大象传媒

And so, away again. Part 2.

Stories of an evacuee.

With my birthday in July and now being eight, I went to Penhale Road Junior School, which was evacuated to Haslemere.
So, away again.
This time my billet was with the gamekeeper鈥檚 family of a Lady Hare at Hindhead. The grounds I think were about 12 acres with a Ha Ha sunken lawn. I was one of four boys staying with this family who I remember as being kind. All of us boys slept each night in the big house and walked along a drive under pine trees to get there. Two of the other boys were older and they bullied us younger ones. The walk to school, ( in wooden two storey buildings adjacent to the railway line, near to the station ); was along a narrow lane, which I think was quite a long way; and I remember having several warts on my knees which were always getting scrapped and bleeding a lot.
The gamekeeper and his family gave us a small plot of land to plant seeds. I bought a packet of radish seeds; but found that I liked chewing them, ( in the absence of sweets !! ), so none got planted.
My mother had got a position as a helper in a big house at Hindhead that had been taken over as a boys school hostel. ( This building, some time long after the war became a retirement home and was later destroyed by fire ). My sister, now six, was evacuated away from our mother; but was so distressed that the 鈥� boys home 鈥� decided that Eileen could stay with our mother.
Some weekends I was able to run across the heath, along sandy winding paths to visit my mother for an afternoon.
The heathland was a wonderful playground for us boys. Tunnelling through ferns, making spears from them and throwing them at each other. We caught snakes, ( generally adders ), and killed them with sticks, found a sand cave where supposedly a German had hidden, collected and ate bilberries, and sometimes going with the gamekeeper to shoot squirrels. At school we went one day to see a film in a nearby hall, it was Felix the Cat, and I think the first film I had seen.
It was a very cold winter 1940.
At Christmas, all of us boys were told to go to see Lady Hare in the big house to receive a Christmas present. We were excited and wondered what she had got for us. It turned out to be a shallow box with sand in, and a few toy soldiers and some pieces of pine tree for foliage. I think that we dutifully showed our appreciation!
When there was a threat of bombs, which was really very, very, unlikely; all us four boys went to a small bed under the stairs in the big house and tried to sleep head to toe.
While back at home, and before being re-evacuated, Eileen and I were playing in the playground of the Penhale Road School one-day. I was exploring one of the school air raid shelters and climbed a metal internal ladder in the dark. Putting my hand up to find a hatch, I put my fingers into an empty light socket and was nearly knocked off the ladder with electric shock. Another day, Eileen was climbing on a nearly vertical school gate that had been left lying against a wall, and somehow over- balanced this heavy iron gate. It fell on top of her; but very luckily the top gate hinge swung out and embedded in the asphalt of the playground with Eileen trapped underneath. I heard her cry out and then ran to the Air Raid Wardens room in the school. They lifted the very heavy gate, got her out and called an ambulance. She had a fractured skull and eventually got better. All the cast iron railings had been removed along with all house railings for the war effort; but the gate had been left behind. The school authorities said that we should not have been playing in the school ground. We should have stayed playing in the streets as we usually did. There were no cars parked in the roads, and we played so many different games involving the lampposts, the gutters and the walls. These included 鈥渁lleys鈥� with marbles, 鈥渇lics鈥� with cigarette cards, a game involving spitting, hopping or jumping, etc. as far as one could depending on the letters in ones name.
We lived near the Fratton railway shunting yards and could hear the clink, clink, clink of wagons being moved about by day and by night. A railwayman鈥檚 bridge was perfect for standing on and being completely enveloped with steam as the driver put on 鈥� extra puff 鈥� for us when they saw us waiting. ( Health and Safety would have a fit nowadays !! ).
Most boys had a cart made of old pram wheels. The bombed site was my adventure playground, where I collected firewood from broken chairs, banisters, ceiling lathes etc.. I also collected whatever I might find, a glass lampshade, a sheath knife and sometimes lice and fleas. We could run over piles of bricks, up broken stairs, hide behind fallen walls, explore shattered rooms, all with a freedom that would be considered horrendous today. We mostly played Cowboys and Indians.
Whole blocks of terraced houses, probably 150 or more, had been destroyed by two landmines that had come down by parachute. How many people had died in their shelters I do not know; but these remainders of family homes were our playground !
Every house had to have two buckets outside, one full of water and one of sand. These were to put out small fires and to smother incendiary bombs that the Germans dropped in their thousands on Portsmouth.
Each house also had an air raid shelter, either an Anderson sunk into a space in the back garden or a ?? which was built inside one of the rooms. There was a series of nights when we had to go down into the shelter in our garden because of raids. My mother woke me up one night to hurry and carried on with Eileen to the Anderson. After a while she had to return to the front downstairs room where I slept to get me, and found me sitting astride my two wheeled 鈥� fairy cycle 鈥�, ( which had wide stabilisers on ), and pedalling away like mad. She had to hit me quite hard to wake me up before I would get off the bike. I didn鈥檛 remember this; but she told me about it the next morning.
One of the corner shops had a little sale. This was a large dish full of small odds and ends all at 1 penny each. I got two fireworks, which looked like being a banger and probably a fountain type. The printed details had got worn off through damp. I remember being, in effect, the male of the house and setting these fireworks up one at a time in the narrow outside passage at the back of the house while Eileen and my Mum watched through the window with excitement. I was eight years old now and the responsibility and danger must have been quite important to me at the time as I have remembered it so well.
Some time during this period of the war, my father was home for a few days. We all went to London and stayed with my Mothers mother at her house in Highbury. This was right next to Arsenal football ground where my Grandmother was a nurse in the emergency station that had been set up there. We visited my Fathers mother and father one-day at Barnet. This involved a long journey by tube and tram and we didn鈥檛 return until late in the evening. I remember looking out of the tram and seeing searchlights hunting for enemy aircraft, seeing tracer bullets and shells firing into air. On the tube we stepped over people sheltering there for the night, and then when above ground running from street air raid shelter to shelter between intervals in the bombs dropping to get back to Highbury. I cannot remember being at all frightened; but just excited. When a group of searchlights all caught a bomber in their beam, guns concentrated their fire on it and we hoped it would be shot down.

My mother and father had arranged to move to a larger terraced house in Percy Road, Southsea. This house had a large hole in the ceiling of an upstairs and a downstairs room where an incendiary had come through. We were all home at this time when we moved, and I suppose that air raids had lessened, so I stayed at 96 Percy Road and went to Francis Avenue School at the end of the road. One day an oldish man came to the school, and we all had to line up to be presented to him at a piano. Of all us 50 to 60 boys I was asked if I would go to Portsmouth Cathedral on a Tuesday evening to a particular room, to become part of the Cathedral Choir. I cycled there but couldn鈥檛 find the room or anybody. So I returned home. That was the start and end of a possible singing career, and one wonders what difference it would have made to me if someone had pushed me a bit to find the practice room. ( I eventually joined a choir, together with my wife Margaret when I was 54 years old. And have now been singing happily for 19 years. )
300 or more children in Portsmouth were invited to the South Parade Pier for entertainment and a hand out of sweets and large juicy muscatel grapes dried fruit. This was provided by the Soroptomists of Canada. During the show boys and girls were asked to go on to the stage to sing a song. A friend of mine from school, Jack Vaughan, and I went up. When our turn came, he sang a hymn and then I sang 鈥� Roll Out the Barrel 鈥�; which I went wrong on, and caused lots of laughter for the audience and embarrassment for me. The next day at school, our teacher, a Mr Underhay, made us both stand out in front of the class and sing our songs again.
I hated Friday mornings. That was spelling day; and every mistake that any of us boys in the 鈥� lower part 鈥� of the class made resulted in a bending over at a low front desk, and a whack with the cane. One day a boy in the 鈥� upper part 鈥� of our class of 25 or so boys, did something wrong, and he was brought out to the front and given a hand caning. He wet himself, and all us 鈥� lower part 鈥� boys, I must admit, were highly pleased.
I passed the entrance exam for Portsmouth Southern Secondary School, ( much to the amazement of Mr. Underhay ); which was evacuated to Brokenhurst.
So once again away !!!!

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