大象传媒

On the realization that there was no home or livelihood left, my parents decided that the best thing to do was to join my two brothers in Farnham, Surrey. In May 1940 my brothers' school had been moved from Hove to Farnham because the South Coast was becoming increasingly unsafe due to enemy activity.

The only possessions we had when we boarded the train at Waterloo Station were the clothes we had been wearing at the time of going to the shelter and a small amount of money from the previous days takings in the shop. Although things looked bleak we were thankful to be alive and looking forward to being reunited with my brothers. When we arrived in Farnham, the foster family who were looking after my brother Raymond, invited us to stay with them until we could find a suitable place to live. They made us very welcome and helped us to cope with the trauma of our experience. My youngest brother Derek was billeted with another family in the same village about a half a mile away. Meanwhile I was again fitted out with another set of clothes to replace the ones destroyed in London.

Due to the unhappy sequence of events I had an extended holiday which caused me to arrive at my new school in Exeter several weeks late. At first I was billeted with a family who owned a greengrocer shop. When the weather was fine at weekends we used to go to Dawlish Warren where my foster parents had a beach hut and we spent happy times in the sea and playing on the sand. The war seemed a million miles away. During the Winter evenings our teachers ran a social club in the local church hall. The teachers joined us in playing chess, draughts and table tennis. Our mathematics master was very good at chess and draughts and not many boys, if any, could beat him at these games. Our headmaster was to our surprise, an accomplished ballroom dancer and once a week he ran dancing classes for any of the boys who were interested. To provide partners our girls school was invited to send along any of their students to join us to take part in these lessons. We found the dance steps we learned came in very useful later on when we went to dances in adult life.

About this time the school started its own Air Training Corps Squadron No.207 which most of the students joined. On a number of occasions we were taught how to handle and shoot with a rifle, in addition to other subjects .To learn about the rifle we used an indoor rifle range looked after by a sergeant of the Home Guard who had lost the use of an eye in the first World War. This handicap did not prevent him from shooting with extreme accuracy. He could cut a small cardboard target in half, which was set up showing just the edge of the card, with one bullet from a distance of 23 metres.

After about a year of my stay in Exeter the billeting officer moved me to another billet about a mile away. This new billet was a terraced house in a street of buildings of similar design. The family consisted of a man, his wife and young son. As the man was medically unfit he was unable to join the forces. However, he did valuable work as a telephonist at the main telephone exchange in the centre of the City. In another part of the City my foster mother had a brother who was a manager of a garage. Although there were restrictions on petrol, a number of cars came in for servicing, repair or petrol. At weekends I spent some of my spare time helping out with a number of these tasks.

When harvest time came around, the school sent us out to various farms to help get in the crops, particularly potatoes. We used to spend all day following the 'spinner', that was a machine pulled by a tractor or horse for unearthing the potatoes. We would have to pick them up and put them into containers, where they were then emptied into sacks and weighed ready for market. At the end of the day we would arrive back at our billets tired out. Some of the students were taken to large farms in hired coaches and others had to make their own way by local buses in groups of two or three to the smaller farms. I was lucky as another boy and I went by Devon General bus to Okehampton, about 18 miles from Exeter. On leaving the bus we went to a small farm managed by a farmer and his wife. When we arrived at the farmhouse we were invited into the kitchen and given something to eat and drink before setting off to work. Sometimes as a treat we were allowed to ride the horse up to the field where we were going work that day. The job of the horse for the rest of the day was to pull the spinner for us. At midday the farmer's wife would bring us our lunch, this sometimes consisted of a home made pasty that even now to think of it makes my mouth water. In many ways we were sorry when the work at this farm came to an end as it was quite a change from classroom work.

In 1942 during the months of April and May Exeter like other historic towns suffered heavy bomb damage in what became known as 'Baedeker Raids'. The name Baedeker was taken from the name of a well-known German travel book featuring many of our historic towns and cities, in particular the ones that had cathedrals. Most of these raids occurred at night and when the siren sounded my foster family and myself took refuge in a 'Morrison Shelter' that had been assembled in the lounge. The framework was made of very heavy angle iron, a thick steel plate on top and a strong wire mesh for the sides and bottom. The measurements of this construction were approximately 6 ft [1.83 m] long,4 ft [1.22 m] wide and 3 ft [0.915 m] high. Shelters of this type were named after Herbert Morrison who was Home Secretary at that time. One night this shelter saved us from injury when a bomb exploded not far from us and the ceiling of the room came down on us and landed on top of the shelter.

On the days following a previous night raid some of my school friends and I, who were A.T.C. cadets, were detailed to act as 'cycle messengers to carry letters and information to various parts of the City. Because of the damage to the streets, houses and broken telephone lines, the 'cycle messenger was the best way to get vital information from one place to another. Many streets had hose pipes criss - crossing them and bomb debris strewn about, the bicycle came into its own as a means of transport. My headquarters was the Central Food Kitchen, whose job it was to feed several thousand people bombed out by the raids. The City covered market place was used for this purpose and when there were no messages to be delivered I helped with peeling potatoes and preparing other vegetables.

As a result of the damage and high number of casualties it was becoming very difficult for the billeting officers to find accommodation for our students. The school authorities decided that it would be best that the school return to London. On the return to our school buildings we found that some of the classrooms and workshops were occupied by military and civilian courses, this meant that we had to use some of the facilities of the Beaufoy Institute in Vauxhall about two miles away. For the first few months after our return I stayed with my uncle, aunt and cousin who lived in Camberwell, South London. After the Summer holidays my parents thought it best for me to travel to London each day by train from Farnham. During this time there were still air raids on the capital, which sometimes caused delays on the railways. On occasions I would not arrive back in Farnham until 2 or 3 hours later than the scheduled time. One of these long delays was caused by bomb damage to the railway lines at Clapham Junction. To get back to Farnham on this particular evening, the first part of the journey required travelling by Underground train from Waterloo Station to Wimbledon. At this station we had to change trains and board the normal Southern Railway train to complete our journey. These journeys at most times were uneventful but on other occasions were not so good. However, they went on until the Spring of 1943 when I sat for my final examinations. When the exams were finished I left school to make my living and way in the world. I was now about two months from my seventeenth birthday and thinking of applying for my first full time job. An engineering workshop of E.D.Abbott Ltd., Motors Engineers, who had their premises at Wrecclesham just outside Farnham. It was at this firm that my first taste of war work started. One of the jobs on which I was employed was helping to make experimental radar aerials for the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire. This was very different from their peace time work, which was building special bodies for Rolls Royce, Bentley and Sunbeam Talbot cars.

In the early months of 1944 I changed my job and went to work for another firm in Farnham called Dzus Fasteners. This engineering workshop was engaged in making special fasteners for holding the engine cowlings on nearly every British aircraft in the R.A.F. Many thousands of fasteners were produced each day and the factory was working practically non stop day and night for 7 days each week. Since leaving London my father worked at this factory, he was working 12 hour shifts, one week on night work and the next week working during the day. It was not unusual for 60 hours to worked in a week. When I started my employment at this firm I also worked 12 hour shifts, but my shift changes were organized on a two week rota, that meant that I had two weeks on day work, followed by two weeks on night work. This produced a situation where twice in every four weeks my father and I were at work together on the same shift. After completing a night shift at 8 o'clock in the morning, to get home to our village of Rowledge we had a 20 minute bus journey. More often than not the conductor would have to waken the pair of us when we reached our destination. Fortunately Rowledge was the terminus otherwise we would be on our way back to Farnham again.

Even though long hours were worked at Dzus Fasteners, the firm managed to field a cricket team during the Summer months. At weekends we used to arrange games between village teams wherever they were able get enough players together to field a side. This was not always an easy task as most of the young men were away in the Forces. Still we had a number of enjoyable games at different places and it helped to give us some welcome exercise in the fresh air. In the village of Rowledge on some Saturday evenings a friend and I used to organize and run dances in the village hall. We used a home built public address system, and with this equipment plus a pile of suitable dance records we managed to provide a good evenings entertainment. These dances became very popular and young people came from a wide area to join in the fun. During 1944 the village suddenly found itself playing host to a tank unit of the Canadian Army. Their armoured vehicles were very carefully camouflaged so that they would not draw attention to themselves and the village from any enemy reconnaissance aircraft that may happen to fly over the area. It did not take long for the soldiers to learn about our dances which they attended and joined in the fun with enthusiasm. The unit did not stay very long in the village and it left just as suddenly as when it arrived. Although the visit was very brief their company was missed when they were gone.

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