大象传媒

The day war broke out I was a choirboy in the local church in Folkestone and in a break between the services the local vicar obviously was told that war had broken out so he told us young lads to get off home as quick as we could 鈥� which we did. I can tell you we absolutely ran down the road for fear of the secret weapon the Germans were supposed to have had hiding away somewhere. Of course there was no such thing.

The girls from Eltham High School in London were evacuated to Folkestone and we had to share our school with them, we boys going in the morning and the girls in the afternoon, so our education was not quite as good as it could have been, though at the time we were quite pleased to only be going to school half the day.

It soon became apparent that Folkestone was not the ideal place to send evacuees so after a short while the girls were taken away and quite soon after that the local children were evacuated. On June 2nd 1940 our school was sent by train to a place called Cwmyoy, about seven miles Hereford side of Abergavenny. Imagine if you can just for a moment what it must have been like for parents standing on the station waving their children goodbye, not knowing if they would see them again, or when. Likewsie, we children didn鈥檛 know if we would see our parents again. It was rather a traumatic experience I can tell you. I was 13 and I had with me my brother who was seven. My sister, who was about 10, was on the train to Abergavenny but there the girls were sent somewhere else and the boys went on to Cwmyoy.

We were taken to the village hall and pushed in a line and these people, I nearly said funny people but they weren鈥檛 really, they just seemed strange to us, came in and paraded up and down in front of us. I鈥檓 not sure if what we thought at the time was correct or not but it seemed to us that they were picking out the tallest, biggest, strongest-looking chaps, because they were farmers you see. They were pointing and it looked like they were saying, 鈥渨e鈥檒l take him鈥� but we had name labels on and they may just have been looking for our names. I was sorted out but I had strict instructions from my father to make sure I looked after young John, my brother, so I couldn鈥檛 go alone.

We were duly taken to a farm, never having been on a farm before, although we lived near the country. It was quite an experience. It was rather late at night by the time we got to bed and I remember next morning getting up and eagerly looking out of the window to see what a farm was like. It was nothing spectacular at all, just a farmyard with all sorts of mess which was rather unusual for a townie.

Larger boys, myself included, went to the village hall and younger boys including my brother were sent to the village school where they did not have a very friendly welcome. The farmer told John, you up down the road, past the Queen鈥檚 Head, down the hill and up the other side. But instead he decided to go across some fields and when he was later asked why he said it was because he didn鈥檛 want to see the queen鈥檚 head 鈥� he was scared, he didn鈥檛 realise it was the name of the pub! The bigger boys鈥� education was rather limited because we arrived there in summer and there was harvesting and hay-making and potato-picking to be done 鈥� which was far more acceptable to us than going to school.

There was very little school equipment because it had been left in Folkestone. I left at 16 with no qualifications at all. But while I was there I did win an art competition for youngsters. We had to design a poster for war saving, and I won a five shilling savings certificate.

We were all well-treated as far as I know, my brother and I very well-treated. When I left school John stayed there and the farmer and his wife virtually brought him up, and we are still in touch with the family.

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