大象传媒

An evacuee, I be

At 8 years 6 months years old, to be told that I would be going for a ride, for the first time on a bus, a train and a car all in one day was very exciting indeed. As a child one did not look any further than the first day. However, four and a half years later I was brought home on the back of my father's motorbike with my few possessions wrapped in a brown paper parcel.

We, that is my mother, sister and two brothers walked from home to the school in Honeysuckle Road, Southampton with our gas masks and our few belongings it was to be the adventure that I remember, also the soot in the eye from looking out of the steam train window, it was an adventure for me as I had mother with me. But for some, it was a very different story of a lot of crying and sobbing. I think this is true for about 200 of us evacuees, for this is what we became known as. The date was 1st September 1939, one day prior to the second world war starting.

We were taken to St. Marybourne Station, near Andover and from there to St. Marybourne School in the biggest car I had ever seen, it was a Bentley. We were waiting around for someone to take us in as a family as there were 5 of us. We did not stand a chance of that. Eventually my mother, my younger sister and I were taken in by a farmer and his wife to their Downham farm about 2 miles away from the village. I will always remember the farm and going to the old fashioned thatched barn early in the morning and helping to put the harness on the 3 working horses. I still go back now after 65 years as often as I can. Unfortunately the horses are gone and so too is the house but the memories linger on. My 2 brothers were housed 200 yards up the lane.

One thing that does stick in my mind when we reached the school was how much I needed the toilet and was shown to the outside loo joined to the school. There to my surprise the urinal was a bit pit in the ground filled with leaf mould. As for the actual loo, that was a board with a big hole cut into it with a big smelly bucket underneath. This was not what we were used to at home. The next thing I remember was the fruit trees, you name them and they were there, fruit like one had never seen before hanging from every garden over the roads and there it was, fruit for the taking. You can鈥檛 imagine what it was like for us kids coming from where we did, the only fruit we ever had, we had to steal from the man with the horse and cart on his way home at night. It has to be planned like a military operation. We lived on a hill and as the poor old horse was plodding his way up, and the driver looked like he was asleep, us kids were positioned in every other gateway concealed behind the big privet hedges that every one seemed to grow in those days. As the cart passed by one would dive out across the pavement, reach up as far as one could into the nearest box and grab whatever was there. Sometimes you were lucky or you may have got the box of rotten fruit. I do remember well though it could have been the 2lb weights from the scales! Then it was back to the next gateway as fast as one could.

In those days a man selling ice cream went round the streets in a van. We had a nickname for him 鈥淧ermpy鈥�. This was because he had a big brass horn with a large black rubber ball that he would press to make this funny noise to let people know he was in the street. We had no money to buy the ice cream, so the trick was to ask him if he wanted a 鈥減ee鈥�, if he used your toilet you got a free ice cream.

So you see when we were moved to the country, for a little time, we thought it was a land of milk and honey. I suppose it was in away, most of us came from poverty (I know we did) and then to all the food one could eat.

From the farm, my mother, sister and I moved into the village and I moved in with a very old couple in a thatched cottage where one could lean out of the window and shake hands with someone stood in the road. This cottage also had an old privy but this time it was way down the bottom of the garden.
One night I was not very well (can you imagine) an 8 year old boy in the middle of the night with no lights, not even a candle, just the light of the moon. As for any toilet paper, that was torn up strips of damp newspaper and I was all by myself, unforgettable.

From that cottage I had to go back to live with my mother and sister again in the centre of the village. This time it was a farm labourer and his wife in another thatched cottage. It had just one sink in the small kitchen and a tin bath in front of the fire (but it was home) even if it was the third house I had been to in 7 months. The best thing about living in this house was being taken 鈥渞abbiting鈥� at 5 in the morning. It did not take long to learn how to catch, kill, paunch, skin and eat them. As for any academic learning, there wasn鈥檛 much of that.

As I mentioned previously, I think 200 children moved into a small village school with no room for anyone, but the village had to take us. I think most of us sat on small but long P.E. benches for the 2 and a half years until it was time to go to the Senior school in Whitchurch. They did their best with what they could for us. There鈥檚 was a war on. That was the saying at the time for anything that was not quite right.

By now a year had passed. Mother had had enough of the country village working as a cleaner in the big house and the bakehouse. To earn a few shillings to make our lives a little better she went home to father. Prior to this mother did not want to leave my sister who was age 7 and me in the same house that we were living in at the time. So it was on the move again.

For my sister it was a very small house opposite the Church. As for me, it was the village bakehouse where I was to spend the next 3 and a half years. But it was not the last move because when the baker and his wife had house guests, I was sent to the village pub, my bedroom was above the public bar. In the evening I would watch the old men drinking, smoking and making the poker red hot from the fireplace and then plunging it into their pints of beer. They used to say it was full of iron, whatever that meant. Also I would sleep at Jamaica Farm. I would cycle the two miles at night and back home for my food in the morning. Some nights one would hear the rats running up and down and above the rafters as the house was joined to the farm buildings and it still is today. I wonder every time I pass 鈥淚s it still the same?!鈥�

Living with the bakers and their 7 year old son was another pleasant shock. Coming from a home with nothing to a home with everything. Toys that I had never seen before - Meccano building sets, Hornby train sets, paper, pencils, and crayons, gramophones, there was even a radio. But we were told not to touch that. I do remember, however, walking to the blacksmiths shop to change the 鈥榓ccumulater鈥� (battery to you) now and again to run the radio. This was the only news in those days all about the war, not much interest though for 2 small boys

But the bakehouse meant a lot of work for all of us. At now 9 years of age, my job on a Saturday morning was to get up at 5 o鈥檆lock to cook the doughnuts on an old paraffin stove. Then it鈥檚 time for breakfast 鈥� time for those doughnuts to cool down. Then came the best bit, filling them with either cream or red jam, cream was the best! One would fill a big icing bag, with a nozzle in the end full of cream and then squeeze it into the slit previously cut into the doughnut, quite a job for a 9 year old. Now and again the nozzle would slip into my mouth. After all these years I can still taste it. Cream will never taste like that again!

Then it was time to load the old Morris 8 van for the first round of the day. Off we would go, sometimes with my brother helping and earning a few bob for himself. I would be sitting in the back surrounded by all the lovely fresh bread and cakes, especially the lardy cakes 鈥� there is nothing like a big sweet sultana from the top of a fresh baked lardy cake (try it one day). Then it was back to the bakehouse. Sometimes in the winter for a cup of tea or hot Oxo 鈥� which had real taste in those days.

It was then back out again on the next round. Sometimes in the winter the small lanes were blocked with fallen trees. We would always carry a saw, an axe and a shovel just to get through to some of the outlying houses. But the wood was never wasted. If we had room in the van the wood went homes for the fire or was picked up at a later date. When we got home it was time to unload the van. The bread was put into an old tin box and covered with a sack and all the cakes went into a big mixing bowl. This was then mixed with black treacle spread between 2 layers of pastry, baked, then cut into 4 inch squares. We called them Nelson Squares, they sold like hot cakes. I have never eaten one to this day!

So this was life as it was. Everyone worked very hard. As for Mr & Mrs R, for this is how I always addressed them, they gave me a good home and treated me as one of the family, but the work was always there. For instance, every night I came home from school, it was on the big black trade bike for me loaded with bread, about 14 loaves and I had to ride up to a farm at Stoke House, the next village up the Bourne Valley, for up there they had a large number of Italian prisoners of war. They had big black patches on their backs. It was said at the time they had no fight in them. I remember well the night I fell off this bike and dropped all the bread in the wet gravel. What a time I had cleaning it all up before delivering them and worrying for the next 2 days and nights that I delivered them without telling anyone.

It was then back to the bakehouse to pump water for the next days baking. It was a big pump, greenish in colour as it was made partly from brass. I did not enjoy this job. It was fixed to the wall and I had to stand on a box to reach it. It seemed to take ages to fill the tank. The tank was on top of the coalfire oven. This had to be cleaned out everyday, even at the weekends.

Mr R made the bread every weekday evening after dinner. It was mixed up by hand, there were no machines in those days, and always when he had finished and before he covered it with a sack he would slap the dough and say 鈥淭urn over Bess, I want to kiss you.鈥� It was then off to the pub.

Bath time was taken with the fire door open to make it warmer for us. One thing that I did dislike was being second to have the bath in the same water, but I was glad in a way as I did not have to pump it. The bath by the way was a big long galvanised one made of tin. It was hung on the whitewashed wall (no emulsion in those days) in the same place at the back of the bread oven with all the coke and wood staked high all around.

It was with Mrs R., my new mum, that I had my first bath. (Although I need to mention we had a bath back home in Southampton. Home was a new council house which has a bathroom with a big gas geyser, but there was one snag, we could not afford the money to put into the meter. However, what we did do was collect wood, fir cones, old boots, shoes, in fact anything that would burn. From the big old wash boiler in the kitchen we would carry the water in buckets upstairs. Also to make money for food. It was with an old box on 4 pram wheels we, that is my 2 brothers went from Swaythling to Midanbury and then down the hill to Portswood to try and fill the box with horse manure. For a full box was worth 6 pence. The trick was to fluff it up to make it look more than it was. Times were hard and called for desperate measures. I can still see my mother鈥檚 eyes when the money was handed over, she would sit down and work out the best way to spend it. But it was always on food. Back to village life, Mrs R. said to me when I was getting dried, 鈥淲here are your underpants?鈥�. I could not answer as I had never had underpants in my short life. This was soon rectified, as was a Post Office Book. For I was now being paid one Shilling and 3 pence a week, and with tips, if I was lucky, I was able to save a little money. I still have my old Post Office Book.

I had managed to save 拢8/14/6 and with it bought my first bicycle, a lot of money in those days, and a lot of tips! A little different from what I had been used to when we lived back home in Southampton. For then all it was was just a stripped down old bike frame with 2 wheels of any size that we could lay our hands on from any old pram we found on the dump near our home and living on a hill, need I say more.

Life was never dull living in the village. We had Church on Sundays and Sunday School. Everytime I go back and sit in my old seat in front of the mirror that Miss Fountain, the organist in the Church, she would look at me through the mirror and shake her finger should I be making a noise by playing noughts and crosses when the Vicar was preaching his sermon. For us choir boys this was boring. The highlight for a choir boy in those days was to carry the banner in the procession all around the Church and to time it right so that the choir would reach the choir pews just as the last words of the hymn Onward Christian Soliders were being sung. I still look at that banner and rod today and wonder if it is the same one?

When the Homeguard was formed the big long ladder and stirrup pump were housed alongside the bakehouse and for training purposes us lads were used as injured casualties with names tags tied to us saying what injuries we had. I had a broken leg and arm. They would truss us up like chickens. This was only after they had found me because I was way out in the cress beds. But it was fun. Mentioning cress beds, we were informed they were going to dig deep wells in the lower cress beds as they were called, because in those days we had upper cress beds as well near the Doctors clinic as it is today. But what they did not realise was they would drop the water table so low that the river dried up part of the year and still does. Talking of the river Mr R. after making the bread, giving it time to rise and before he went down the pub for his 2 pints and a game of snooker, he would bend a pin as fishing hooks were unobtainable, and go fishing in the river. I have seen many a good foot long trout fished from the River Bourne.

Talking of fish and thinking of food, we lived off the fat of the land in the war not like a lot of people. You name it and we had it, except of course bananas. The last time I saw one of then was from the old man鈥檚 cart coming slowly up the hill. Eggs, chicken, turkey, goose, pheasant, partridge, duck, even peewits 鈥� just to try. Eggs, I had one every day. I think at home it was one a week.

With Mr R. being so busy working in the bakehouse, John and I had a lady to look after us and work in the bakehouse. Her name was Mrs Hurst. A well known name in the village. She cooked our breakfast and set us off to school. Sometimes she cooked a 鈥榦ne eyed Nelson鈥�. This was large 1 inch slice of bread with the middle taken out, fried in the pan with an egg put into the hole in the bread. To this day I cannot face one and when I met my wife I asked that she never cooked that meal for me, wet, soggy and half-cooked 鈥� not for me.

As for Mr Hurst he worked on the farm but always wore a longish coat. One day he was standing at the doorway of the bakehouse and I found out why, from the pocket one side of the open coat came a rabbit and a pheasant from the other and in one pocket went a packet of butter and the other a packet of lard. That鈥檚 how things had to be 鈥渢here鈥檚 a war on you know鈥�.

On a sadder note we all felt so sorry for them both for one day we were all working in the bakehouse when a telegram arrived for Mrs Hurst. They knew she was working that day. Unfortunately it was from the War Office to inform her that her only son had been killed in action. He was with the Black Watch. His name, with others, is now on the Cenotaph at the bottom of Andover Hill in the centre of the village.

We all played our part in the garden and grew all we could. There was a large patch of tomatoes which had to be well fed. It was one of my jobs to collect the fertiliser 鈥� although in my day it was called dung! It had to be collected fresh and I do mean fresh. When the cows were down in the field near us I would it and wait and shovel it up into a sack and drag it home. Put it into a tin bath filled with water. Tomatoes like you have never tasted 鈥� now we are talking about tomatoes!

A little story I must tell you remembering previously mentioned privies. Well they had to be emptied once a week. If you had a lot of people staying with you, you were in trouble. The emptying was done at night with a horse and cart especially built for the job. The Our bedroom overlooked the road. We knew he was coming at least 10 houses away! Known as the night soil cart, the waste was then taken away and put on the fields near the village of Stoke and I will tell you this, you will never see or taste a finer show of self seeding tomatoes in your life!

As for the village school things went on about the same, still very overcrowded but a lot of the children were going back home for various reasons. I was never very good at school work, not like the boy I lived with, John. He went to Andover Grammar School latterly onto Southampton University. We still keep in touch 66 years later.

My elder brother, Peter, lived in the big house up at Egbury for a short time and then went home to join the Navy. My second brother, Robert, at the age of 14 had to get a job when he left school and worked for the village blacksmith for a while. Then he also left to join the Navy as a Boy Seaman. My sister, Sheila, went to live with a relative in Shedfield not far from Southampton. So now I was on my own.

It must have been my ability, or the lack of it in my case, that the cane and sometimes the edge of a ruler was always being put my way. There was no special needs in my day only the cane. There was not much time for playing football or any field games as the Recreation Ground, known as the 鈥楻ec鈥� was for cows and sheep. Learning about the birds and the bees did not take long when you live in the country with the animals. I think I can say that I have climbed every tree that surrounds the 鈥楻ec鈥�.

In late Summer it was up the fields with big sticks standing around the farm fields with the farmers and the small terrier dogs waiting for the horses to go by pulling the reaper. At this point the rabbits would run. What you caught you kept. To go home with a couple of rabbits for the pot was magic. Also the ones we kept in hutches, not as pets, well not for long 鈥� the saying 鈥渢ake the buck to the doe, or the doe to the buck鈥�, whatever it was we always had no trouble producing lots of fluffy balls of food for the pot. We kids took our rabbits up the field, we said for a run, but they knew exactly what to do.

Harvest time was always a big event, what with the ladies of the Womens Institute in the big black old hall as it was in the war years, making jam, the noise of paraffin stoves being pumped up and the unforgettable smell of blackberry, apple or gooseberry, you name it and they made it.

Mr R. always made a Harvest Festival loaf for the Church, one that looked like a stook of corn. The Church was always well decorated, with everyone taking part. Flowers adorned every nook and cranny. Fruit and vegetables overflowed from all the windows. The floor was strewn with evergreen leaves and the hymn 鈥榃e Plough the Fields and Scatter the Good Seed on the Land鈥� was always sung. However, it was good for us kids in those days for it kept us out of trouble and gave us something to do.

As well as work, the baker had 2 vans, both Morris 8s and a red Riley car with chrome bumpers. This was set up on blocks to get the tyres off the ground. Now and again we started the engine up and ran it for a short time. This was breaking the law as petrol was in very short supply and only the farmers, doctors and a few others could get it. If anyone was found to be driving further than the end of your round, you could get fined heavily.

Unfortunately Mr R鈥檚 mother died so we went to the funeral as a family. Off to Newbury we went, I was sat in the back of the van looking out of the window, checking that no one was following us. This was the only time the law was broken and we got away with it.

It was now time for me to go to Whitchurch School. This meant travelling by Tibbles bus. This was a worrying time for me, being sat at the back of the crowded class for a number of months, because when I arrived at school I was put in a grade too high for me and had to go down a grade at the end of term. There was 2 things that I could well at school, singing and gardening. Large parts of the school playground had been turned into arable land. The posters said 鈥淒ig for Victory鈥� and Whitchurch School certainly played its part. We were nearly self sufficient in vegetables, root crops were our speciality. Potatoes, carrots, swedes, turnips, you name it. But to be able to produce this amount of food something had to be sacrificed. It was our class work, but we did learn how to keep potatoes and carrots until the next season crop grew. This meant building long clamps with straw covered with a foot of earth with 6 foot spacing. Tufts of straw were stuck in the top so it could breath. Every school day a class went out to uncover the clamp, take as many as the kitchen requested and then cover the clamp up again. As for the carrots they were kept in the main building in boxes filled with dry sand. The boxes had to be checked now and again for rot. To put ones hand into dry sand and feel a rotten carrot was unforgettable, but they still tasted good to hungry lads.

The war lingered on and a lot more evacuees went back home. My parents did come to see me about 3 times in all, also my brother and his girlfriend came down once but by this time they were nearly strangers. Not that this bothered me too much at the time, I had to work hard, but I was looked after and well fed.

On the bus going or coming home from school we would drop a tin can on a long length of strong string out through a hole in the back of the bus and watch it bounce all over the road. It was good when the girls had cookery lessons 鈥� cheese straws, rock cakes, you name it, they all tasted good.

The bread round finished late in the evening. Sometimes it was a job to get round because of the snow. Mr R and I were up at Weeke and we stood looking out in the direction of Southampton and there would be a big orange glow in the sky. When we got home I heard him say to Mrs R. 鈥渢hey are getting it tonight down Southampton way鈥�. This meant that Southampton were being bombed, this did not bother me very much as I had never experienced the war or the bombing. We always had our evening meals together and the radio was always on.

The first time I sat at the table to eat my first meal with the family was very embarrassing for me. I had never been taught any table manners in any way. However from that day I was constantly being watched. I would put my elbows on the table with the knife and fork in my hands pointing upwards and spoke constantly. This was not the done thing, small boys were seen and not heard. You would speak when you were spoken to and you certainly did not put you arms on the table and if you finished eating before the master of the household, in this case, Mr R., one was to sit with your arms folded until the next course was ready and when one had finished to put your knife and fork on the plate pointing outwards to say that you had finished that course.

All in all this was a good education on table manners for now I can eat with anyone and know which knife or fork to use and not to be embarrassed and never put my arms on the table, only my wrists.

Singing also played a big part in my young life being in the local Church Choir, the school choir and given the chance to sing solo in front of the school now and again was about the only boost I ever got from school.

Potato picking was another money earner but hard work in the field on the right side of Andover Hill, especially on a wet and windy day, although I did not take part in the activity very often. Conkers or horse chestnuts were picked up one year. They said it was for the war effort.

At the time no one had any idea what it was for, it was a well kept war secret. Later we learnt it was used in the making of gunpowder. After this it was rosehip time. However, we knew what the rosehip was for, for chesty coughs and colds and we did get a little money for this but had to collect a sack full at a time to make it pay.

By this time I had picked up a real Hampshire accent. The village was only 30 miles away from Southampton but it was an entirely different world than Southampton. I still have the accent today, after all it was my home and have been told on two occasions never to loose it.

Every year in that part of the country we had a lot of snow. I think it was 1943 when a particularly bad snow storm had brought trees down and blocked some roads. We had as customers two families living out in the sticks way up in Coopers in the Wood farm near Egbury. It would have been impossible for the van to get through and no way to walk through to talk to them, for there were no mobile phones in those days, not even a phone. So it was decided that Mrs R, John and I would walk pulling a makeshift sledge. This consisted of an old hording made of tin which advertised Bovril. It measured 2ft by 6ft. It was loaded with bread enough to last 2 families with a number of children for a few days. Off we set. It was not long before we realised that John was not going to make it and he only made it to Weeks Farm where Mr and Mrs Hurst, the lady that cooked for us at the Bakehouse lived. Mrs R and I trudged on. Mrs R had a long coat on and the icicles were forming on the hem of her coat. At last we made it. We were not even offered a cup of tea, instead asked where are the cakes? After a short rest it was off again. We picked up John and put him on the sledge. This time it was all down hill and we arrived home safe and sound but exhausted.

Easter was a very busy time, Good Friday especially. It was up very early and to make and bake the fresh hot cross buns. It was my job to pipe the cross on the buns and the mixture had to be just the right consistency or it would run all over the bun. There was an Easter ritual that was performed each year in that a hot cross bun was nailed over the bakehouse door every year and not ever taken down. The last time I looked, back in 1999, the row of nails were still there but the buns had of course disappeared. Nothing lasts forever.

I had to deliver the buns in the village on the trade bike with the van going to the houses and farms for the rest of the round. Farms in those days were very much different places than they are today. Today they are lifeless with not an animal in sight and very few farm workers. In my day as a baker鈥檚 boy trying to get in one was an obstacle course. First one had to open the main gate, 9 times out of ten it was tied up with string. By this time the dog was barking its head off in one of the outhouses or was on a long running wire just long enough to reach from side to side of the yard. The dog in his excitement would bound towards you and forget all about the long running wire and nearly choke himself. Next it was the cock turkeys turn. They would stand in front of you with their wings scraping the ground and peck you if they could. Once past them the geese had their turn. They just milled around and made all the noise they could. As for the chickens, all they wanted was to be fed. As all this was going on the hen turkeys would have their heads in your basket, pecking at whatever was in there. By this time the lady of the house was out to see what all the fuss was about. That big basket acted as a shield and saved me many times. In the winter when the car tracks to the farms were thick with mud and were too deep for our little van to ride through, we had to walk 鈥� this seemed to be always my job! You did not want to make two journeys so you put all you could carry in the basket and hoped for the best.

One Saturday I asked if I could take the afternoon off to go to a Garden Fete held at the big Long Parish house. This was 4 miles away. Off I went on my bicycle by myself and had a great time. Hooplas, bowling, pig and ferret racing and all the fun of the Fete and then to the bric-a-brac table where I spotted a razor set. I thought this would be a good present for Mr R. However, when I got home Mrs R said it was a silly thing to do and I was not to waste my money on rubbish 鈥� it must have been bad!

On a lighter note, Mrs R loved flowers, especially wild flowers. No room in a war garden though. We would stop the van on the way home if we had the time and pick an enormous bowl of cowslips (not done today) from the hillside on the Binley Road and in the morning when you came downstairs the smell was magnificent. Each Spring Mrs R would always fill a vase with beech twigs with their wonderful green coloured leaves. It has always been my favourite colour. Bluebells carpeted the woods in Autumn. Hazelnuts and filberts were collected for Christmas as nuts were unobtainable.

Mrs R liked her milk stout, two small bottles each night. This she said kept her going. It was my job to walk to the pub of an evening (sadly its now a house). Remembering whilst reading that there were no street lights whatsoever and everywhere was blacked out, even in the country, and for a 9 year old boy you may think this would have been a bit scary. However, after a few trips I came to enjoy it. I said to her one evening that she should buy a crate so that it would last her a week. Her reply was that if she were to do this I would have nothing to do of an evening.
Another of her sayings was when I asked to leave the table of an evening, she would often say 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 take it with you鈥�. Also when John and I were eating at the table 鈥淵ou both eat like a pig eating cinders.鈥� Little sayings like these stay with you all your life.

After sometime had passed I was able to do most of the jobs around the bakehouse. Putting the bread in and out of the oven with a wooden bat like tool. It was about 10ft long and took some getting used to but once you had mastered it, it was easy. Also taking the bread out of the tins as soon as they came out of the oven with only a sack to cover your hands was a trick to master. Making Swiss rolls on the same tray as they were baked on. This was relatively easy to put the jam and cream on, but it was when you came to roll it up that the fun really started.

We received all the news about Southampton from the driver delivering the flour (the flour being delivered from Rank Flour Mills in Southampton Docks). Southampton didn鈥檛 enter my head very much for by now 3 years had passed and that鈥檚 a long time to be away from your home.

It was not all work in the bakehouse, there was the holidays. I would go to Ponds Farm and go with John Pond, the farmer鈥檚 son, and whatever he was doing up the fields with the big horses, sitting on their backs, driving the cart, or the dung cart, I came too. Once I drove a big Shire horse and hay rake. The foot pedals were so big I had a job to move them. However, milking time was my favourite. I was stood in the doorway of the long milk shed (no milking parlour in those days), when I was hit by a stream of milk in both eyes. This they said was a milkmaid鈥檚 party trick. The bit I liked the best was to go to the milk cooler with a ladle, dip it into the milk (not too deep) and drink the top of the milk. It was cool and delicious.

The first time I ever drove a tractor it was a Fordson with big spiked wheels. I said to John Pond to let me have a go (I鈥檓 now 12 years old). He asked whether I had ever driven before and of course I said I had, but of course I hadn鈥檛. Off I went across the field and I drove until it was time to change gear and I was soon off the tractor.

The young men of the village had gone off to join the Forces and things around the village were left to the older men. The ladies walked out into the fields with cold tea in the enamel pots with chipped cups and we would sit round on stooks of corn or on the cart and eat big lumps of cake. I can still taste it all now!

The piece of land that was left for a playing field at school was never mowed and the grass became so long that we lads would tie a small bunch to another and make a type of trip wire 鈥� it became a minefield for anyone who walked through it 鈥� boys with be boys. Mentioning getting up to mischief 鈥� out on the round one day, on one of the farms, there was a large water tank with a large round tap on it. I turned it and out shot the water so fast it knocked me over. Good thing that John was out of the way, but I was unable to turn the tap off and we got back into the van I had to say I fell in the pond and we both worried for a whole week until our next visit. However, when we got there it was still empty and was never filled again. All that worrying for nothing.

John and I went back to St Marybourne in the year 2001 when he came home (for he emigrated to Australia) and we made a return visit to this particular farm to see if the tank was still there. Low and behold there it was! This time however, it was filled with diesel oil and this time I was a lot older and very much wiser not to turn that tap!

As time passed the word evacuee was forgotten and I was very pleased about that for I was now one of them. I had become a real country boy and by now talked like one of them and today I still get told off by my grandchildren about sounding my R's.

The dialect as I knew it is now fast disappearing. There are still a few of the old timers left in the village when I go back and visit (which I do several times each year with my brother) but their stories now are different in the village. They can鈥檛 afford the house prices and people just move in. I certainly would like to be one of them 鈥� but sadly I don鈥檛 think that will ever happen.

Back in 1940 not many people could afford to have a camera, the Robinson family did. It was called a Box Brownie and this little black box fascinated me 鈥� for this was the first time I had seen one. That Winter we had quite a snowfall and as children do John and I made snow balls and a snowman and I pulled him up and down the yard on a bent piece of tin. A few pictures were taken of us with the camera. The camera then spent its time on the shelf and then forgotten about 鈥� except by me. Curiosity got the better of me. As I stood waiting for the bread to come out of the oven one day I just had to open it to see where the picture were. I have been sorry ever since. For there might have been some pictures to go with this story. I had to wait another four years before I had another one taken again.

I have been asked whether I was ever taken ill during my time. I can鈥檛 remember going to the doctors, but what I do remember is having a big spoonful of cod liver oil every week. The doctor was sent for Mrs R who became ill and was confined to bed. I later learnt that she had suffered a miscarriage but to talk about such matters in those days was taboo.

It was about this time that the Americans joined us in the War. Their big lorries and tanks would knock the sides of the bridges off many times, especially the one in the centre of the village. Unfortunately a soldier was killed when he hit the ash tree in a jeep outside Oak Beams cottage. You can still see the crash mark in the tree stump if you know where to look for it.

Time passed very quickly and the soldiers and their tanks filled every lane and road for miles around. It was the preparation of D-Day. Out on the trade bike delivering to my usual customers I had to be careful not to sell everything to them.

D-Day came 鈥� it was a school day 鈥� and a day I will always remember. I stood in St Marybourne School holding on to the railings looking up to the sky and it was black with never ending waves of aircraft of all types, shapes and sizes 鈥� the noise was deafening. When the children in the school went into Assembly we sang the French National Anthem 鈥� The Marseillaise. It was from then on that the gun tanks, lorries and soldiers slowly went away and we were left with our quiet, peaceful village again.

Time passed much the same as it had always done and by now I was 13陆 years old. I had been an evacuee for 4陆 years. This was my home. So the day that Mrs R told me that I was to go back to Southampton came as a shock. 鈥淚t was like being evacuated all over again鈥� 鈥� off to the unknown.

When I got back home I was lost. School was the first big shock. I went back to the old school that I had left before. The teacher spoke to me at the end of the first day and said 鈥淒o you intend to do any work boy?鈥� I said I was sorry but what she did not realise was that at 13陆 years of age was I could not read or write very well 鈥� she found out very quickly. Those first few months back at school were hard.

The teacher had no idea about me 鈥� my expertise was as a baker鈥檚 boy. Bread and cake making, decorating them and icing them too, delivering the bread and cakes and taking the money, giving the change, planting potatoes and tomatoes, keeping rabbits - killing and skinning them, etc, etc, etc.

My own mother said to me on a number of occasions 鈥淚t鈥檚 about time you started to get out son?, but to tell the truth I was scared.
She suggested I get on a tram and ride to Portswood 鈥� 2 miles away. I started off with brave intentions until I got to the tram. On the journey board it stated Portswood via Bullar Road, City Centre. I stood with my hand on the handrail but I could not step on. I had never been on a tram before and it was a strange thing. I took myself back home and asked my mum where Via was. 鈥淭hink about it鈥�.

Life in the city was very different from the village. Clothing was still a big problem in the latter part of the war. My mother warned me when I arrived home that the big grey blanket on my bed would not be there fore long. A few days later it had disappeared. I was told it was off at the tailors being made into a winter鈥檚 coat for my mother. It was a good thing it was the warmer part of the year. However, it was never warn because my mum said it made her look big. So when the winter time came it was back on my bed again 鈥� and I was pleased with it.

I therefore spent a lot of time with my mother and sister. My sister at the time was acting in a play 鈥淪now White and the Seven Dwarfs鈥�. Mum invited me to go and see my sister Sheila. This we did. I was smitten with the young lady playing the lead, Snow White, her name was Jean Colmer. We were married in 1952, 鈥渁 home at last鈥�.

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