps 20 — 25 kids, we had a label attached to our coat collars and were each given a carrier bag of foodstuffs, I also remember an 8oz bar of chocolate, which we didn’t see very often due to sweet rationing. We were then taken to Crich and into the Council room on the common adjacent to ‘The Dimble’ (where recently filming has taken place of ‘Peak Practice’).
We were then handed over to the families with whom we were being billeted, Alex Widdowson and I went with John and Doris Sulley of Crich, who lived in a stone detached house (3 bedrooms) which John had built himself when he was a young stonemason in the 1920’s. Mrs Sulley’s two younger sisters, Gladys and Hazel Bradshaw (aged 22 and 19), lived with them therefore Alex and I had to share a bed in the small back bedroom for the first few nights. I would imagine the Sulleys and the girls would have quite a job on their hands comforting two 12 year old lads taken from home into a strange village life, but they did succeed and our lives settled down.
I have spoken to soldiers of 18 years old complaining of ‘home sickness’ but try it as a 12 year old, I can’t recommend it!

Still when we finally settled in to a new atmosphere life became very good, after only a few days, I assume till the following Monday, we started school at Crich Council School which had only three teachers and taught all ages from 4 to 14 years old, very different to town schools which had Infant, Junior and Senior classes all in separate schools. The class work was at least one year behind the work we were used to, so life was very easy. Our only problem that I recall was that as the school football pitch was along side Hilts Quarry, if you kicked the ball over the fence and into the quarry it was a long walk round to find the ball.

Later in 1939 the Railway Servants Orphanage Boys, from Ashbourne Road, Derby, were evacuated to Crich. They were billeted in a large house at the top of Bull Bridge Hill. They then came to Crich School. A room at one end of the school was emptied for their use. When they had settled in, we Derby lads were moved into their class. Those boys had to walk to school each day, return to Bull Bridge for their mid-day meal, return to school again after lunch and then walk back after school, a long walk for young boys and their teachers, no matter what the weather. Rain, snow made no difference. I don't know how long they stayed there after they returned home.
Hazel and her friend Dinah Byard, who lived next door but one from the Sulleys, were friendly with the sister of Jack Ludlam who had a farm on Moorwood Moor, so each Saturday we would walk to the farm to work with Jack and I well remember ploughing with two Shire horses and working with horses each weekend and all of the time I was at Crich and when it snowed, working with them pulling the snow plough to clear the local roads. Learning all of the different jobs on the farm was very enjoyable.

The one big problem was that there were no buses from Derby to Crich so our mothers only managed to come to see us very occasionally on a Wednesday afternoon, as they had to catch the train to Ambergate and then walk to Crich and then back home the same way. There was a shopping bus that ran from Crich to Ripley on a Friday morning to return late afternoon but if you missed the return bus you had to walk, owing to the petrol rationing no one could get a taxi or a lift of any kind, only one bus a week, however the bus from Alfreton to Matlock ran daily services from Town End taking workers to Leigh Mills at Cromford, but not much help to get to Derby.

Dinah’s father was the preacher at a nearby Methodist chapel and so we had to go to chapel every Sunday, twice a day, but I don’t think it did us any harm.

John Sulley like many country people kept poultry but to get their food you had to forfeit your egg ration but this paid off OK. I soon purchased two bantam hens and a cockerel, looking after them kept me employed every day but John also got help with his poultry.

I remember my mother sending me a shilling postal order each week (5 pence in present day money), which gave me a bit of pocket money. With John sitting a hen on a clutch of eggs to breed his own poultry we did occasionally get a cockerel in the oven and so saw a bit extra meat to help out the meat ration. I remember on one occasion one of Jack’s pigs on the farm was choking on a cabbage stalk, he went into the house to get a sharp knife to kill the pig, but Roger, who helped on the farm occasionally, and I stood the pig up on it’s legs and he thumped it’s back until it cleared the blockage and lived, when Jack returned and saw the pig alive he was not very pleased, as he could have legally killed it and would have had bacon and pork to last a long time.

We didn’t go home for Christmas as it was too dangerous and so we didn’t see Pear Tree Crescent again until school broke up for the summer holidays in July 1940. We returned to Derby for a holiday and as there had not been much bombing near home Alex and I decided not to return to Crich. I sometimes regret not going back to see all our friends but our school had reopened and so there wasn’t much time. I did however cycle to Crich to see some locals who had poultry, to obtain a few eggs to help out with the egg ration. To travel 12½ miles each way seems a lot of effort for a few eggs, sometimes 6, sometimes none at all.

I settled down to life in town again. Whilst I was at Crich the evacuation of France took place and some soldiers from the South Staffs Regiment were billeted with my mother and stepfather, on returning from France, for a short while until they were called back to duty.

Two lads who we palled out about with in Pear Tree Crescent were Tony and Richard Ridings, their father had been an RSM in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers before the war and was recalled to the army on the outbreak of war, Tony went into the RWF band as a 14 year old band boy in 1940, Richard, also 14, into the Sherwood Foresters band. Tony finished as a Brigadier in the Pioneer Corps and Richard a Lieutenant Colonel in the Coldstream Guards Regiment Band and Senior Director of Music for the Guards Division in London. So two of my friends had good careers in the army, both decorated by the Queen and I believe had the CBE or MBE.

My stepfather’s brother Herbert Jones served with Richard’s dad in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers before the war was demobbed in 1937 and recalled in 1939 to the RWF. He was captured at Dunkirk in 1940 and spent the rest of the war in Stalag (prisoner of war camp) in Poland until released at the end of the war. When he came to live with us for a short while I now wish I had asked many more questions of his life as a prisoner of war.

I started work at the Derby Co-op Building Dept. in Bridge Gate, Whitsun 1942, and as an apprentice bricklayer worked on numerous street air raid shelters — Walker Lane, Balaclava Road, Randolph Road and Rutland Street to name a few.

With the Building Dept. having large timber stocks we had to enrol for fire watching duties, in case the Luftwaffe decided to drop incendiary bombs, fortunately this didn’t happen, so that would mean sleeping one full night a week and one evening shift.
One advantage of being in the building trade meant that because we didn’t have any canteen facilities we were allowed extra bread, cheese, margarine, tea and sugar rations, also with carrying out repairs at the Co-op shops, Derby Co-op alone had 179 in the Derby area, there were sometimes a few perks available.
I remember the first time I was sent to work at Woods Street Dairy, the bricklayer I was working with, Jack, told me to take our mashing cans with its coffee grounds and saccharine tablets and put in only one inch of boiling water and return to him, he then took me to the Pasteurising Room to see Ted, who worked there, he filled up the can with hot milk from the machine, ‘Ambrosia’, after years of rationing that was the best drink of coffee I have ever tasted, even to this day the memory lingers.

In April 1945, with some of my mates in the Forces, I asked the Building Manager if I could be released from my apprenticeship to enlist in the Forces but he told me that being a ‘Bound Apprentice’ I would not be released and to wait until I came out of my time at 21 years old, however as the war ended in Europe in June 1945 there wasn’t much point in enlisting and the building trade became an important occupation and call up ceased in the building trade.

I had an uncle, my mother’s youngest sister’s husband, who joined the Royal Navy in 1941 and saw action in the invasion of Madagascar on HMS Keken and was working in a store in Bombay when an ammunition ship, ‘Fort Stricknene’, if I remember correctly, caught fire and exploded sinking or badly damaging 25 other ships in Bombay harbour. He was lucky and though injured survived to fight another day.

I met my wife Hazel whilst working at the Co-op Dairy. She recalls that when Rolls Royce was bombed during a morning air raid her family lived in Elton Road, quite near to Royce’s. Her brother Donald as a 14-year-old school boy saw the plane, the pilot and the bomb bay doors open and the bombs drop, he was a disturbed boy for quite a while. They do say that if the bombs had been released a bit sooner they would have hit the fuel tanks for the Test beds, which would have made a mess of the factory.
For the number of raids on Derby the Luftwaffe did cause damage to houses - Derby Lane, Offerton Avenue, Reginald Street, High Street, Stenson Road (the bungalow of the foreman bricklayer at the Co-op), Carlton Avenue, Shelton Lock and the Bandstand at the Arboretum. Businesses were also effected, Platform 6 at the Railway Station, Loco Works, Carriage and Wagon Works and Bliss’s at Chester Green, not a lot of damage compared to some other towns and cities.

Now I cannot understand why people today, obviously were not alive during the war, say it was wrong to bomb Dresden, Berlin etc and Japan. I have also heard young people saying that Belson and Auschwitz camps did not exist. We saw it at the pictures in 1945 and I can assure them that they did.

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