大象传媒

My name is Pearl Webster, nee Stretton. I was born in Clowne, a Derbyshire mining village, in August 1928, the last of my parents' 'round dozen' - eleven girls and one boy; although two girls died in infancy. I married George in September, 1949, and now live in Ashbourne in Derbyshire.
I 'posted' my first contribution to the WW2 Website on 29th June, 2004, telling of my experience on the night of 3rd/4th September, 1939 - 'A Wartime Experience'.
The immediate effect of hostilities on daily life as far as we children were concerned was the disruption to our schooling. Clowne's schools were single sex, i.e. infant and junior girls in one building, senior girls in an adjacent building, with a large shared playground with lavatories way down the far end. These lavatories were water closets, housed in a well built brick building. A row of about eight or ten very small ones for the infants and juniors, each in its separate cubicle with a door, backed on to a row of slightly larger ones for the seniors. There were two lavatories for the teachers which were kept locked. Each teacher had her own key. Toilet paper was handed out in squares by the teacher when a child asked, "Please may I go to the office?", although we were not encouraged to use these facilities during lesson time.
The boys' schools were divided in the same way, but I believe the infant and junior boys had a separate playground from the senior boys. The senior boys' school was commandeered as a ARP First Aid Post on the outbreak of war, and although the girls' schools were never used for such purposes we did not attend school for many weeks after war was declared.
I cannot remember how we were notified, but eventually my class, Mrs Hardy's Standard V, would go each day to Mount Zion Methodist Sunday School room to collect 'homework' which we took back to be marked next day before collecting the next assignment. My best friend, Ivy Walker, and I always did our homework together, helping each other. She was good at arithmetic- known to us as 'sums'- and I was considered to be bright at English, History and Geography, so between us we maintained a pretty high standard.
After a while we attended school five half-days a week, alternating mornings and afternoons weekly with the senior boys. We were given 'Pack Boxes' - large cardboard boxes with lids - in which to keep all our exercise books. These were kept in the desks which the boys also used. We soon learned to take pens, pencils, rulers and india rubbers home each day as some of the boys would raid the boxes and the teachers said they couldn't replace anything that was missing.
We were back to normal schooling by the time the evacuees arrived in Clowne. They came from Lowestoft, a place few of us had heard of, on the train one Sunday. It must have been early in 1940, but I can't remember the precise date. They were boys from a senior school, aged between eleven and fourteen, and their teachers were evacuated with them. I seem to remember the Headmaster had a daughter named Vanessa, a name new to Clowne ears, who was about ten or eleven years old.
I remember the Billeting Officers coming along Barlborough Road, past our house, with one or two boys who had not yet been placed with families. People had been canvassed a few weeks beforehand to see how many children they might be able to take, and those who had offered accommodation had gone down to the railway station and had 'selected' their charges on the spot. Had they been girls my parents would have welcomed one - or perhaps two - but in a three-bedroomed house with a son of twent-four, and daughters of almost twelve and fourteen, boys were not an option.
My sister Ruby was fourteen in May 1940, and left school at the end of July and went to a job in service with a family in Sheffield, but Nell, our eldest sister came to live with us in June of that year. She was married to a regular soldier, Frank Green, who had been posted to Palestine in January, 1938, when their youngest son was just six weeks old. Their two older boys were Frankie, aged eight, and Les, aged six. Nell and her children had had to leave their home in Army Married Quarters when Frank was sent abroad, and had gone to live with our sister Grace, married two years but without a family. When the air raids began on Birmingham my father insisted Nell must come with her children to live with us.
With four adults, four growing children and a toddler, it might be thought that our home was overcrowded, but it never seemed so. Sleeping arrangements needed a bit of sorting. 'Our Stan' kept the small room that had always been his, Nell, Ruby - for just a couple of months - Frankie, Les and Geoff shared the big bedroom that had been Ruby's and mine, with Nell and Ruby sharing the brass double bed, Frankie and Les sharing a single bed, and Geoff in his cot. It was abit of a tight squeeze, but in those days children didn't have their own bedrooms to disappear into with T V's and computers. We were not encouraged to use our bedrooms for anything but sleep. I had a single bed in my parents' room until Ruby left home, when I moved in to share a bed with Nell. My father worked nights at Markham Colliery six days a week - Saturday was his only night off - so we were on three in that room on one night a week. I'm sure there were people in far worse circumstances than we were.
Having Nell to live with us had its advantages. She had the ability to conjure up, or concoct, a delicious meal from almost nothing; although nine ration books helped to swell the essential ingredients. I still remember her pilchard fishcakes and cheese and potato cakes, and still have her recipe for eggless boiled fruit cake. She had been cook-general for an Army Officer's family, and Captain Thorne was a friend and fellow officer of the Duke of Gloucester who was often entertained to dinner at the Thorne's home, but I don't think for a moment that he ever partook of these cullinary delights. Nell made, and iced, wedding cakes for three of our sisters during the war; no mean achievement, when every ingredient had to be begged, borrowed and horded.
It wasn't too long before Nell was able to rent a little two up, two down house in a terrace of four in a sort of cul de sac called New Barlborough. I always felt a deep sympathy for this place as a child because it had a sign declaring it an Unadopted Road. There was a row of slightly larger houses on the opposite side of this road. It was quite unmade up, with large smooth stones, and large pockets of black grit-like dirt where the men sometimes played marbles, placing the marbles in a large ring, then seeing who could knock the most marbles out with one of their own, fired from the hand by the movement of the thumb. Sometimes they would play a game called 'Peggy', where they balanced a small flat plank of wood on a log, one end just touching the ground, on which would be placed a small cube of wood, about two inches square. A piece of wood about two foot long, and about two and a half inches wide, with a roughly shaped handle, would serve as a bat with which to hit the end of the plank which was tilted up in the air. As the cube was projected into the air the batsman had to give it a mighty whack, sending it as far away as possible. The spot where the cube had landed was marked and each contestant took a turn, the one hitting the cube the furthest declared the winner. Of course, when the men weren't playing these games we took over, and played our versions of the adult game with hastily contrived equipment.
By the time Nell moved into New Barlborough the evacuees were settled into their new surroundings and were using the Technical School - 'Clowne Tec'- for their classrooms. This was not as grand a place as it sounds. In those days it consisted of one brick-built building, and mining studies were taught here, and it was used for 'Night School', as it was then known, before Evening Classes and Further Education became the norm.
Frank now insisted on being called by his given name. As a baby he had been known as 'Little Frank', his Dad being known in the family as 'Big Frank',he had then graduated to Frankie, but now, at going on for nine, he'd had enough of that. He and Les were now settled into their new school, Clowne Junior Boys, and doing well, making new friends and losing their southern accents, soon picking up the Derbyshire vowel sounds.
On the domestic scene there were one or two highlights in our week. The 'Beano' comic came out on Tuesdays, I think, and 'Mickey Mouse' on Fridays. Nell bought these for the boys. We had never had comics. The nearest we came to a comic strip was Rupert's Adventures in 'The Daily Express'. Before Dad changed his allegiance to the Beaverbrook Press he used to take the 'News Chronicle'and we read about the Noah Family. With pocket money at one half-penny a week, known as the Friday 'apeny, and doled out by Dad after he had been to 'Reckon' - the miners' term for collecting their wages - we couldn't afford such luxuries. 'Our Stan' bought the 'Rover' each week and swapped it with Dick Williams, his friend from next door, for 'The Hotspur'.
The Gascoigne children from two doors away took 'Tiny Tots' and we would go round to their house and we would read it together, leaning up against their fireguard. The Millards at the last hose in the row took 'Bubbles' and I'm sure it was this comic that had 'Peter the Paleface' on the back page. Peter was a white boy brought up by a Red Indian tribe. I must have come to this comic late, because I never knew how he got to be there. Irene Millard took 'The Girls' Crystal' and this was my favourite weekly read. It was not, strictly speaking, a comic, but a collection of stories about girls in boarding schools with such plots as hooded monks, secret panels in the old school buildings, and a serial or two. One might feature a fifth former named Maria or Truda, who has been shunned because her surname is Schultz, or something like that, until the day she saves the day - and the vital match - by hitting a six off the last ball of the game. It turned out that her father had defected from Germany and was engaged in very secret work for the Brits. None of us questioned how Maria - or was it Truda? - had learned to bat like that in a country not renowned for its cricketing prowess. Innocents we were in those days, and gullible. Now and then I was able to get hold of a copy of Enid Blyton's 'Sunny Stories', but they were very tame after the stories of 'Ship-board Sally' another of the 'Girls' Crystal' heroines.
What we looked forward to most, Frank, Les and I, was the weekly ritual of 'getting Geoffrey used to his gasmask'. This was no ordinary gasmask, but a contraption made of what I took to be clear celluloid and solid rubber. We would put this on the big deal table in the room we called 'the house' where the blackleaded grate was, and where we ate, did our homework, and Mum and Nell pegged rugs, and where they sat to write their letters; Nell to 'Darling Frank', and Mum to her sister Ethel, and to her daughters, married or 'out service'. Dad would write letters to his mother, his sister Rose, and to his brothers. He had the most beautiful hand writing, although he left school aged eleven, and had no problems with grammar or spelling.
On the days we did the gasmask drill the table was cleared for action. We had to lie Geoff in this thing, but I'm afraid I just can't remember if the whole of him went in, or if his body from his head to his waist went in and then we tightened straps round him. What I do remember was that there was a concertina-like pump on the outside which had to be pumped continuously to keep the air supply fed to the child entombed in the thing. We would take it in turns, Frank, Les and I, and would sing songs in time to the pumping. One of our favourites was 'My cup's full and running over', one of our Sunday School songs. Strange as it may seem, Geoff seemed to enjoy the whole performance. We were quite sad when he was issued with a Mickey Mouse gasmask. I remember it had a red tongue which hung out from it, and which vibrated madly when Geoff breathed out. For a while we found it quite funny, but it never came up to the excitement of 'getting him used to' the first one. Thank God we never had to put him into either for real.
These are just a few of the memories of the wartime I knew.

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