大象传媒

In 1938, at the age of 22, I began my career as a music teacher in a secondary school and two primary schools. This entailed quite a lot of walking between the three buildings, but I was young and active and enjoyed the exercise.

My main love was teaching children to play the piano, but the job requirements included class-singing, so I found that in the course of a week, my timetable was to cover piano tuition for individual pupils of all ages and class-singing periods for children whose ages ranged from five to eighteen years.

I spent the first year busily and happily settling down to my new life. Then came the war, when all our lives changed, in many cases so drastically. School buildings were closed and lessons were organised to take place in parents' homes. The parents were most co-operative as they valiantly tried to keep up some semblance of continuity in their children's education and in their day-to-day living.

A neighbouring church obligingly flung open its doors to provide accommodation for class work in the church hall, and I was given the use of the vestry for my piano teaching. In another church hall I met pupils, from various primary schools, who had been invited to come along at set times for a sing-song. This was more to keep up morale than voice-training purposes.

Such was the pattern of my days for some time, until the national decision was made for a mass exodus of children from the towns to safer inland areas. Preparations for this operation were hurriedly got under way and one day, I, and some of my colleagues were told to report the next morning to a primary school in a deprived area of the town in which we worked.

When we arrived, we were briefed as to our duties and then allocated classrooms where we would shortly meet our charges and get to know them. Each teacher was responsible for a group of primary school pupils and also younger children with their mothers. We were to stay with them that day until all the paper-work connected with their future housing had been completed. On the following day we would travel with them to a secret destination and remain in charge until they had been welcomed into their new homes.

In due course, the children began to arrive and we were united with our young charges. They were a bit shy and subdued at first, but with the resilience of youth, they soon began to enjoy experiencing a day like no other day in their entire school lives. Free from the restrictions of sitting still at a desk under the watchful eye of their teacher, free from the boredom of attending to dull lessons, they realised they were on to a good thing and they one and all intended to enjoy it to the full.

It was a long and tiring day, as we endeavoured to keep order amongst the excited children and tried to carry on desultory conversations with the mothers in our groups. I had one mother in my care. She had a baby in arms, two children under school age and two at primary school. She was inclined to be quarrelsome and was highly averse to what she regarded as "being bossed about." However, we made allowances, as she was obviously frightened and bewildered, as we all were, but she had the added burden of responsibility for her five children.

At lunch-time, sandwiches, fruit, biscuits and tea were served, for which we were very grateful, but it proved to be rather a messy business, with the tidy classrooms ending up festooned with crumbs and awash with spilt tea. If the day was proving to be long for the teachers who had been requisitioned to take part in this exercise, it must have been a nightmare for the harassed organisers, whose job it was, by the end of the afternoon, to procure lodgings, at least on paper, for each child and adult gathered in front of them. They also had to make arrangements for the journey on the morrow.

They consulted the lists of addresses at their disposal and noted the number of children each householder had agreed to take. How they managed to match these columns with the names of the children milling around them I have no idea. By this time in the early afternoon, the whirling and darting little bodies presented and ever-changing kaleidoscope of shapes and colours. They chased each other, laughing and shouting and then, to add to the general air of confusion, began gleefully to pelt each other (and anyone else who happened to cross their line of fire) with the remains of the sandwiches and biscuits intermingled with fragments of orange peel.

At last, some sort of decision must have been reached, because a bell rang, we were all told when to return the next morning and then we were mercifully released. That night, in sombre mood, I packed a small suitcase as I had been instructed to do, in case of an emergency of some kind, and the next morning I took leave of my anxious family and embarked on the unknown.

We were waiting in the school playground when the children began to arrive, clinging tearfully to equally tearful mothers and grannies who had come to see them off. When the numbers were complete and everyone had been given an identity label, we were lined up and marched to the station, gas masks bumping at our sides. I remember little of that journey, which involved a change of trains, but through time we stopped at a station and were told to get out. We had arrived at our secret destination. As all name signs had already been removed from station platforms, the name of the town at which we had stopped remained a secret until we were enlightened.

We checked in at the Town Hall, where each group was put under the care of a guide who would conduct the children to their future homes. We had some refreshment and on leaving the building each child and adult was presented with a brown paper carrier bag of rations, mostly in forms of tins as far as I can recollect. The bags were very heavy and cumbersome as they were large and had long handles, making them difficult for young children to manipulate along with their gas masks.

Their was quite a long walk ahead of us, and as we progressed, the mother and I kept having to retrieve ration bags from hot and sticky little hands. There I was, trudging along, with one arm weighted down by several paper bags as well as my suitcase, whilst my other arm supported a very cross and decidedly damp baby. And there was the mother, over burdened with a full compliment of bags, plus a woebegone toddler suffering from a blistered heel. We were indeed thankful when the guide bustled up to us and announced that we had arrived at the first address on her list.

When I took stock of our surroundings, I realised we had reached the residential area of the town. Before us stood an avenue of impressive looking buildings, each standing in its own immaculate garden. I looked at the first house with its glossy paintwork and sparkling windows. Then I looked at my brood of tired and dispirited little waifs and my heart sank.

However, I had not reckoned on the tenacity of purpose with which our redoubtable guide had been endowed. She bravely set to and with grim determination, proceeded to confront the householders on her list, pleading with, cajoling, and, no doubt, in some stubborn cases even bullying them into accepting their incompatible small guests. Gradually, the numbers in our party dwindled until we were left with just six. Yes, you will have guessed who they were. There was the baby, now blissfully asleep against my shoulder, his four siblings and his mother.

The latter had been warned the previous day that it was highly unlikely that any one householder would agree to take the whole family. Already our guide had managed to persuade one kindly lady to accept the two older children, and another promised to make room for the rest of the family, but when it came to the bit, the overwrought woman could not agree to the separation.

Consequently, late that afternoon, all seven of us straggled back to the station, there to await the next train bound for the city. As the train drew nearer home, the little family began to brighten up, especially when Ma told them that they would all have fish and chips for supper that night, adding that Da would be very pleased to see them home again. On that happier note, I escorted them to their tram car, and we parted the best of friends.

I heard later that the evacuees from the secondary school in which I taught had been billeted in a small village where the cottages, although clean and tidy, were cramped and rather old fashioned. I was told that the youngsters had nobly accepted these conditions and had quickly settled down. I could only hope that my young charges had likewise been able to adjust to their very changed circumstances. Eh bien! C'est la guerre!

Kathleen Blackwood via Dundee Central Library

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