大象传媒

JOHN BOWMAN JORY 鈥擡vacuee Chapter 1 of 2

Early days
I was born in Mayday Hospital Croydon and lived first in a downstairs flat and then moved upstairs to No 73A Princess Rd
.I can remember flashes from my years there but the very earliest that I can date is when I was 2 and that was seeing the glow in the sky as we stood outside the flat when Crystal Palace burnt down .
I can remember the local shop window being full of Coronation cups and,going out with Dad in the Thorneycroft lorry he drove for the Croydon Corporation before I started school. My first day at Elmwood school in the Spring of 1939,

We didn鈥檛 have holidays as such pre war but I can recall going for weekends to Grandad Jory at Farnham. I always viewed this place nostalgically. It always seemed to be sunny and the end of the garden path led across a dusty lane out on to the Lower Bourne cricket field with the Cricketers pub on the other side.
My other favourite place in those days and since was Auntie Tab and Uncle Percy鈥檚 home at Lower Basildon, just a field away from the Thames. Uncle Percy was Mum鈥檚 youngest brother was a gardener for en executive of Brooke Bond the tea 鈥減eople鈥� and lived in the cottage next to the church.
Our favourite pastimes were the river but also the Great Western Railway which ran under the bridge at the top of the lane. The steam trains scooped up their water from troughs in between the rails as they went through at speed. An excellent spectator sport and no crowd problems.

School
From those first few weeks at school I can remember my teacher Miss COLE,-daily assemblies - a girl on stage singing the Flannagan and Allen song 鈥滱ny Umberellas鈥� ,we had hand and finger nail scrubbing lectures and regular nit inspections .We were still in the era of Diptheria.
Walking to school could be quite a trial for a five year old. We had to pass the end of Wilfred and Foster roads. These were rough areas to say the least. Police on the beat stopped patrolling after a couple had been stuffed down manholes. The properties were pretty dilapidated and I can remember the front wall falling out of two and that was before the Blitz. No doubt there were some kindly folk living there but we never stopped to find out. T here was nearly always one old lady who would stand at the end of Foster road and call out for one of us to run an errand for her, but we were afraid she was out to 鈥渃apture 鈥� us and would run by on the other side of the road.

I had only been at school a few weeks when I developed whooping cough and was off for most of the Summer term .I must have gone back before we broke up because I can recall coming home the day summer holidays started and Mum said 鈥漁h dear 5 weeks of purgatory鈥�-after tea and playing in the street I boasted to my pals that we were going on holiday to Purgatory for 5 weeks. That was 1939 and just as we were about to return to school after the summer holidays war was declared.

Early War Months & First evacuation
We were kitted out with gas masks which we had to collect from the school in the Crescent
The evacuation of children from the built up areas was in full swing and of course some teachers were going to .I was not included in the first batch of evacuations, presumably because at that time bombing had not started and if and when it did I had relatives in the country I could go to. Anyhow I continued to go to school(complete with gas mask) but only in the afternoons because of the shortage of teachers

As history has recorded the 6 months following the outbreak of war were very quiet although after a while I was sent to Berkshire to stay with a married cousin.
They lived in Upper Basildon almost next door to the village school unfortunately they didn鈥檛 have a flush toilet so here was a six year old who had never seen an outside loo with a bucket .I was only there two weeks and never did use the loo. Cousin Hilda got fed up washing my trousers and sent me back to Croydon to face the Blitz. Sounds like a big exageration but in reality that鈥檚 how it turned out. However I did learn to ride a two wheeled bike while I was there.

Air Raid
I was in the street in Croydon on my bike when the siren went one morning. The first time I had been out of the house when it went. I was so terrified that in my blind panic I jumped off my bike and carried it the last few yards. There wasn鈥檛 a lot of sympathy about in those days so on top of the panic I got laughed at.

We are into 1940 now and the air raids are increasing gradually but more so at night and always about 8 o鈥檆lock .My normal bed time being 7-30 ,so it was half an hour in bed and then up and down to the shelter at the bottom of the garden By the summer of 1940 the raids were every night so when it was bed time I went straight down to the shelter and stayed there until morning.
There were daytime raids as well but my recollection of these was more about Spitfires and Hurricanes which always seemed to be overhead. I suppose they were the only ones I saw.
When the 鈥淎llClear sounded we went out into Henderson road Rec鈥� and collected spent bullet cases.

Second Evacuation(Scotland)
By Sept 1940 the Blitz was intense so Mum and I went to Auntie Mil鈥檚 (Sarah Amelia 鈥攐ne of Mum鈥檚 sisters) and Uncle George in Scotland. Also in the house were Colin (my cousin 15) his half sister Agnes 35(An epileptic) and an Irish blacksmith.
.Dad who was still in the police force took us to Euston Station in the black out via the tube of course .He came onto the train with us because there was an air raid going on at the time. He was using his torch to sort out some money for Mum and got shouted at by a warden. He couldn鈥檛 get back to Croydon because of the raid so he slept in the underground that night .

Location
STROANFREGGAN 1940 to 1943
Stroanfreggan 6 miles from the village of Carsphairn, 9 miles from Dalry in Kirkcudbrighshire and 9 miles from Moniave Dumfriesshire South Scotland. All now Dumfries and Galloway.
Stroanfreggan was the name of the school house and the single classroom school attached to the house.where Auntie Mil taught all ages 5 to 14.
A few hundred yards to the rear and slightly up the hillside was a shepherds home -Stroanpatrick-and about 2 miles across the hills in the other direction -another shepherds house , Culmark. Nothing else in the way of homes could be seen and it was still the same when I returned thirty years later with June Susan and Christopher 9My wife and children).( I see from a recent map there is now a long distance path called the Southern Uplands Way runs close by)
P.S. Still the same in 2001

The most incongruous thing however was the corrugated iron edifice which was Uncle George鈥檚 garage on the opposite side of the road to the school house, and adjacent to the garage the hand operated petrol pumps.
Photo available
To understand the need for these facilities in the middle of nowhere let me explain the local geography and
the population.

Stroanfreggan (SF for short) was built close to meeting point of two open valleys running in opposite directions away from the school .One valley known as the Ken and the other Fingland Each of these valleys contained a number of shepherds homesteads some situated close by the side of a very narrow road with others set back in some cases a mile or more into the hills up quite rough tracks and with many 5 bar gates to open and shut.. Obviously SF school was for the shepherds鈥� children and as it turned out, for me. I was the only pupil who did not have a shepherd for a father. Colin my cousin had left school by now and was working with his father 鈥攎y Uncle George in the garage opposite the school

Uncle was an engineer and a blacksmith and to assist him he employed a 鈥渓ive in鈥� blacksmith from Ireland.
Uncle had a daughter Agnes from a previous marriage who by this time was in her thirties. Unfortunately she was backward and an epileptic

New Home/New Neighbours/New school/Same War (Apart from 1 week I was never to return to 73A Princess Rd Croydon)
So this was the scene when Uncle collected Mum and I from Dumfries station in Sept 1940 arriving at Auntie鈥檚 just in time for lunch to sit down with Auntie , Uncle, Agnes .Colin and the Blacksmith-Oh and Phyllis the dog.
She was to come in very useful
I wore my school cap to Scotland-I don鈥檛 think they had ever seen one at SF
-Well I put it on the back of my chair but as I swung the chair round to sit at the table the cap flew off and unbeknown to me landed on the smouldering coals on the fire. Well any chance of saving the cap was lost when the Blacksmith ,sitting at the end of the table and having seen everything, didn鈥檛 leap to the rescue but in between mouthfulls asked quite nonchalantly 鈥淚s dat yur hat on de foire鈥�. How was I to know when I leapt up that Auntie kept a bucket of skimmed milk on the floor for us to dip our mugs in at meal times .Phyllis the dog was most grateful and helped in the mopping up operations. I had only been there 15 minutes-What a start.
The bucket of skimmed milk was collected each day from Stroanpatrick for use by uncle鈥檚 pig but en route to the sty served as a mealtime drink.
I soon found out that collection of the skimmed milk would be my job after school 鈥攁 simple chore I thought until I learned that I had to stand for half an hour turning the very high geared separator to remove the cream and thus produce the skimmed milk and on occasions subsequently I would operate the churn to make the resulting butter.

I don鈥檛 know what the payment arrangements were but Mum was to help with housework at SF as part of the deal and of course she would need something to keep her occupied. Living in this sort of isolation after Croydon was a considerable change .

The shepherds in the area were tenants minding sheep for wealthy landowners and in order to eke out a living they attempted to be as self sufficient as possible. To this end they kept a few cows, a pig ,chickens ,and a shire horse .A small area of meadow land was set aside for hay and in some cases a small corn field but in the main the land was given over to sheep grazing.
Some of these people were quite sceptical about the blitz reports from London and other cities down south . Much to Mum鈥檚 annoyance having endured months of bombing herself they viewed press photo鈥檚 and write ups as British propaganda .I exclude the BELLS of Smeaton in particular from these comments..
I never thought the sound of German planes would have given Mum any satisfaction but Clydeside Glasgow became the new focus of attention for the German bombers in March 1941 and their flightpath took them over our region.
(We had moved from Croydon 6 months earlier to get away from them)
Downier 217s having been turned back from Glasgow without delivering their load and being pursued by British fighter planes were jettisoning their bombs to speed their getaway. No crofts were hit but the story of crofters from the Ken valley fleeing in their shirt tails was a 鈥渃ome uppance鈥� tale to be told long after the war.

There were only about 15 pupils in total between the ages of 5 and 14 and all in one classroom with one teacher (Auntie Mil) in the middle and an old coke stove at the end.
I have a photo of the complete school plus Colin in overalls
How did the kids get to school?-That鈥檚 where Uncle comes in. A big Austin shooting brake funded by the education authorities and driven by Uncle collected them in the morning -Up the Ken first- back to school-dump them off and then round Fingland,and then the same procedure in the afternoon. Inevitably when it snowed ,as it did very often, Uncle would be delayed and Auntie would be pacing up and down in the classroom in an agitated state and stopping to peer out of the frosted windows. Sometimes of course the snow prevented Uncle taking the bus out at all. In which case you would think 鈥� no school. Wrong because I lived in the school house and didn鈥檛 need a bus.
The winters were very cold , but the school bus was garaged and a paraffin heater used to ensure reasonably easy starting in the morning. Which wasn鈥檛 always the case with Uncle鈥檚 lorry which needed a swing start with a handle and if that didn鈥檛 work then Uncle would lash the 鈥渄amned thing 鈥� with a rope , which of course made no difference at all to the lorry ,but it must have done something to relieve his stress levels or whatever the equivalent was in those days.
He would often have to leave the lorry and turn his attention to his garage / workshop which also needed a 鈥渟tart up鈥� .Firstly the coke stove and then the static engine which by means of belt and pulley drives was the power source for his lathes and other machinery.
He was an agricultural engineer and blacksmith and as such carried out all the horse shoeing and repairs to farming implements for miles around. He was an extrovert and quite uneconomical with the truth (A salesman as well as an engineer)
In a remote area it couldn鈥檛 have been easy for him to advertise , but on reflection I suppose this was done on a Monday. Market day in Castle Douglas (25 miles distant) where I was later to spend 3 good years at CD High School .
Uncle had a lock up shop in a line of lock up shops opposite the cattle market 鈥淕. C. Irrving鈥� the name board read over his shop/office /hospitality suite.
He would spend the day telling the shepherds and farmers how much they needed his services and equipment and it seemed to work. His 鈥� piece de resistance鈥� was his one wheeled bracken cutter鈥� which he designed and manufactured in the garage at SF. The bracken was very much the enemy of the sheep in terms of taking up good grazing tracts on the hillside. The single wheel design allowed the cutter to be used on quite steep slopes.

Mum and I soon settled into a routine of work and play. As arranged Mum carried out house keeping for Auntie in return for our keep. I had missed a lot of schooling in Croydon due to illness and the evacuation system, but I can recall enjoying being able to read and write and of course knit.
Yes every school day after lunch time play the first spell of the afternoon was knitting 鈥攁nnounced by Auntie 鈥斺�渆veryone get your knitting out鈥�. So desk lids would clatter and needles would start to click. All age groups 5 to 14 with the degree of difficulty arranged according to age and sex. The oldest girls knitted socks and gloves while at the other end of the scale I was working on a 52 plain stitch scarf. This was all for the war effort of course.
This was followed by the news which in effect amounted to a daily update on the war in Europe and North Africa. .Auntie would have listened to the radio at lunch time and then using the huge wall map gave us a progess report , which at that time mainly related to the 8th Army鈥檚 campaign in the North African desert where my brothers Harold and Mick were involved. Harold on land and Mick on naval convoy support.

The stream or burn as they are called in Scotland ran a few hundred yards from the school house and so provided a lunch time ,evening and weekend play facility to say nothing of the fact that it doubled as the emptying point for the house and the school toilet buckets which were transported as carefully as possible on a hand cart every Saturday morning.

Mum never saw eye to eye with the blacksmith and a tale she told later at her own expense referred to a partly written letter to his wife that Mum鈥� happened鈥� to see when she was cleaning his room. He was telling his wife how he was happy at Stroanfreggan although 鈥渢here is a nosey old biddy from Croydon staying here鈥�.

Continued in Chapter 2

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