大象传媒

I was 5 years old when, in the summer of 1939, I was taken on holiday to Southport by my parents Ernest and Celia. Staying at the same Guest House was a couple from the small village of Hemington (Leicestershire). The four adults got on well and spent a lot of time together. Being the only child I was well entertained and found Stanley Wheildon great fun.
There was much talk about the possibility of war and the evacuation of children from the cities.
While saying goodbye to each other at the end of the holiday, Nancy said to my parents that, should war be declared she and Stanley would be happy to have me stay with them in the safety of the country 鈥� my parents were from the port of Kingston upon Hull, on the side of England nearest to Germany!
A short time later war with Germany was declared and, thinking that I would be happier being evacuated to people I knew (if only vaguely) rather than being evacuated en masse with school children I had only known for a short time too, it was agreed that my mother would take me by train and leave me with the Wheildons.
Arriving by train at Derby, we had to catch a Trent bus to Hemington. The bus didn鈥檛 actually go into the village but dropped us on the A6 main road near a huge gravel pit. We then had to walk about a mile down a country road where there were just two houses, cross the railway bridge and pass the row of five railway cottages on the outskirts of the village. Strangely, these cottages were 100 yards from the roadside, in the middle of a field, with access only by a field gate and a dirt track. (Nancy鈥檚 brother, Jack King lived there with his wife Eunice).
Then, on the right hand side of the road, there was a row of four 1930s terraced houses, a detached cottage and then pair of semi-detached cottages. Stanley鈥檚 parents lived in the first and Nancy and Stanley in the other with their dog Pop. The front doors opened on to the pavement and at the back was a shared open area on to which the back doors opened. Across this yard, each house had a coal shed and lavatory and, in between, there was a shared wash-house with a stone wash tub in the corner. A fire underneath the wash tub heated the water and a huge mangle stood nearby ready to squeeze the water out of the clothes. In the lavatory, a zinc bath hung on the wall.
The house was 鈥渢wo up, two down鈥�. The tiny living room had a fire with a side oven, a modern dining table with four chairs, a three piece suite, a piano and a very modern, floor-standing radiogram! The kitchen, from which led the staircase (with the pantry cupboard underneath) contained a sink, small table with a couple of chairs and a gas cooker. There was running water (but no hot water) and electricity which had only been installed that year. The zinc bath was brought in once a week to be filled with water heated on the stove and used in sequence by all three of us. Upstairs were two bedrooms opening directly from the staircase.
I was enrolled at the two-room village school in the centre of the village which was attended by about 40 children from Hemington and the nearby village of Lockington. The two classrooms each had an iron stove for heating.
I was extremely happy there particularly after having survived the taunting and fights with local children and Nancy and Stanley were very kind and interesting people. Nancy had a part-time job first at the Food Coupon Office in the nearby bigger village of Castle Donington and later at the Post Office in Kegworth as a telephonist. Stanley worked in a Coutaulds factory but was really a countryman who loved his allotment, mushrooming, blackberrying and snaring rabbits. He had also spent about a year in Canada and the United States visiting a relative where he had picked up an unusual collection of slang words! Bread, cakes and a few groceries were delivered by van from Kegworth and a local farmer delivered the milk daily, using a measuring ladle to serve the milk from a churn to a metal pot with lid and wire handle. Other groceries had to be bought in Castle Donington two miles away.

I am second from the right on the back row
Being evacuated meant that experienced little of the war. I remember seeing on one occasion, the vapour trails of dog-fighting aircraft, one being shot down and a parachute dropping. A couple of local farmers took off to try and capture what they supposed to be a German but I think it was falling further away than they thought. However, that was from my viewpoint as a child and I don鈥檛 remember hearing that they caught anyone. On another occasion I was taken by Stanley, in the dark, to the railway bridge to watch the glow in the night sky 鈥� Coventry was being bombed! (November 1940 or April 1941).
I think I must have returned to Hull in 1942 or 1943. I had at least one year at Maybury Road school Hull before winning a scholarship to Malet Lambert High School which I entered in September 1944.
Strangely, having been evacuated for safety reasons, I experienced more war activity after my return to Hull 鈥� family members who lived in the old town or the inner suburbs being bombed out of their homes, spending nights in our neighbours brick- built air raid shelter (less damp and better furnished than our own Anderson shelter), hearing the fearful silence after the engines cut out on the flying bombs, the deafening explosions of bombs and the crack of anti-aircraft fire and collecting and swapping jagged pieces of shrapnel.

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