大象传媒

My name is Fred Bailey and I was born April 3rd 1916 in the mining village of Silverdale in North staffordshire. After attending school and college I qualified as a teacher. In 1936 I took up my first post in Essex at a primary school at Chadwell Heath near the London area. The next year, 1937, I moved to Rainham in Essex. At the time there were some troops training in the area which gave us the idea that war might be imminent. At this time Hitler was rampant in Europe. When Neville Chamberlain came back from a visit to Germany, he waved a piece of paper saying that we had "peace in our time." We didn't altogether believe in that and I don't think the Government believed in it either because prior to the war breaking out, that August 1939, the Dagenham schools were evacuated by Paddle steamer to Norfolk.
On the week at the end of August 1939 my school was informed that they were being evacuated. On the Sunday war had not been declared but everything was in order for the evacuation to take place. My school had no problem in providing the teachers to accompany the evacuation as they all lived in the village. The primary school teachers found it more difficult as they lived in the villages in the surrounding area. They had a problem getting to school with no buses running and no trains timetabled. Teachers had no cars in those days. As it happened I had married the Easter before, and we were able to rent a house. We had arranged for the teachers who couldn't get in on a Sunday to stay with us.
On the Sunday we assembled in the school playground. Along came London Transport buses which had been taken out of service and were used for deprived children's outings. We finished up in Rochford, 20 miles up the coast where we had a very warm welcome. By lunch time all the children and staff were accommodated in billets. My wife came as welfare officer and our accommodation was with Mrs Halsey and Mrs Rankin, her mother, in the town square in Rochford. Mrs Halsey was later to receive a certificate from George VI commending her service to evacuation for which she was very pleased and proud. After lunch on that Sunday the Prime Minister came on the radio and announced that war had been declared. They thought that we would be bombarded from the air immediately, and we had a false alarm that night.
We shared the school with Rochford school, half a day each. After a time when there were no air raids parents took their children back to Rainham, so eventually the staff went back. We had given up our rented house in Rainham so we stayed in Rochford and looked after the children that were left. The children were able to be in school with the Rochford children, which went very smoothly. Molly(my wife)joined the W.I. and I joined the L.D.V.(that preceeded the Home Guard). I was included in the staff at the secondary school and we enjoyed a good social life. Molly was still welfare officer, and on one occasion the billeting officer passed on a complaint about shoplifting. Molly took the boy(aged about 8) to apologise to the shopkeeper at the sweet shop. The shopkeeper was pleased with the apology and gave a packet of sweets to the boy. They returned to the billeting officer only to discover they had been to the wrong shop, it should have been the greengrocer. When they went to the greengrocer he was very angry. The boy could not understand why because his mother was always happy when he did that at home!
After Dunkirk they realised that Rochford was on the edge of Southend airport and would probably be bombed. All our children and the Rochford children as well were evacuated by train. We were not told where we were going. We went north, then west then south and finished up in Lydney, in the Forest of Dean. The reception we had there was very different. It was early evening when we arrived, and we were billeted in the villages around. My children were in and around Yorkley. During the billeting, as I walked through the school gym one teacher or 6th former remarked and I quote "It strikes me that all these children could do with a damn good wash." To which I replied "and if you had been travelling on a train all day without facilities you would want a damn good wash too." This was an example of their attitude. We were regarded as foreigners, and there was no co-operation between each village. I suppose it was similar to receiving asylum seekers now. Eventually we were allocated our billet at about midnight. We were offered a weak cup of tea and asked if we had brought our ration books. On the following day we asked the billeting officer to move us and we ended up in Parkend where we were very comfortable and mixed with the family.
The school had a strange arrangement where the curriculum was directed by an organisation in the Lake District although the school was in Gloucestershire. The school was very Victorian - more like a prison! The set book for 7 to 8 year olds was "Pilgrim's Progress". I remember having a joke with my class and the head teacher came in and demanded to know what was going on. The classes were mixed, local children and Essex children together. I stayed there until I was called up to join the Navy.

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