大象传媒

Kenneth Jack who was evacuated

This story was submitted to the people鈥檚 War site by Serene from Dover Road School and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs Kenneth Jack with permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions鈥欌��.

I was born in Dover in 1930, I was 8 戮 years old when the war started, and I remember the faint siren going of. We thought it was exciting, it was then my Mother made her mind up to evacuate us, and Dad was in the army.
My Grandmother and Grandfather were cooks in a mansion called Valden Hill House near Newbury Berks. They decided to retire to allure my Mother and her sister, to take over as cooks and take us as evacuees. This served a double fanfare because the big house had to take so many evacuees; anyway there were my two sisters and I.
We had a lovely time together in the country. The only thing about the school was about 3 miles away, were we used to walk up the drive, it was quite a long drive, and it was past the gates and the Batten house, where the woods started.
Rather than follow the road to school at a little village called Ftechcroes. We used to take the shortcut on a path through the woods. There were a lot of big farms taken over by the American troops and were around us. One day I was walking home from school when I found an Elastoplasts tin, inside were three lengths of cord about 3/8 of an inch thick and about 4鈥� long, at the end of each cord was a grass end the same thickness as the cord about 2鈥� long. I took the tin home, I put it on the kitchen table that afternoon I saw my mother sitting at the table putting the cords together, and put them back in the tin. That鈥檚 how innocent they looked.
While she was fitting them away I noticed they were coloured yellow and black hart looked the tan.
The next morning I took them out with me and some matches.
I walked past the Butlen House, to the start of the woods. I opened the tin and took one of the cores out.
I held on to the grass end and lit a match. I set light to the cord often the cord was a fuse, it burnt so quickly I didn鈥檛 have time to draft it.
It exploded the first time and my second finger and half of a thumb blew off my right hand.
I ran home where everyone panicked except the lackey of the house who was covered my hand with a dripping wet cloth and drove me to Newtwnj Hospital seven miles away. I was in the hospital for 1 month; I was only 13 years old then.
It was hard work at first getting used to it but in the end I stayed right-handed. I became a Merchant Seaman for 40 years as a boy, working on things such as the Queen Mary and Mauritania.
So my accident ended making little difference to my life, just a little more hard work.
By the way my eldest sister Gloria married an American Paratrooper becoming a G1,
Criede where she still lives in New Jersey, with a large family.

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