´óÏó´«Ã½

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A LONDON EVACUEE

The following are a few reminiscences of an evacuee who stayed in the village of Clifton-on-Teme, near Worcester for about 18 months in the early days of the war of 1939 to 1945.

Before commencing with my memories of the school and village I should like to fill in a little information about myself at the time and the circumstances which lead up to my visit in the first place.

I was the younger of two brothers, being seven and a half years old in the August of 1939, and lived with my parents and grandmother at a place called Bounds Green which is a suburb lying about 6 miles to the North of Central London. As young as I was in that August I was aware that there could possibly be another war as we had already been issued with our gas masks and I had taken a form to my school on which it was stated that my parents would make their own arrangements to evacuate us should it become necessary. We had also seen the beams of searchlights shining against the clouds as the army searchlight teams carried out their training during the dark evenings of that Spring and, while on holiday in Cornwall during the August, we had watched the Territorial Army practicing the firing of their anti-aircraft guns out to sea from their summer camp set up on the cliff top adjacent to the beach where we played in the hot sunshine that was typical of that summer.

It was on the Tuesday after we had returned home from our holiday that we were first told that we were actually going to be evacuated and that we would be staying on a farm.

The next day saw us up early and a hired car arrived to pick us up for our long drive to Clifton. In the car, apart from the driver, were my mother, grandmother and brother as well as an aunt and cousin complete with their dog and its basket. Needlessly to say, we were very cramped. As we passed through the Vale of Evesham plums were being sold for as little as a penny a pound (less than a half a new penny).

We arrived in Clifton sometime in the afternoon to be welcomed at Church House Farm by the farmer's wife with a splendid tea. I was asked if I would like lemonade or milk to drink and, thinking that country milk would be different from that bought in a bottle from the milkman at home, I asked for the milk. I was a little disappointed to find that it tasted exactly the same.

The date of our arrival in Clifton would have been the 30th of August and consequently the school was closed for the summer holidays for in those days the holiday in that part of the country was held in September to allow the children to help with the harvest and hop picking. It was a fascinating experience for us for although we had seen farm animals on our holidays and, of course, horses were still used in London to pull the milk floats, bread vans, coal carts and even the dust carts we had never been able to get so close and to see them in their natural surroundings. We were very glad the school was closed.

The war was officially declared on the 3rd of September which was the first Sunday after our arrival in Clifton. Nothing appeared to be happening in Britain at the beginning of the war even though the Royal Navy was in action at sea and the Royal Air Force was carrying out leaflet raids over Germany and so, after five weeks, it was decided that we should return to London. When we got back to London we found that our own school only opened for a short time each day as a safety precaution against possible air-raids and consequently we had to attend at a certain time each day to be given work to do at home. This work had to be handed in the next day for marking and further work would then be issued. This situation didn’t last very long however and after a few weeks the school was opened for us to attend all day again.

The war situation then took a turn for the worse with the German Army invading Belgium, Holland and France and so, with the prospect of air-raids on London becoming a distinct possibility, my brother, grandmother and I were sent back to Clifton. It was at this time that my brother and I were enrolled at the school and the School Register for that period shows us starting on the 4th of June 1940.

The school consisted only of a stone-built main section with a small stone extension on the back. There were two rooms only for the classes, the back room held the infant class and the main room was divided into two by a folding partition with the juniors on one side and the seniors on the other. The Headmaster's house was also part of the school building.

Each morning the whole school would assemble in the large room, with the partition pulled back, for morning prayers after which the infants would return to their own room and the partition, with a great deal of noise, would be pulled across the big room by a senior pupil to divide the juniors from the seniors. In each class there were 3 rows of desks with each row representing a different year of learning. I started in the middle of the juniors and my brother started in the top stream of the juniors.

I can remember on that first day making a fuss when I was issued with a pencil instead of a pen and ink as, back in London, I had already progressed to pen and ink. After my teacher had consulted with the headmaster it was agreed that, as a special privilege, I would be allowed to write in ink and so, for a time, I was the only one in my line not using pencil.

In those days the cane was used very frequently and there were certain children in the senior class, including the girls, who were always being caned. In fact, on misbehaving and being found out, these boys and girls would be at the front of the class with their hand held out almost before the headmaster had called out their name. He had a number of thin bamboo canes, all with curved handles, and it was not uncommon for these to split and break up while being used. Many a time the junior class would hear the bits of cane that had broken off hit the partition. One dodge the senior pupils got up to was to push pins down the end of the cane while the headmaster was absent and this encouraged the cane to split when in use. The cane was also used very occasionally in the junior class as I found out to my cost.

It seemed very strange to me that some of the children had to bring sandwiches for their dinner each day due to the distance they had to walk to get to school. This was in the days before school dinners don’t forget. In London all children lived within easy walking distance of their school and were able to get home for lunch. The school provided a cup of Horlicks for all those staying during the lunch hour and this was made on the premises.

Another thing which seemed very strange to me was to see some children come to the school in the winter wearing breeches and jodhpurs. Back in London the boys would have had to put up with our short trousers and chapped knees. We were also surprised to find that nobody was required to bring a note explaining why they had been away after an absence from school. In London we would not have been allowed back without a note written and signed by one of our parents.

Talking of winter, there was a day when it had been snowing continuously all night and when we arrived at the school we found it closed. We knocked on the headmaster's door and were told that the school would be closed for a week due to the bad weather. We didn’t see any other children at the time and I have often wondered why we were the only ones who didn’t seem to know that the school would be closed. In fact I also wonder how the headmaster knew that the bad weather would last for at least a week.

On our second visit to the village the only change that we could see was a ring of sandbags that had been built round a big tree that stood in front of the school at the edge of the village green adjacent to the main road. This ring of sandbags formed a wall about 4ft high and had an entrance at the back away from the road. It would probably have been a rifle and machine gun post in the event of this country being invaded but fortunately was only used as a refuge for the infants class during air raid practices. For these practices the headmaster would blow a whistle and everybody had to grab their gasmask and evacuate the school. The infants would run across the green and crouch inside the sandbagged wall and the junior and senior classes had to run down the road to a field about a hundred yards away. Here we were expected to lay flat on the ground with our arms over our head and as near to the hedge as possible until told that the practice was over.

We also had gasmask practices at which we had to wear our gasmasks while working. I can remember feeling slightly superior at the first such practice as, because we had come from London where it was considered that the danger was greatest, our gasmasks had been fitted with an extra green coloured extension piece to the bottom of the mask to counteract a new type of gas that was expected to be used. Nobody else in the village had had this extra piece fitted at the time although it wasn’t long before they did. On one occasion a large van, looking rather like a furniture removal lorry, parked on the green and all the children had to go into this van in small groups wearing their gasmasks. The van was filled with tear gas and the object of the exercise was to ensure that the gasmasks fitted. One boy in my group found that his mask didn’t fit properly and he left the van with streaming eyes and nose. After coming out of the van we all had to run down the road, after taking off our gasmasks, waving our masks about to dispel the gas that tended to cling to our clothes.

On another occasion a temporary corrugated iron shed was built near the school. During the evening rubbish was piled up inside the shed and set alight so that the A.R.P. could demonstrate the use of stirrup pumps in fighting fires that could have been started by incendiary bombs. These bombs were causing a lot of fire damage in London and other big towns at the time. Some of the grown-ups were encouraged to try their hand at crawling into the building on their stomachs to put out the fire with the stirrup pump. It must have been about this time that a hand operated, horse drawn fire engine arrived in the village. This fire engine was a museum piece even in those days and was kept in a building in the yard of the Red Lion public house.

For two or three days in 1941we saw a lot of the army as manoeuvres were held in and around the Village. The school children were instructed not to give any information to any of the soldiers as the manoeuvres were to be made as realistic as possible. The village seemed to be full of soldiers for these few days and a cookhouse lorry was parked in front of the village shop. There were two men working in the back of this lorry and one of them got very drunk during one lunch time and threatened, with a large meat cleaver, the boys who were climbing up the back of the vehicle to see what they were doing.

A number of us managed to cadge a ride on one of the army bren gun carriers.

I said that these manoeuvres were to be carried out as realistically as possible and, unfortunately, they were so realistic that one poor soldier was actually shot and killed during one night. Apart from that incident most of the soldiers we saw seemed to be enjoying themselves and drank gallons of tea that was made for them by the people of the village. A large number of these men slept amongst the straw in the rickyard of the farm where we were staying and I can remember seeing one man opening a 5 gallon can of petrol just to fill up his cigarette lighter. As these cans could not be resealed once they had been opened I can only hope that the rest of the petrol was used to fill up an army vehicle.

During our time in the village there were only few occasions that seemed to bring the reality of war nearer the village. This was not counting the rationing of food and petrol and all the other restrictions that affected everybody in England wherever they were.

During the November of 1940 a red glow could be seen in the direction of Coventry as this City was suffering its very bad air-raids.

A stray bomb was dropped about half a mile from the village and there were various reports of parachutists being seen dropping in the surrounding countryside but I never did know if these were just rumours but what was certain was that wooden poles were put up in some fields to deter airborne troops from landing.

While playing on the Village Green during one school break a very low flying aeroplane passed right over the school. It was so low that we could see the pilot and some of his crew and we all waved to them and they waved back. I can remember thinking that it was strange that it had black crosses under its wings and in my own mind I had come to the conclusion that it must have been an ambulance plane and its red crosses had been painted black because of the war. It was some time afterwards that we found out that it was, in fact, a German bomber that had been on its way to machine gun an army barracks about ten miles away.

We were used to seeing aeroplanes flying low over the village as one of the villagers had a son who was a pilot and, while on training flights in an Avro-Anson, he would circle the village and drop notes to his parent.

One of the village boys was attending the Worcester Grammar School and I can remember him standing in the doorway of his home dressed in the school uniform, which in those days included an ‘Eton Collar’, practicing rifle drill with a broomstick.

Towards the end of 1941 the blitz on London had quietened down and it was decided that we should return home. By this time both my brother and I were both in the senior class and my brother was due to take his Scholarship examination to find out what secondary school he should attend. So on the 14th of November 1941 we left the village school and returned to our own school in London. I am glad to be able to say that our standard of education had not suffered by being at a different school for over a year and although we were slightly behind in some subjects we were ahead in others.

So, what did we find when we got back home to London? Well, our house was undamaged, apart from a few cracked windows, in spite of an oil bomb being dropped 50 yards from our house and a high explosive bomb and an aerial torpedo all falling within a radius of about 300 yards. After our return there were the occasional air-raids and we had another high explosive bomb fall 100 yards away which brought down some of our ceilings. The worst period we had to go through was in l944 when the ‘Doodle Bug’ flying bombs were being sent over and these caused us to lose a lot of our schooling due to having to take cover in the school air-raid shelters for hours at a time. These bombs and the Rockets that followed, caused more of our ceilings to come down but we were very fortunate that the nearest of these was at least half a mile away.

We both settled down very well on our return although we missed the peace and quiet of the countryside. I can remember getting a certain amount of pleasure when we first got back home by people asking me where I came from as I didn’t talk like a Londoner. I had, in fact, picked up a slight Worcestershire accent and I was rather proud of that.

K. A. Harris Southwold, Suffolk November 2004

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