大象传媒

My First Evacuation.

Chapter 1.

鈥淗i Mum, where鈥檚 Dad ?鈥� An innocent enough expression, you would think, uttered daily by thousands of young children whose first language happens to be English. I鈥檓 quite sure that it will travel well and have equal significance translated into any other language. Its significance to me, on this particular occasion however, lays not so much in the question itself, as in the circumstances in which it was asked.

I was 6陆 years old at the time. At this age, you will yourselves perhaps remember, the 鈥樎解�� assumes a very disproportionate significance and must not, therefore, be forgotten. In the company of another 6 year old, who I didn鈥檛 know from Adam, I had just been dumped on a doorstep and left. Henry, to give him a name, and myself, had met only about 30 minutes previously. The pair of us, like parcels, had just been delivered to the house of our prospective new foster parents. The year was 1939 and we were evacuees. That, of course, is merely a posh name for refugees.

My approach to the current world refugee situation which, let鈥檚 face it, has already passed the point at which it can even be described as a crisis, is obviously to some indeterminate extent mediated by the fact that I have been there, done that and got the 鈥楾鈥� shirt. However, unlike some, I did not go to another country. I also have to acknowledge that my refugee status was pretty well organised, official and, on the whole, quite painless. Not withstanding this rather idealised situation there is no doubt that then, as now, we were picked up, transported and delivered - just like the aforementioned parcels. Then, as now, from the moment that we left home until the moment that we were taken into our new foster homes, we became little more than objects in transit. I do not complain about this, I merely observe it. Given the situations that give rise to refugees, such a state of affairs is almost as inevitable as that of night following day.

Henry and I had walked, with our guide carrying our meagre luggage, from the allocation centre. There were few cars in those days 鈥� walking was the norm. It was, as I remember, a pleasant late summer afternoon. The distance was, perhaps, a mile and a half or so and we chattered the while as young children will. How many 6 year olds are even capable of walking a mile and a half or so today I wonder? All at once, as well! Unfortunately our future foster mum was out when we arrived 鈥� there were even fewer telephones in those days. Our guide had many other kids, just like us, to deliver before evening, and so we were left, on our own, to await the return of the lady of the house.

There was no ceremony, for there was no time. We were now, near enough, at war. Things that had to be done had to be done quickly. The organisation of suitable foster-parents that now, in the normal course of events, takes weeks or months to settle, then took hours, or a day or two at most, with little, if any, I suspect, difference in the success rate. Populations were, in any case, much more stable in those days. Within a given area virtually everybody knew everybody else. This was particularly true in rural areas where the indigenous population had grown up together from birth. As children taken into existing families we were absorbed into the community much more rapidly than would have been the case had we just moved into the area complete with our own families. We all knew who was happy, and who wasn鈥檛. Certainly, amongst my peers and through a number of such evacuations, the latter was a rarity and usually soon dealt with. Kids may be reluctant to unburden themselves to adults but they certainly talk to each other. In the situation in which we all found ourselves, the presence of our peers was the only stable factor. We tended, in many ways therefore, to rely on each other rather than on parents and teachers.

Henry and I were total strangers. Although near enough the same age we were not even from the same school. Why we had been billeted together as total strangers when we each had a coterie of known friends from which a companion could have been selected we shall never know. Questions were asked at the time and never received a sensible answer 鈥� c鈥檈st la vie. Six year olds are, on the whole, pretty adaptable 鈥� at least, they were then. Six year olds are far more adaptable than their parents think. They are, in fact, far more adaptable and resilient than most of their parents want to think. The average six year old given good food, a comfortable bed, acceptable clothes and a welcoming home will settle down in no time flat and be perfectly happy. The average parent won鈥檛 like this and I can hear every social worker in the country screaming disbelief. Well, I鈥檓 telling you - they haven鈥檛 been there, they haven鈥檛 experienced it for real and they haven鈥檛 really got a clue. That is the way it, for the most part, was; and, I am quite confident, it is also the way that it would be again.

We passed the time, sat on our suitcases outside the back door, getting to know each other. Gradually, the major topic of our conversation became centred round the knotty problem of how we should address the missing Mrs. when she eventually returned. Should she be plain Mrs. ? Should she be Mrs. followed by her name ? Not only had we not been briefed on this protocol 鈥� we still hadn鈥檛 the slightest idea what her name was. Should we call her auntie, or should we keep it simple and call her mum ? We eventually settled on mum. Which is how two 6 year olds managed to greet a total stranger on the back step of her home I, with the 鈥淗ello mum鈥� closely followed by Henry with the 鈥淲here鈥檚 dad ?鈥� I seem to recollect that once through the door we united in asking 鈥淲hat鈥檚 for tea ?鈥�

These happenings, though, are not actually the beginning of our story. We shall pick up this particular thread of the tale again, later, if you manage to stay the course! For now, we will go back in time to when it all started. Bearing in mind that I was only 6 years old, I was not privy to any of the decision-making processes involved in this mass relocation of the young. I can only look at it all from the point of view of a participant. I must also confess that hindsight can be a very valuable aid to memory. We are back in the late summer of 1939 and war was imminent. It was obvious from the first that London was going to be a prime target. An early start was made on the task of removing as many children as parents would allow, to places of relative safety. I was one of them. There was no compulsion. Parents were given the option of sending their children to a place of safety, or not, as they thought fit. These were the days, of course, when children were still regarded as belonging to their parents rather than as belonging to the state. I am certain, in my own mind, and with the advantage of hindsight, that I would have been as much consulted for this first adventure as I was for later ones. For this first adventure, however, I have no such recollection. Memory can be very selective.

Thus I have no present knowledge of any of the preliminary arrangements. I have also to confess that, unlike in a later evacuation, I have no recollection of any goodbyes, or of our departure. Finally, I cannot recall anything of the journey or of our arrival. From my own personal point of view there was obviously no very great trauma involved in this great upheaval. If there had have been any great upset then I suspect that my memory would have been much more active. Perhaps 10 weeks without visitors in an isolation hospital with scarlet fever, during the previous year, had already fired up my independence and self-reliance! It is apparent, when viewed retrospectively, that the events here portrayed were arranged in an almighty hurry, with little or no prior, or back-up, organisation. They were arranged to counter a perceived immediate threat that, although it never materialised, so easily could have done. It really was a case of getting the kids out of harms way first and sorting out the details later. These days the war would be over before all the minutia of the arrangements were complete!

My story, then, really begins in a farmhouse, somewhere in the wilds of Bedfordshire, with a sizeable group of my peers all sharing the same experience. I have absolutely no idea where we were, and, to the best of my knowledge, my parents never found out. As it turned out this was destined to be a temporary halt and this may well be why the weekly letter home, which became mandatory later, did not rear its ugly head at this time. Hence this singular gap in our knowledge. The entire operation, as we have already discussed of course, was all arranged in something of a hurry, and I suspect that very little in the way of records were kept. Now a days, of course, as I have just observed, the philosophy is entirely different. The records would take precedence over everything else. More people would be employed keeping the records than prosecuting the war effort. It鈥檚 all a question of priorities and one鈥檚 approach to them.

Many of my companions were friends from school, but not all. There were children present from more than one school so there was no shortage of total strangers. As I remember, we were all infants. There were no juniors or older children in the immediate vicinity although there may well have been, say, in the next village. I am a little vague as to numbers, not only from the point of view of the total number of evacuees in the village, but also from the point of view of exactly how many there were on this particular farm with me. One thing is certain; it must have been a very large farmhouse with very large rooms. I appreciate that everything appears to be larger when viewed from a great distance in time. I also appreciate that everything appears larger when we are smaller - so I will let the facts speak for themselves. Perhaps the most revealing of my recollections, in this respect, is the nature of the sleeping arrangements.

I slept in a large double bed. There鈥檚 nothing very remarkable about that except that there were at least 5 others in there with me! I lost count! We slept head to tail with pillows at both ends of the bed! That is not all. In the same room, on the opposite wall, there was also a large double mattress laid out on the floor with a similar number of occupants. Those occupying the mattress, although regarded as inferior by those of us in the bed, did have one singular advantage. When they got pushed off of the edge and fell out of bed, it didn鈥檛 hurt. This became such a problem in the proper bed that we rotated our sleeping positions and took it in turns to sleep on the outside. In retrospect I have realised that it is just as well that there were no bed-wetters amongst us!! These two beds were aligned tail to tail, or head to tail or even head to head depending on your point of view. The point that I am actually making is that they were end-to-end rather than parallel, with a more than comfortable walkway between them. The room was still not full. In terms of our size, at any rate, there was plenty of space in which to move about. There鈥檚 more! In the next room, from which we boys were totally barred, there were a similar number of girls.

There was no electricity, of course, lighting was all by oil lamps and candles. Fortunately it was high summer, so this was not a problem that often impinged itself on our consciousness. It was daylight when we got up in the morning and daylight when we retired at night. Other facilities were, by modern standards, equally primitive. There was no bathroom and the loo was outside. The only 鈥榬unning鈥� water was in the kitchen 鈥� a hand pump over the sink. We washed, with coarse green household soap, in cold water 鈥� it was a hot summer!! I don鈥檛 remember having a bath in all the time we were there. We couldn鈥檛 鈥� there wasn鈥檛 one!! The one part of our daily ablutions that is engraved indelibly on my mind is that whilst we had all come on this adventure equipped with toothbrushes there was, apparently, no toothpaste. We used salt instead! Have you ever tried cleaning your teeth with salt 鈥� go on, give yourself a treat.

There must have been plenty of food as I have no recollection of going hungry. In any case, in those more enlightened days, children tended to eat what was put in front of them. You grew up knowing that it was that or nothing. The primary reason for this was usually the obvious one. There were no alternatives listed on the average household menu in the 1930s, wages didn鈥檛 run to it. If you didn鈥檛 eat what you were given then the alternative was to go hungry. We ate in the kitchen. This was a proper 鈥榦lde worlde鈥� farmhouse kitchen. I remember the table as being well scrubbed and large 鈥� very large. Bearing in mind the numbers involved it must have been around the size of a snooker table. There was never any feeling of being overcrowded. It was a big kitchen.

My recollections of this building are limited. As I keep saying, I was only 6 years old and, as we shall see, we were not there for very long. I remember the kitchen, I remember the bedroom, and I remember the stairs 鈥� which were steep and very narrow. On reflection, if there had been a fire we wouldn鈥檛 have stood a cat-in-hell鈥檚 chance. I only remember the stairs because there was a crisis of some sort in the girls鈥� room one night, which roused the entire household and attracted my attention to how difficult it was for several people to get up and down them in a hurry. This, incidentally, is the only certain recollection I have of seeing the man of the house 鈥� the farmer himself. He, pretty obviously, had decided that discretion was the better part of valour and, very wisely, kept well out from under our feet. It was also,as we shall see later, harvest time which meant that he would have had a lot on his mind. He concentrated on the harvest and his wife concentrated on us !

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