大象传媒

We were too young to understand,
Each battle fought, the bitter cost,
So many husbands, fathers, sons,
Before our innocence was lost.

The train from Tottenham Hale station took us to March, Cambridgeshire, where we were met at the station by some very nice WVS ladies who gave each of us a warm welcome, a packet of digestive biscuits, a bar of chocolate and a tin of corned beef to tide us over the weekend. Once again we were loaded onto coaches and paraded round endless council estates trying to offload us onto anyone willing to take us in. No-one seemed to want my sisters and me, either they didn't like the look of me or, being unwilling to separate, we were too much to take on. It was quite late in the evening when they managed to persuade a Mrs Saunders to have us ''just for the weekend, but they must be gone by Monday". I remember thinking "that's all right; we are going home on Monday". Poor lady, that night she put us to bed, all three of us in one bed and I, who had scoffed a whole packet of biscuits, a bar of chocolate and a tin of corned beef, was heartily sick over the bed clothes and just to cap it I wet the bed. Mrs Saunders was delighted when Monday came; that was the day the war started so there was no way we were going home, London was far too dangerous. I was getting a bit fed up with the whole thing by then until we were taken to our next home, 29 Peashill Road, where a wonderful lady named Rosetta Harley lived with her husband Ted. Mrs Harley was a lovely cuddly lady whose two daughters, Cynthia and Barbara had joined the WAAFs, a third daughter Dora lived round the corner with her husband Ernie so she had a spare room in her house and in her heart. She and I took to each other at first sight; I think she had always wanted a son and the sight of me, scruffy little urchin, must have re-awakened her maternal instincts. Then there was little Joan with her golden hair and Anne who was old enough to lighten the load. We were going to get along fine. Unfortunately, a few weeks later Joan was fretting for her mummy so, under the pretext to me that they were only going home for a few days so that Anne could go to the dentist, off they went. Oh the lies; they never came back and for the next four years I was on my own. On my first night without siblings I wet the bed, and in the morning I was mortified, desperately trying to dry the bed but of course it was hopeless, I lay there awaiting my fate, Mrs Harley would be furious, but no; all she said was "I think we had better get a rubber under sheet". It must have been traumatic because from then on I wet the bed with monotonous regularity, each time with the same sense of shame. Did I mention school? No? Well school was the most fun I'd had since arriving in March, on my first day all the evacuees formed a motley crew on one side of the playground while the local boys lined up opposite us calling out "cor blimey mate" while we retaliated with "moo, baaa, oink". Of course we all tired of this after a while and started to make friends. My favourite teacher was Mrs Powell, who tried to teach us to sing songs from 'Merry England' with spectacular lack of success. The line, 'which like the ever hungry sea howls round our isle,' in particular seemed to upset her. We kept singing' ahls rahnd ahr isle', then the local boys who couldn't help laughing, joined us, and it was our version which was sung at the school concert, much to Mrs Powell's disgust. Another source of entertainment was inventing new noises from our gas-masks, a treasure chest of rich, fruity raspberries, which went down a treat during assembly, when we had gas-mask drill, the head master had to shout to get us to stop, and for some reason he had me spotted as the ring-leader, but I have a feeling he didn't mind too much. The school was a mile or two from Peashill Road which I always walked with three local boys, Ted Hills, Brian Strickland and Michael Nottingham. Our route took us along West End, a narrow lane which ran alongside the River Nene so often we would do a spot of fishing with cotton and bent pins, sometimes we caught eels. In those days there were otters which we loved to watch playing, are they still there? I hope so. Before too long Mrs Harley introduced me to her church, Saint Mary's, I don't think I had ever been in a church before and I loved it, the church was so lovely and the hymns and psalms were the most beautiful music I had ever heard, quite a change from 'Cherry Blossom Lane'. I became a regular and soon I was asked if I would like to join the choir, well after the fiasco of 'Merry England' I was somewhat doubtful but I was very keen to wear a cassock and surplice and sing those lovely hymns so I threw myself into it with great enthusiasm. To conserve electricity, the vicar decided that the organ would be pumped by hand, which would be done by choir boys in rotation? This meant squatting behind the organ in a tiny cubby hole and wait for the organist to knock on the screen, when we were supposed to start pumping to power up the organ. One Sunday I was so engrossed in a comic that I didn't hear his knock, when the music started the organ just died with a horrible groan, this roused me to start pumping like fury but the damage was do - I was in disgrace and had to forfeit my share of the collection, all tuppence ha'penny of it. My high point came though when I was chosen to sing a solo part in the Christmas carol service, I was Melchior in 'We Three Kings', I was so proud, my Cockney twang was fading fast, my family wouldn't know me. I spent nearly four years in the choir and the memory of all those hymns remains with me, I still tingle whenever I hear them. News of the war was a source of endless interest to me; I knew where each battle was being fought, all the advances and retreats, and the names of each general and their commands. My brother Harry was in France with the 51st Highland Division so when the news came of the Dunkirk evacuation; I knew that as a machine gunner he would be fighting a rear-guard action so one of the last to leave. Suddenly the war became serious, no longer quite the game it had been to us kids. When I heard that he was home safe I was overjoyed. Soon afterwards he was discharged from the army with a heart problem, not serious but it prevented further military service. He started work in a munitions factory where he met and fell in love with a girl named Jessie, being wartime they were soon married. A few weeks later, running for a bus, he tripped on a kerb stone, banged his head on a concrete gun post and died instantly. I was broken hearted and I ranted and raved at God for a long time. The vicar and Mrs Harley did their utmost to console me but it took quite a while. The blitz passed us by in March; they had a couple of goes at the marshalling yards but soon gave up. I did go back home in 1942 for Lucy's wedding; she was marrying a Grenadier Guardsman named Dick. What a shock! Instead of our lovely house in Peabody Cottages we had a three storey slum with outside toilet, no bath and in a really grotty neighbourhood. Some rotten swine had dropped a bomb on our lovely house so the family had no choice. Then I had my first taste of real bombing, it was terrifying, but everyone seemed to take it in their stride; all the neighbours ignored the Anderson shelters, which were holes in the ground covered with corrugated iron, in the back garden, nasty damp miserable things. When the siren went, they just grabbed their treasures which were left handily situated in the hall and hot-footed it over to the communal shelter over the road, handily situated in the back yard of the Queen Vic pub. No wonder they didn't mind, it was just one big party, a sing-song, with someone on the accordion, crates of beer, and they didn't seem to hear the bangs outside. After a few days we left for Cornwall to visit the boys and Joan, they were at the Lizard, Joan at 4 Coronation Cottages with a Mrs Johns, Sid and Billy were on a farm nearby with Mrs Johns' mother-in-law. It was great to be with my family again although they teased me no end about my country accent, and I teased them back about their ridiculous haircuts, close cropped all over except for a tassel of hair over the forehead. We spent a week or so there then back to Tottenham. Soon it was time for me to return to Mrs Harley so I was put into the guards van of a train in the care of the guard, like a piece of luggage, but he was very kind and put me off at March which was a good thing because all the station signs had been removed to foil Nazi spies; Mrs Harley welcomed me back with open arms; I think she had become quite fond of me by then. Although I missed my family, I soon settled down to what was a very pleasant life in the country. One thing always puzzled me though; my parents never came to visit me in four years and for some reason I never questioned them about this. The only visitor I had was my uncle Len who turned up out of the blue one day having cycled all the way from Bedford, where he was stationed with the RAF, what a very nice man! My friends and I used to play in a field at the back of the houses, we would dig for clay, which we fashioned into model planes, ships and guns, normal toys were very rare in those days. Then there was fishing and roaming the countryside, especially at harvest time when we could help, I don't think we were much help though. there was too much fun to be had, haystacks can be wonderful things to play on but too easily wrecked, that's when the farmers dispensed with our services, ungrateful, these farmers. As March had a large railway marshalling yard there were lots of goods trains carrying all kind of military supplies being transported to the war zones and we were fascinated to watch them go past with tanks, trucks and guns. We would count the wagons, sometimes there were up to a hundred and seemed go on for ages. By 1943 the bombing had subsided sufficiently for me to go home for a holiday, Sid and Billy were home from Cornwall, I think Billy had disgraced himself by setting about the barber with a stick after a particularly hideous haircut. Blood being thicker than water, I begged mum to let me stay, the worst decision I ever made, she agreed so I never went back to the lovely Mrs Harley. Tottenham was fun for a while, there were bombed-out buildings to explore, more mischief with my brothers and each weekend we all went to the T L and R Club, where dad was entertainment secretary. There were dances and concerts which I loved. It made my life in March seems dull by comparison. Of course someone had to go and spoil it eventually, Hitler again, he started sending us V1s (Doodlebugs) which were absolutely terrifying. We could hear them going overhead with an engine noise like an old motor-bike and we held our breath in case the noise stopped, which meant that the thing was about to drop on some poor souls and it could be us. One dropped on Fladbury Road, very near us which killed a lot of people and demolished about three hundred houses. Lucy was living in a flat above a butcher's shop in that direction and I was praying that she was alright. I ran out of the house to go to her, slates were falling from the roofs but I hardly noticed. Lucy was alright but I got a real roasting from mum. It was shortly after this that the subject of evacuation came up again and before I could argue I found myself in Leicester with dear Billy. He was two years older than me and he led me a dog's life, always teasing me and stealing things from me so I was not very happy. We were billeted with a Mrs Gamble, a short, roly-poly woman who loved to tell naughty jokes when she came home from the pub, she would often pass wind and go into Henry V mode exclaiming "Hark, I hear a distant peal of thunder, quick, quick the closet key, too late, too late, I've gone and done it". We slept on canvas camp beds in the parlour; we were not allowed to sleep in proper beds as we had Scabies, a skin disease which was rife at the time. I don't think we were there very long, Mrs Gamble couldn't put up with our Scabies so we were put into Roundhills Sick bay, a large old house filled with evacuees, all with similar complaints. There were just two nurses to look after all of us completely, which was almost impossible, so we were kept in bed like sick patients while the poor nurses did their best to cope. Inevitably disease was rampant and one of the nurses caught Scarlet Fever and I caught it from her. I was taken to Markfield Sanatorium which was a great improvement, and put in a children's ward with lovely clean beds, nice food and being pampered. I was the only evacuee there and in six weeks I had no visitors so the other children's parents felt sorry for me and brought me fruit and little gifts. I ended up with more visitors than anyone else, but not my own parents. In the next bed was a boy named Charlie Pickering, whose parents owned a garage at Measham, they made quite a fuss of me and Charlie and I became good friends for a while. When I was discharged I went back to Mrs Gamble as I was now clean, only to find that Billy had escaped from Roundhills with another boy by climbing through a toilet window then made his way back to Mrs Gamble who would not have him so he nicked my Saving Stamps, 12/6d worth to buy a ticket home. Mrs Gamble agreed to take me in and let me sleep in a proper bed as I was now free of the dreaded Scabies. I had to stay there for a while longer as the Germans were now bombarding us with V2s, which were similar to the Doodlebugs except, being jet propelled, they were silent until the explosion when they hit.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.