大象传媒

1942-45

In June 1942 my friend and I had our first taste of fire watching. The Germans decided to give Weston 2 nights of concentrated bombing and we were targeted with incendiary bombs until it looked as if the whole place was ablaze. When we saw it the following day we were horrified to see the damage that was done. What had made it so dreadful was that we could not do anything about it. Our little fire fighting apparatus was totally inadequate 鈥� 4 stirrup pumps and some buckets of sand! However we did not experience any more enemy action and were ready to leave Weston for London.

I returned to my home in Waltham Abbey expecting to teach infants at Haringey School in September. However the Blitz changed all that as we had several incidents at the school during the 3 years that I was there. First a bomb was dropped in the playground killing the milkman delivering the school childrens鈥� free milk and also his poor old horse. No one else suffered but several houses were damaged and many of the mothers of children in the school came along to see if their children were all right which was natural but it upset all the children. There were crying mothers, sobbing children, policemen and firemen everywhere and we teachers had to try and cope with everything, which was not easy. The day following, about sixty of the children with only myself in charge, evacuated to Morecambe near Blackpool. Their billets were sorted out and then I had to return to Haringey, leaving the children in a strange place with no one that they knew. It was heart- breaking and although I offered to stay with them, at least for a day or so, that was not allowed. This must have had a devastating effect on many of the children. For some this was the second time they were suddenly evacuated, as a lot came back during the time of the phoney war in 1939 鈥� 40. They were frightened because of the bombing at their school and inconsolable about their parents and friends whom they probably thought they would never see again and some had never seen the sea before and wondered what it was. After all some were only five or six years old and may have never left London before.

I returned to Haringey to find there had been a lot of changes after only 2 days. The windows on the ground floor were now boarded up with bricks which meant that we had to teach in the dark for at least 2 years and also the children could rarely go out to the playground in case they could not get back into the building safely. No one was allowed to go home for lunch and for the first year we had to walk with the children a mile to the nearest British Restaurant, so a kitchen was quickly built and equipped for cooking for 300 or so children. The meals were very good and the children enjoyed eating good food as a lot of the things they could not get at home, whereas schools had priority regarding bananas, oranges and other food from abroad. We also had to provide tea for all those whose mothers were working. The children had bread and butter, tea and cake one day; tea, bread, margarine and jam the next. We teachers had to supervise the children from 3.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m., letting them draw or make things with clay etc. For this we were paid 7/6d. a time. We usually had to do this twice a week and then go home in the dark and face a probable air raid. The school was one of the old three-storey type and we had to do fire watching once a week from the top storey. This was quite frightening because even if we did not have any incidents nearby we could see evidence of bombing all over London and the surrounding area. However one or other of the two headmasters (one was Head of the junior school and the other, Head of the senior boys) was always there so it was good to know that we had support because it could have been worrying with just two young women in the large, empty school.

Then, in September 1944 another incident occurred 鈥� this time it was a buzz bomb or doodlebug, as it was called, and it fell very close indeed, killing quite a lot of people. Once more the children were evacuated and I was in charge of 30 infants to a village in Wales, mid-way between Llanelli and Carmarthen. I had to teach the fifteen infants and juniors in one of the spare classrooms in the local school. It was not an easy task as by this time most of them had been evacuated at least twice and were quite bewildered by all the changes they had had to put up with. Many were homesick, frightened by the bombing they had witnessed and were now having to live with families who spoke mostly in a language they did not know. Most of the folk spoke in Welsh at home and their learning in school was carried out in both Welsh and English until Primary 3. After that it was in English, but in the shops and at home they mostly spoke in Welsh. Also the way of living was very different from London. Some had never seen a cow or pigs and hens etc. and some were billeted on farms and were either scared of the animals or thought that anything strange was a good target for stone throwing. I had many a complaint from the farms but it was difficult for me to make the town children understand that animals were not for sport because very few had a cat or dog at their homes so they did not know any better. One or two of the juniors were already truants and in trouble for stealing apples or anything else that they wanted off the barrows in London so I had to deal with these things when Truant Officers or Social Workers appeared. When they had gone, the offenders were uncooperative and would not join in the lessons or even games. I had no help from the Welsh teachers because they did not want the evacuees in their school and the Welsh children resented the 鈥淭ownies鈥� in their homes and school.

However, the scenery and the peace and quiet were wonderful. I was billeted with the Baptist Minister and family. There was an eleven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl and it was such a relief to be with a happy family. I enjoyed living there so much that when the end of the war came in May, six months after I have arrived, I did not want to go back to London 鈥� in fact I cried when I left this family even though I was by then 23 yrs old.

Reflecting on the things that happened to me during the war has made me aware of the effects that the war had on people of every age. On billet mothers for instance, who had to suddenly look after children, some of whom must have been very difficult to deal with especially if they were 鈥渂ed-wetters鈥�. These children might have been alright in London but the conditions they had to endure away from home could perhaps have caused them to become incontinent. The billet mothers also found life quite hard because they were often retired people who had been looking forward to an easier life now that their own families were grown-up and away from home. I wonder how many of those evacuees kept in touch after they had left. I myself did with the last family, but not to any of the previous ones. I am ashamed when I think of how much different people did for us and I never thanked them. I took it all for granted 鈥� even my father who used all his petrol coupons to come and visit me every other week when I was first evacuated with my school.

I had a shock when I arrived home in May 1945 because a V2 had been dropped outside our house. We were told it was the last one to be dropped in the war but it wrecked about 20 houses, the army drill hall, the Court House and the pub where quite a lot of people were killed. Fortunately for us, my parents were away collecting me from the station where I had arrived from Wales.

I was able to join in the V.E. celebrations in London and my friend and I just had to go wherever the masses went. We saw Churchill and some of the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace and joined in all the shouting and singing. Everyone cheered when the lights came on and we felt so happy that we had survived the war. We will never forget those who had died or had done heroic things but, although I had not done anything special, I was one of the People who 鈥渄id what we had to do to the best of our ability鈥�.

Mrs June Cox, nee Knapman
95 Easton Drive
Shieldhill
Falkirk
Stirlingshire
FK1 2EG

Formerly of Waltham Abbey, Essex

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