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The Second Time Round

Soon the ‘phoney war’ became a real one; Hull was now being raided by enemy bombers. Again we had to go into the dreaded cupboard under the stairs. My mother kept a survival attaché case ready in the passage to the front door. This contained birth certificates, insurance books, ration books, in fact anything that was important in establishing who we were, or might have been if the worst happened. When the raids became heavier we went to the shelters under the trees in the avenue — except granddad who, as an old navy man, wasn’t going to allow the ‘Jerries’ to force him out of his own home. In heavy raids we heard the bombs whistling down, the crump of the explosions and shrapnel from our own guns falling into the street. Going to school the following day there were often gaps in nearby buildings. We were near the docks which were obvious targets. So, after a few months of this I, now in my eighth year, my mother decided had to be evacuated again for her own piece of mind. Needless to say her decision was not popular.

So once again the awful gathering of crying children, the not knowing where we were going, the bus journey to an unknown destination. For me this time it was the small village of Wheldrake in the Wolds not far from York. They ushered us into the village school where we were allotted foster parents. The village kids looked at us as though we’d come from the moon. Again I ended up on my own with but with a younger couple than before. He was chicken farmer and part-time gamekeeper for the local bigwig who owned the farm and the bungalow which was to be my ‘home’ for nearly 3 years. I liked him, but not his wife who used to ‘box my ears’ at every opportunity. They had no children of their own; in retrospect I suspect she couldn’t have any. She clearly disliked me. Neither her husband nor myself were allowed into the bungalow— no electricity, gas or main drainage- until the meal (except breakfast) was ready, so we had to wait in the outhouse with his dog. Her dog was allowed in the house however. There was no bathroom or lavatory — neither did we at home but we had a WC in the back yard here we had to use an earth closet in the garden which was emptied every week by a man with a special cart. Neither the husband nor myself were allowed to pee in it; we had to do that at the back of the shed which housed the closet.

When I wasn’t at school I used to help around the farm, feeding the chickens which lived in little huts in various fields and cleaned their eggs ready for collection. During the holidays I used to pick potatoes and carrots and at harvest time I with other kids stood by to club escaping rats and rabbits as the reaper made their territory smaller and smaller. I started to keep rabbits of my own which we used to eat; I used to cure the skins and sell them to make gloves. I had to register with the authorities in order to get bran to feed them. I also gathered leaves from the hedgerows for them. I soon learned about the birds and the bees and I remember I allowed the buck to go in with one of the does, the result was a large increase in my rabbit population. Although practically everything was rationed, living in the country especially on a chicken farm, meant that we ate healthily. I soon lost my city pallor becoming like the rest of the kids, brown as a berry; I even began to speak like a native. When my mother made one of her rare visits (she was now working in a weapons factory in Beverley) she said she couldn’t understand half of what I was saying.

However I was utterly miserable most of the time; I was lonely and sorely missed my mother and granddad. I made friends with another introverted evacuee from North shields and sometimes I used to invite him into my hidey-hole — a small disused hen coop, climbing in through the flap where the hens would have entered. We comforted each other in our misery. The village ‘idiot’ was reputed to have a big willy; he would show it off to whoever asked to see it; it was of huge proportions more befitting a donkey. One of the village girls liked to show what she had in the sports pavilion. One grew up quickly in every way there. Even so I was shocked to discover that babies were not found in gooseberry bushes. I refused to believe what they said really happened between man and wife; I remember saying I didn’t believe it because my mother wasn’t married so how could it be true! By the time I left there childhood innocence was a thing of the past.

The war featured dramatically to our village. We were surrounded by a number of aerodromes where bombers almost daily took off to bomb Germany. We sometimes used to watch them loading bombs from a lane which ran round the perimeter of the nearest one. Once an escaping enemy bomber jettisoned his bombs after being chased by RAF fighters; they landed in the fields around the village. One day I shall never forget: I was out in the field; I heard one of our planes returning from a raid; it was a Halifax bomber coming in very low, making a funny noise. To my horror, as I stood watching, one of the wings fell off and a few seconds later part of the tail; then the rest of the bomber fell to the ground followed by a tremendous explosion and thick black smoke. I felt sick inside as I imagined the fate of the crew. Then its ammunition began to explode; this went on for several minutes. On another occasion I was taken to York to visit their friends there; suddenly the sirens went and we heard the sound of a plane coming followed by an explosion as it dropped its bombs. They had an underground shelter (Anderson I think) in the garden; I shot in head first landing in the muddy bottom, which everyone except me thought very funny. It was I think the first daylight raid York experienced. The local Home Guard used to practise in the field behind the bungalow, sometimes with a bren gun, sometimes with hand grenades. When the invasion scares were very real they manned road blocks at each end of the village — exactly like ‘Dad’s Army’ on TV-
my foster-father was the sergeant and his boss, the local bigwig, was ‘Captain
Mainwaring’, but there the resemblance ends. One morning when I left the house to go to school I found the lane full of American troop carriers and lorries, the first I’d ever seen. They were very friendly and gave me some gum, quite different to ours. They were there for a couple of days and as mysteriously as they had arrived they disappeared.

Other than the headmaster there was only one other teacher at school; she used to drive one of only three motor cars in the village, another belonged to the doctor, the third was the local taxi. There was a bus to York about two days a week and that was all. For some reason I didn’t get on with some of the others, especially the village kids who thought we evacuees were too big for our boots and ignorant of village life, which was true. Being shy and not really a mixer I suffered some bullying so I used to ask my teacher, the one with the car, if she’d give me a lift part of the way home so I could escape my tormentors. One day the headmaster suggested I should sit an exam, a scholarship for a place at a secondary school. This surprised me because I didn’t think I was at all clever, but when he said it would mean I had to return home if I passed, I thought it a good idea. I eventually sat the exam, the only one in the school to do so. Coached and egged on by the headmaster to my surprise I passed. My mother clearly couldn’t prevent me returning home now! I grew excited at the prospect of seeing Hull again after so many years in exile. I left Wheldrake without a shred of regret and with a song in my heart. Although I didn’t know it then, getting the scholarship (worth about £8 a term for clothes and equipment) set me on a road which, within five years, led to me abandoning Hull for ever, thus opening up a future career which I would never have believed possible. I will tell about my return in the next and final chapter of my story as an evacuee.

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