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Early Signs and the first departure.

In 1938 when I was still five years, old I realised that some things were changing which intrigued me. During a visit to friends in London with my mother I remember big buildings with sandbags round the doors and windows with brown paper crosses on the glass. In Hyde Park, from the top of the bus, I saw my first barrage balloon. I thought it was wonderful, it reminded me of an elephant with baggy legs and floppy ears. They looked inelegant when on the ground but as they rose higher and higher in the sky they gradually filled out and their bagginess disappeared. To see them in a clear blue sky with the sun shining on them was quite a sight. Later, after the war had begun, I discovered that when they floated high in the sky it was a sure sign that bombers were expected, Once I saw one struck by lightening; it burst into flames and descended like a flaming parachute tethered to its steel cable.
Back home again in West Hull, where I lived with my mother and grandfather, they were building ugly flat-roofed brick air raid shelters under the trees in the avenue. They had no doors; when you went in you had to turn a right-angle through another doorway to get inside where there were some wooden benches and sometimes bunks as well. They always smelt musty. Huge concrete stagnant water tanks were being built which grandfather explained were for the firemen if the water mains were blown up. Of course at my age I didn’t really understand what it was all about. I used to collect cigarette cards and I remember there was a series about ‘air raid precautions’ showing all the different things you could use or get, such as a ‘stirrup pump’ and always having a bucket of sand handy in case of incendiary bombs.
At school we began to have drills. When we heard the bell ringing we had to gather in the hall and go downstairs to the boiler room where we stayed until the bell rang again. Also the sirens (what we called the buzzers) were sounded so that people would recognize the air raid alarm from the ‘all clear’ if war was declared. Everybody was given a gas mask in a little cardboard box with a string to hang round your neck. For us kids it all seemed very exciting — something different in our otherwise routine lives.

Then one Sunday, (September 3rd 1939) war was declared. My mother and granddad were listening to a man speaking on the wireless; granddad was getting angry, he kept swearing about the ‘bloody Jerries’. He said they wanted to invade England and would come out of the sky on parachutes and shoot us all if they had their way. Just then the buzzers sounded; me and my mother went in the cupboard under the stairs which was supposed to be the safest place if you were bombed. Some people living in houses with gardens had a shelter dug in the ground in preparation for a raid — they were called Anderson shelters I think, but they often filled up with water. Those living in houses without a cupboard under the stairs were told to sit under the table as the next best thing. However the ‘all clear’ soon went. I was allowed to go out to play with my friends and we spent the rest of the morning peering at the sky waiting to see the Germans coming down on their parachutes. We weren’t afraid; we didn’t really believe it or understand what being at war meant.

Hull was a strategic target so we had many alarms before the real air raids began. Every time the ‘buzzers’ sounded my mother got me out of bed and sat with me shivering -out of fear or excitement I don’t know- on her knee in the smelly cupboard under the stairs. Granddad would prowl around the back yard listening for the bombers — I don’t ever remember him going to the shelters. My shivering fits in the cupboard were, I think, my undoing because my mother decided I was to be evacuated. By this time she was doing war work on the docks. I suppose she didn’t want to come home and find the house bombed with me inside. Whatever the reason I had to go. I’d never been away from home on my own except for a couple of nights in hospital when I had my tonsils out. All evacuees assembled at their own schools and were taken either to the railway station or the bus station depending on where they were going. I found myself sitting on a bus not knowing where I was going, clutching a packet of sandwiches my mother had made for the journey — she didn’t know either where I was going. I felt numb inside, but sat silent in my seat determined not to cry like many were, mothers and children. Eventually we set off. My bus ended up in Thorne, a small mining town near Doncaster. I was allocated to a nice elderly couple who had room for one child. He still worked on the railway and they had a daughter who was a teacher but she didn’t live with them. She had a little car which made me think she must be rich. I had never been in a motor car in my life.

That first night is still vivid today. I felt abandoned and as I was very shy I hardly spoke a word. I remember they gave me tea or supper and though I had a great lump in my throat I tried to eat something. I used not to eat bread and butter with crusts on and I hid the uneaten crusts under the rim of my plate. Suddenly everything became too much for me and I ran from the table and went to the lavatory — an inside one which at home we’d never had. I sat there in great distress, sobbing my heart out, much to the dismay of my new foster parents. I was so upset they promised to see if they could find another evacuee to come and live with to keep me company. But alas the next day we were told everybody had been allocated. Of course eventually I got used to being on my own but I hated it deep down even though the couple were nice to me.
He took me one day to the signal box where he worked and allowed me to help him open the level crossing when a train came by. I was fascinated by that. They used to take me to chapel which I didn’t much care for. They asked me all sorts of questions, one I remember was had I been to France. I said of course I had, many times. In fact, apart from our visit to London the year before, I’d never been further than the nearest seaside town about 18 miles from Hull. At Christmas my mother came to visit me and I made myself sick eating dates, which were still in the shops. I begged her to let me come home but she was adamant. With the benefit of hindsight I realise it must have been as painful for her as for me. She wrote to me regularly and sometimes sent me the words of songs popular at the time. Before the war sometimes she used to take me to the music hall in Hull, which in those days had three or four theatres. Deliverance eventually came after about nine months in Thorne. For some reason my mother decided I had to have a new suit and suggested I return to Hull so she could buy one for me - not with long trousers of course; that didn’t happen until one was 12 in those days. Needless to say I jumped at the chance of seeing Hull again and also granddad. After my mother had bought the new suit (with coupons) I rushed to granddad’s knee — he was always my source of comfort when my mother disciplined me, often unjustly I thought! Fortunately he took my side, yet again, and to my surprise mother agreed that I didn’t have to return to Thorne. I never saw the couple again. I wrote them a letter saying how I hated being with them which thankfully my mother didn’t post. They were a very nice couple but two generations separated us; and they weren’t used to the antics of a small boy. The reason my mother agreed to my return was because up to then the war had been what they called the ‘phoney war’ and there’d been no severe air raids on Hull. However that was soon to change as I’ll recount in the next instalment of my experiences.

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