大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Kathy Woollett from Hastings Library on behalf of Rev Michael Ward, and has been added to the site with his permission. Rev Ward fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

One of my earliest memories in relation to the war was that two of my sisters were visiting a French family in Le Havre, and when war broke out my father dashed across to France to bring them back. Another memory was, that my father was serving in the army in the British Expeditionary Force, and after Dunkirk he was still in France. We lived on the West Hill at this time and we could see flashes of gunfire across the channel, I was six at the time, and I was told 鈥淒addy鈥檚 over there鈥�. He escaped through San Lazare and came back to England and I think he then was stationed up at Blackpool for a while. I can remember big guns being brought to Hastings, and firing at a target being towed by a ship out to sea. The guns were mobile ones, on the sea front. I can also remember a ship tying up on the pier and I think it was people escaping from Norway. I鈥檓 not sure whether it was here, or a little later on when we were in Aberystwyth, I can remember being told to get off the beach because there was a mine drifting.

I think when war broke out, we were on holiday at Udimore, we took a day trip into Rye, and we were up the church tower and could see evacuees arriving at Rye station. When we got home, my eldest sister had accepted two evacuees to stay with us, she was about sixteen at the time. They weren鈥檛 entirely satisfactory, so later we had another one. I was evacuated with my next two sisters to Ware in Hertfordshire. I assumed that since there were three of us, the three of us would be in one home. Well, the train took us to Liverpool Street, I remember it was pouring with rain, anyway, we then went to Ware and we marched in a crocodile to the Methodist Church hall, with one trunk for the three of us. We were sitting in the church hall while the names were called out; my two sisters names were called out, but not mine, I was taken to stay with another family, and I remember I cried and cried and cried, I was seven years and one month. As I watched them going I don鈥檛 think I can put into words how I felt, just totally devastated and bewildered. I came from a Methodist family where there was no alcohol, and that evening the family took us out into the country, they had a son, a bit older than me, and they brought packets of crisps out to us from the pub, which was a totally foreign world to me. We didn鈥檛 have a car, but these people did. I didn鈥檛 stay very long with that family; the son had roller skates, and he put one on, and I put one on, and I fell over and grazed my knee. Within a comparatively short time it went septic, but by that time I was moved into accommodation with my two sisters, and the man there was a first aider. He poulticed my knee and quite a big poison blister came up, and he pricked it and poison squirted which was fascinating, since he was making it better; one respected him for that, but one couldn鈥檛 respect the first people for just putting a plaster on a dirty wound. I went to the school which was just across the road from where we were now staying. From the school one could see the barrage balloons over London. The siren went one day, and we all trooped down into the shelter until the all clear went, and one Saturday night, a bomb was dropped down the road, and I slept through it. When we went to the church the next morning, the windows had been sort of sucked out by the blast, and there were two little cottages which had been demolished. That was the only experience of bombing that I had. Then my mother came to see us, she just came for one day, she鈥檇 stayed in Hastings for a little while, and she brought some apples from the apple trees in the garden, they were beautifully rich, red, ripe. Something lovely.

My family is part of Wards shop, and we had a tailoring workshop. My mother was delegated the job of trying to set up a tailoring workshop for the tailoring staff, but not here in Hastings. What was looked for was something in Aberystwyth, where the RAF were getting trained and getting their uniforms. One of the jobs they had to do was cut out little circles in the leather helmets so that the earphones could go in, they also had to shorten trousers, all sorts of things. Eventually my mother came and took me to Aberystwyth and we took a room in a house, I had to share the bed with her. The people wouldn鈥檛 put a blackout up, so at night we couldn鈥檛 do anything, because we couldn鈥檛 turn the light on once it was dark. Anyway eventually we managed to find half a house, and my sisters came and joined us, and my aunt, whose husband was a pharmacist in Claremont, came and joined us with their two children. The summer of 1941 was a lovely hot summer, and my cousin and I used to spend a lot of time on the beach in Aberystwyth. While we were there, my father came and visited us on embarkation leave, and he took us to Cader Idris, and we climbed up. The next day we went to Plynlimmon, and then he went off; my mother knew where he was going, but we didn鈥檛. A few days later my mother received a telegram, which had one word on it 鈥� 鈥渁rrived鈥�. Now that was just after HMS Hood had been sunk in the North Sea, between here and Iceland, which was where he was going. The postmark on the telegram was Reykjavik, just that one word, but what a powerful word, it was all that was needed. She was very relieved.

Towards the end of the summer of 鈥�41, my aunt took me and her two children and we stayed at Horam, and we went to the local school. I can remember having macaroni cheese, it sticks in my mind because it was so nice. We鈥檇 walk to school, and there was a metal pipe over the stream, and we would balance over it, then one day after a lot of rain, the water was almost up to the pipe, and we decided not to. There were some Canadian soldiers there, and there were also pontoon parts being stored under the trees, so even in 鈥�41 there were plans for invasion. One Canadian soldier gave me two coins, I was already interested in collecting coins, and these two coins were Newfoundland coins, now I鈥檝e reflected since, that he gave them to me around about the time Newfoundland became part of Canada, again reflecting back, Canadian soldiers went on the Dieppe raid, and many of them didn鈥檛 come back, and I鈥檝e often wondered about that Canadian soldier, who gave a seven year old two coins. While we were there we had a day trip to Hastings, and we saw the sea front with all the poles with barbed wire on, and the pipe line, which went along the promenade to get fuel across to France 鈥� Operation Pluto. We also visited our home in Collier Road. My uncle had dug the garden up for vegetables. We鈥檇 been away from July 鈥�40 to September 鈥�41; I don鈥檛 remember going into the house, but at least we鈥檇 seen home. While we were away our house was just standing empty. Reading back, our government had discovered, either at the end of June or the first week of July 1940 that Hitler was intending to invade, so they decided, in that first fortnight of July, to evacuate every schoolchild from a thirty mile band along the coast. When you reflect, a fortnight to arrange for all schools to evacuate their children from a town like Hastings, in one sense, if there were calamities, it was not surprising, but we鈥檇 seen how Germany had swept through France, and what it had done to Poland.

Then my mother found a house for us to live in, in Leicester, where I had a great aunt and uncle. In December 鈥�41 we took over this house, and our furniture arrived from Hastings, and we had Christmas with my sisters. My eldest sister, by this time, had gone into the WAAFs. My great uncle was obviously reasonably well off, because later in 鈥�42 he bought a house in Leicester, and we rented it from him. So we lived there, my Mother and I and one sister, the next eldest was at teacher training college by then. The winter of 鈥�41 was a very cold winter, and at some point or other my father came back from Iceland, and he saw me at the elementary school, thought this was terrible, and arranged for me to go the Wyggeston Grammar School. I felt resentful that he was barging in, disrupting my life, but at least I stayed with the same group of boys for three years, which was a good thing; by then I had moved and moved and moved, and I felt totally disrupted; by the end of the war I had been to thirteen different schools. In early summer of 1942, my mother and my middle sister contracted diphtheria, and they had to go into isolation. My youngest sister and I had to go to the doctor and have swabs taken, we were nine and thirteen. I have no recollection of who looked after us, it may have been my eldest sister with compassionate leave, or my great aunt. She was a most remarkable person, when you think, after that initial evacuation, I鈥檇 gone to stay with her, and I felt secure, with a maiden aunt; until she died, I always had tremendous respect for her. We had six weeks off school, then six weeks summer holiday, a long break. Towards the end of the time we went to visit the hospital, but we could only see my mother through the window. I can remember the thousand bomber raid over Germany, because in Leicester these bombers kept going over and over and over. You were always aware of the war, we had a map on the wall, and were watching where the front line was. While we were there I knew that my father was expecting to go across to France in the invasion, and I can remember quite clearly hearing the radio at school saying the Normandy landing has started. It must have been in the staff room, but we could hear this during lunchtime playtime. My father went over on D+1, he was an older soldier, so he was in the Pioneer Corps, but among other things, he was in charge of prisoners of war, in France. I can remember him telling us afterwards that when they arrived at Caen, where there鈥檇 been a massive battle, there was so much debris tanks couldn鈥檛 get in.

We came back from Leicester just after VE day. I can remember VE day in Leicester, we all went down to the market square, by the Cathedral in the morning for a service of thanksgiving, and it rained; everybody knew it was wonderful. We went down to the town centre again in the evening, on the top deck of a tram, and I can remember for the first time in my life seeing somebody drunk, weaving his way across the road.

Then, as soon term ended, we had plans to come back to Hastings. A neighbour in Hastings told us that somebody had driven up saying they had instructions to take our furniture away, and they said 鈥渘o you haven鈥檛鈥� 鈥� so there were thieves even in those days. My sister, who was by now a teacher, and I came on to Hastings in order to receive the furniture; my mother and my younger sister were in Leicester to pack it up. I can remember that train journey, coming down from Charing Cross to Hastings. It was a lovely sunny day, and of course in those days you had drop windows, and the lovely bends around Wadhurst and such like, it was absolutely fantastic, a marvellous moment; whenever now I go on the train, I remember that homecoming, it鈥檚 such a scenic route. Then there was VJ night, and they made a bonfire on the West Hill. My cousin and I were playing and he cut his backside on a bit of broken bottle, so I think I actually missed the bonfire, because he was being patched up. There was a gathering of people, it was an important day. We had the main shop in Queens Road, and one also where Prontaprint is now, but it was bombed while we were away, we came back to find a hole. That was the school wear shop, in due course there was war damage money; my father bought a radiogram with the money, so we never rebuilt that. So that takes us through the war, the memories are bits of jigsaw, and you never have the whole jigsaw.

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