大象传媒

Evacuation to Canada II

In June came the wonderful news that Father was able to come across the continent to join us. Great excitement. Mother rented a cottage on Vancouver Island. We met him in Vancouver and travelled over on the ferry. It was a heavenly place; very small, with only two beds, but did have electricity and water. I had my tent and my sister slept on a mattress under the stars. Father left, all too soon, to fly home in a bomber. Mother gardened for our landlord to help pay the rent. I was given special tuition by the daughter of a neighbour, to try and keep up with arithmetic 鈥� some hope! There were two great excitements for us young ones. The farm chicken houses were dilapidated, to say the least, and overrun with rats. The farmer suggested we join in the great rat hunt. Armed with sticks, and helped by neighbours, dogs and all the family and farm men, we stormed the chicken houses, drove the rats out, and whacked and whacked and whacked. I expect they came back at night, but it was great fun. We also saw a cougar, very close. This is the Canadian mountain lion, very rare and very elusive. I can still remember the sweep of its beautiful tail disappearing into the forest. We borrowed an Indian canoe, we swam, we fished and explored the forest. I even started to ride, cantering at first attempt. Again life was good. You could not say we were having a bad war!

By autumn we were back in Vancouver and back at school. During the Christmas holidays in 1943 we were walking one day along the coast road 鈥� the sea completely obscured by a solid blanket of fog 鈥� when out of nowhere came an eerie sound. Men were talking in the far distance. They seemed to be giving orders in impeccable English. Ghosts of drowned mariners?

Shortly after Christmas plans were being made to come home. Some money was sent out to us, some more borrowed, and Mother booked our tickets by rail from Vancouver to New York. What was to happen after that we knew not, and we were warned most solemnly not to talk about our plans. There was still a war on and, as they said, 鈥渨alls have ears鈥�. It was another superb journey. We were particularly lucky in seeing it all afresh 鈥� we travelled in deepest winter, whereas the out-ward trip had been in late summer, and we saw by day the stretches of country we had passed in the night. We changed in Montreal to an American train. No more the luxury of the Canadian Pacific Railway; the entire train was sleeper cars. Bunks were stacked three high on both sides of the long coaches, with a heavy green curtain along the narrow corridor. Very hot, very stuffy and very noisy. A dreadful night. Grand Central Station in New York was an eye-opener. Huge marble halls, moving stairs, rushing crowds of commuters. We found an underground restaurant for breakfast, and watched fascinated as a fat businessman ate his way through a 6鈥� pile of waffles and maple syrup. We were taken by taxi to an amazing vast hotel 鈥� the Barbizon Plaza overlooking Central Park. We were way up in the sky with a stupendous view of the park and the city. It was becoming obvious that in the hotel were dozens of other British families. We were called to a meeting in a private room where we were addressed by a naval officer, and given no information at all except that we must be ready to move at a moment鈥檚 notice, and that we were to speak to nobody about anything. After a couple of days word went around at breakfast that we should assemble in the foyer ready to go. Taxis took us round town and down to the docks, where there awaited two identical small aircraft carriers. We went on board HMS Begum 鈥� where began every boy鈥檚 dream 鈥� a taste of war in a real warship. We had a splendid cabin, with bunks for four officers, and welded steel cupboards. The only fly in the ointment was that Mother was given charge of a wretched small boy, one Colin, who had been evacuated without parents to a Canadian farm, had been allowed to run wild for 3陆 years, and had become almost uncontrollable. All Mother鈥檚 considerable strength of character was needed over the next ten days to keep him out of trouble and stop him falling overboard. The Captain was superb. He told his motley crew of Mothers and children that we could have the run of the ship as long as we didn鈥檛 get in the way, go on the bridge, or into the engine room. In the case of 鈥淎ction Stations!鈥� being piped we were to go to the ward room or our cabins and lie low. My sister and I found a way round this rule, but we didn鈥檛 include Colin in our plans. We ate with the officers in the ward room. It had a long table athwartships, with massive green steel leather-covered arm chairs, each one anchored to a ring in the deck. Once out at sea we started exploring. The ship was loaded with no less than three flights of fighter aircraft, all with their wings folded upwards. One was on the flight deck, which of course made it impossible for any to take off, and two in the hangar deck below, which completely filled it apart from the lift, which is used to move the aircraft between hangar and flight deck. The extra loading made the ship unstable, with dangerous consequences later in the voyage. A carrier would normally have flight crew for the aircraft on board, but we of course had three times that number. They solved the berthing problem by 鈥渉ot bunking鈥� 鈥� every bunk being used continuously by three men for eight hours each. The officers must have done the same, for there were 60 of us in their cabins.

Mother got talking to one of the officers about where we had been spending the war, and where the carriers came from. They were built by the US in Seattle, on the west coast, under a scheme called lease/lend, which supplied us with ships, planes, vehicles and munitions. These were some of the first welded ships; previously iron and steel ships had been built with thousands of plates and millions of rivets. Because of the desperate need for speed the welding was skimped and was clearly dangerous. They came up to Vancouver not only to be completely rewelded and repainted, but to have the ice cream freezers, Coca-Cola dispensers and washing machines removed, and the ships generally brought up to Royal Naval standards. They then underwent sea trials in Vancouver harbour. We had heard the sister ships talking to one another over the Tannoy in the fog!

My sister and I started exploring 鈥� the flight deck, the hangar deck, the companion ways, the galley, the munitions rooms, the guns, the clipping rooms. The flight deck was particularly dangerous, as of course it has no rail, though there is a net round it like the net over the orchestra pit in a theatre. Mother had her work cut out trying to keep Colin in sight. I think we had a way of charming the seamen, for it was not long before we were being shown the clipping room below No.1 gun turret. Deep in the bowels is the ammunition store. Above it, and below every gun, is a clipping room. Boxes of shells are passed up from below. The clips are in big round open topped cans, in this case about 12鈥� high and the same diameter. In the bottom of the can is a spiral track into which the rounds, which have a flange round the base, are inserted. When full this clip is passed up through a hatch to the gun crew above. The empty clips would be passed back for immediate refilling. Naturally the speed of fire depends on the skill and coordination of the clipping crew. Action stations was called for practice every day at 6.00 p.m., and we were invited to take part. Where Mother thought we were I don鈥檛 know. Too concerned with the dreadful Colin to worry about us, I expect. In the event of a real enemy attack I guess we would have kept out of the way, but we did ask what would happen if a U-boat were to surface in the middle of our vast convoy, which stretched to the horizon. The grim answer was that we couldn鈥檛 torpedo it as a miss would be bound to carry on and sink one of us. Shelling would be equally risky. The simple answer was that we would be sunk. The tactic was for the convoy to zig-zag its way across the Atlantic. A very impressive sight, as the whole fleet would alter course at once. This made it very difficult for the few remaining German aircraft and ships to find us or to predict where we were going. We probably went as far south as the Azores, as it became remarkably warm.

We had very fair weather, but there must have been gales before we sailed, for there was a great swell running. With our huge cargo we rolled. How we rolled! We were thrown to the deck as we tried to move around, and the internal welding started to give. In one cabin a vast steel wardrobe, merely tack-welded to the bulkhead, came adrift, trapping the occupants of the bunk below. In the wardroom the fiddles were fitted; these are barriers all round the table edge keep the plates on. Damp tea towels were spread to try and keep things in place. All the deck rings holding the chairs down simply snapped off. A wild young officer we christened Lt. Commander Beard would give a push to his chair and the whole row would career across the ship and slide down first to one side and then across to the other, while we screamed with excitement and tried to grab a mouthful as we passed our plates.

All good things come to an end, and one grey day we steamed up the Mersey to Liverpool docks from which we had embarked years before. We were met by a Wren officer (Women鈥檚 Royal Naval Service) with a staff car. It was infinitely depressing. The entire city, from the docks to the Adelphi Hotel in the centre, was flattened. There was not a house standing. The hotel was grim. The windows were not only covered with blackout material, but the glass had heavy netting stuck to it with brown glue to hold it in place in case of bomb blast. There was practically no light. The vast dining room had a few weak single light bulbs high in the ceiling. There was very little electricity and very little food. We had a room at the front and peered out for hours expecting Father who had come up by train. At last we saw him, a tired, depressed figure crossing the fore-court. The train journey home the next day was not much better. The train was cold and slow and kept stopping. We could not see out of the windows, as they too were reinforced against bombs. It was late in the evening when a cold depressed family got out at a filthy smelly station. But there was the faithful family taximan, waiting to take us the two miles home. Not that there was much cheer there. There was a tiny piece of beef on the table, a week鈥檚 ration for four, to feed the extended family of seven. But there were vegetables from the garden, and hazel nuts and fruit. It was a sad homecoming.

We survived, and of course the starving masses of Europe under the Germans were infinitely worse off. We got by, though the rationing got steadily more serious. Eventually even potatoes and bread became scarce. We had food parcels from America, and black market sugar, we had our own chickens and geese, and practically the whole garden was down to vegetables.

There were by now very few bombs, just incendiary raids. These were small fire bombs designed to set towns on fire. They didn鈥檛 work, but they were enough to send us schoolboys scurrying to the air raid shelters sometimes several times in a night. Then there were the V1s, or Doodle Bugs, the first unmanned aircraft, with a primitive jet engine. More frightening were the V2s, which were quite large rockets, which could make a very big hole. At last VE Day saw the end of the war in Europe in the early summer of 1945. We celebrated at school with a huge bonfire and a hastily improvised entertainment in the school hall. All was not finally over until the Japanese war was finished with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and VJ Day came in the summer. My sister and I celebrated by going on a memorable long wet cycle ride to Ivinghoe Beacon.

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