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On Sunday 3rd September 1939, I was taken by double-decker bus from Courtney Street Junior School to Victoria Pier, Hull. At about 12 o’clock, we boarded the ferry which was to take us to New Holland where we got a train to Boston, taken to a park and given a bag containing a tin of corned beef, a tin of condensed milk and a large bar of chocolate. Another bus took us to Frampton, where we had to sit in a classroom.

People came and chose the children they wanted. It was about an hour before four of us (two were brothers) were taken to a farm, about 2 miles from the school. I remember having warm milk straight from the cow. It was a small dairy farm. We didn’t go to school for a few weeks and enjoyed ourselves sitting in deckchairs in the sun. At the beginning of the third week we started lessons at the village school, but because there were so many of us evacuees, we only had lessons in the morning and the village children had lessons in the afternoon. It was rotated every week.

At the end of the week, two of us were taken by a very kind lady who kept us for about two weeks, and then we were taken to another house near the dairy farm. I don’t remember any of the people who lived there, but do remember only having cornflakes to eat for every meal! The other evacuee’s mother came to take him home and promised me that she would tell the headmistress.

On the Monday morning I was called out of the class and Mrs. Robinson, the Headmistress, took me to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Edgoose of Middlegate Cottage, Middlegate Lane. It was only 200 yards from the school. My new foster parents made me feel very much at home. I had a lovely tea.

It was a very large poultry farm with over 20,000 chickens on grass. It stretched from Frampton to the next village of Kirton. After tea, Mr. Edgoose took me to see all the little chicks. There were hundreds of day old chicks and we took them upstairs into this old oil heated house where they would live for the next six weeks.

The following day, Mrs. Edgoose took me to Boston to fit me out with new clothes. Evacuees and the village children could be taught together.

I made friends with the family next door; Tony, Victor and Alan Singleton. We were good pals. I was so happy and loved school. I got to know many of the local children and I had so many friends.

When I got home from school, I had to change my clothes. I had my tasks to do; chopping wood for the fire, getting coal, laying the table for tea. After tea I would play out with my friends until seven and then get ready for bed.

On Christmas morning, Santa had left a pillowcase full of presents. It took me a long time to undo them all. There was a chair piled high with presents, when I came downstairs; train sets, farmyards, two meccano sets, money box, carpenter set, dozens of cars, toy soldiers, puzzles, a penknife, dominoes. When I put them away, they were stacked under my bed!

The first winter came and it wasn’t too bad. At school there was a coke boiler which warmed the room. I remember we used to put our free bottles of milk in front of it to warm.

Time seemed to pass quickly. In the school holidays, I can remember scraping a bucket full of new potatoes every day. We ate very well. Mr. Edgoose got flour for chicken feed and he traded some of it for butter and 28lbs. of strawberry jam. His best friend was the headmistress’ husband who worked in a butcher’s shop, so we had quite a few beef and Yorkshire pudding dinners.

Mr. Edgoose was able to keep a pig and every 6 months we lived on homemade sausages, fries haslet, brawn and spare rib. The best was 1 inch thick slices of ham with fried eggs on Sunday mornings!!

I can remember the farmers’ breakfasts on a Monday morning - cold beef, potatoes, Brussels sprouts and cold gravy.

Wednesday was Market day in Boston, and we all went in the Ford car. After market and shopping, we had afternoon tea at the Scala Restaurant; sandwiches, cakes and strawberries. Afterwards, we went to the Odeon Cinema. One of the films we saw was Charlie Chaplin as Hitler in The Great Dictator. Another was Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind.

During the summer months I used to work for Mr. Edgoose, weeding the onions, potato picking (this went on for 5 days using a horse pulled a spinner which lifted the potatoes out of the ground. Lots of neighbours helped. You had your own ‘stretch’ of land and you had to pick up the potatoes before the ‘spinner’ came back. You had a large basket which you took to the weighing machine. It was hard work. The lunch break was good but you wished that 4.30 would come quicker.

There was a patch of land with lettuce on which moles were active. Mr. Edgoose taught me how to trap them and told me that he would give me 2/6 (twelve and a half pence) for every one that I caught. I caught 50 - and another one that was ruining the headmistress’s tennis court! I learned how to set seeds. A piece of land 100ft x 100ft took me two and half hours to rake level before he was satisfied, to set 20 packets of seeds. It was a lovely display of vegetables.

We used to have weeks when people were asked to put money into National Savings so that the money could be used to buy armaments for the services, like Spitfire Week. There used to be a big notice board in Boston showing how much money had been saved. The amount was always over the target that had been set.

We also had the same thing happening at school, and I remember a poster was fastened to one of the chestnut trees in the Frampton school grounds, showing a Bren gun. Little was I to realise that in a few years time. I would be firing and dismantling one of these guns when I joined the army. Every Monday Mrs Edgoose gave me 2/6 to buy savings stamps. Every Sunday my friends and I went to the Methodist Church Sunday school in Kirton, the morning and afternoon, we used to get our cards stamped with the star and once a year we had a prizegiving. I was given quite a few prizes. The book I remember most was Uncle Tom's cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Often, when we left the morning Sunday school, we watched the home guard on manoeuvres; running from one place to another armed to the teeth with guns.

There was great excitement one night. It was about six o'clock at night, the sky was full of aeroplanes. They were Lancaster bombers from two local packs, Coningsby, and Tattersall Thorpe, Lincolnshire was full of bomber airfields, they were flying at various heights, all trying to get into some order. It was only the next day that we learnt it was the Thousand Bomber Raid on Cologne.

During all the war, Mrs Edgoose only got me out of bed three times because of air raids, and was a bad one when a lot of incendiaries were dropped; Mr Edgoose, running to and fro to put them out with sand. One fell on the roofs of the chicken houses. Another time a landmine went off in the fields a mile away. We all went to see where the landmine had dropped. You could put two houses in the hole it had made. Also, we practised abandoning the school if it was bombed, and we were told to proceed to a dike, near the school and to lie down in it. It was summer and the direct was very dry but no one's told us what to do if it was winter and the dike was filled with water.

There was a large map of the British Isles and Europe and I was in charge of making sure that all the pupils knew how the war was going in the last year. I made flags of all the nations and, as we advanced, moved the flags with headlines from the Daily Express. The headmistress used to give us a minute to talk every day.

One of the things we used to do to help the war effort was collect waste paper. Six of us used to go out with a large trailer and collect it from farms. There was a competition among local schools and Frampton School were the first to get their name on the shield.

On Saturday afternoons, Mrs Edgoose used to go shopping in Boston and so I was the person who made the tea for Mr Edgoose and myself. Among the eggs we had to collect were some extra large ones. They were too big to go into the packing cases for the weekly collection. We used to boil them for over four minutes and use teacups as egg cups. Usually they had at least five yolks.

I loved working with chickens. I would help to turn the eggs in the incubators marked with a cross; showing at night, out of sight in the morning. I loved collecting the eggs from the nest boxes. Some of the chicken houses were a 100 yards long with nest boxes the full length. Sometimes you would find broody hens on the eggs and if you attempted to take the eggs you would get packed. Every day, thousands were collected and weekly, the lorry from the Ministry of Food packing station came to collect.

I was now asked to do another job by Mr Edgoose, for which I was paid eight shillings per week (40p). I had to go to each chicken house, see that all the chickens were inside, brought down in the coop so that foxes could not get in, and lock each one.

Another of my weekly jobs was to walk into Kirton, the next village, and change the accumulator for the wireless set so that we could listen to the news and all the radio shows, including I.T.M.A. during the summer months. I was always up early, and I will always remember the news that D-Day had begun. I shouted out to Mr and Mrs Edgoose. ‘They have landed’. We were all very excited.

The last Christmas was very exciting. During the holiday, we went to Peterborough to see Old Mother Riley and Kitty on stage. On another occasion, went into Boston and saw Aladin and his lamp.

The war was finally coming to an end, we all went to Boston. On May 8th there was a huge fair with sideshows and a fireworks display.

The time came when I was going back home to Hull. It was hard saying goodbye to all my friends in Frampton. Mrs. Edgoose took me home. My family was waiting for us at Victoria Pier. Mrs Edgoose stayed for two days with my mother and me. Afterwards, we took her back on the ferry and then saw her onto the train back to Boston.

I was back home with my brothers and sisters. It was strange that I had left all my friends back in Frampton. Within a few weeks I started school again, at Maybury High School in Hull. It was so different to my old school, but I had been taught well and future exams were easy.

I had brought home many unlikely stories and also my Post Office bank book, with over £50 - a very tidy sum in those days!

I was still in touch with my foster parents and they invited me and my brother Dennis to come for a holiday during the school summer holidays. We had meat and potato pie on the first day and we had it again in the second week. I could manage two portions again. My mother, brother and sister also stayed at Mr and Mrs Edgoose’s home for weekends - many times to get away from the bombing of Hull.

I continued to visit them and correspond with them, even when I joined the Army in 1950. When I returned to England from Singapore and Malaya in 1953, I visited them for a long holiday. I sent them lots of parcels from Malaya; Britain was still rationed. I kept in touch with them until they both died.
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Added by: Alan Brigham, www.hullwebs.co.uk, 10/01/2006

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