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DEJA VUE - LILIAN’S STORY

From time to time the world is touched by evil which results in war. Sinister events occur and mankind does not learn from past mistakes. This fact was dramatically brought home to me when I revisited a village where I had spent part of my childhood during World War 2.

To start at the beginning I was born in the town of Gateshead exactly one year and one month to the day before war was declared on Germany. My parents and I lived with my Grandmother in a large old detached stone house. From the upstairs windows one could see the river Tyne in the distance.

As a very young child I knew no other way of life than that of a country at war. The scarcity of food and sweets due to rationing was not a hardship. Between the ages of two and three as all the family gathered around the radio to hear the news I increasingly became aware of a dreadful man called Hitler. The loss of my dummy which mysteriously disappeared when I was about three was attributed to having been “stolen by Mr Hitler”. While ill with measles my mother told me as each spot disappeared that it had been “sent to Hitler”. Just after I had recovered, radio broadcasts reported that Hitler was ill and my mother immediately attributed this was due to me sending him my measles. I remember feeling quite proud at the time. On reflection I suppose my Mother carried on a game to keep life as light hearted as possible.

Despite living reasonably near the coast I never saw the sea side. The building of sandcastles, paddling in the sea and looking in rock pools for crabs were only for the future as at that time beaches were covered in barbed wire to prevent an invasion and were a “no go” area. However on looking through old family photographs it appears that as a baby I had been taken to Marske by the sea in Yorkshire for a holiday during the Summer of 1939. On family days out during the war we visited safer inland places such as Morpeth in Northumberland which in those days was regarded as the country. To be taken to Saltwell Park in Gateshead was a special treat for me as there were swings and roundabouts to enjoy and a lake where I fished for “tiddlers”.

An air raid shelter with a corrugated iron roof was built at the bottom of our garden. During the night when the air raid sirens went off I was carried there wrapped in a blanket. We would remain there huddled together until the all clear sounded. Because my Grandmother who suffered from asthma became more frail we were provided with an “iron shelter”. This was a cage with a solid iron roof which was housed in our living room and occupied almost a third of the room. On some occasions we sheltered in a large cupboard under the stairs. During the long nights when we were awake due to air raids we would fill in the time doing jig saw puzzles. I remember on one occasion being taken upstairs and being stood on a chair to enable me to look through the bedroom window at flames leaping up from the river Tyne following an air raid on the Byker area of Newcastle. As soon as darkness descended black blinds had to be pulled down over all of the windows before switching on lights (in our case gas mantles) to prevent German aircraft being able to locate town areas. A chink of light showing from a house during this time known as “The Blackout” would quickly bring about a knock on the door by a member of the ��ѿ��ý Guard to tell you to adjust your blinds to block the light. At times during the day large silver balloons known as barrage balloons would appear in the sky to signal an impending air raid. When these balloons appeared we would rush home to take shelter. Other memories are of metal railings being removed from garden walls to provide for the war effort and a large part of our garden being turned into a vegetable patch as households were encouraged to grow their own vegetables.

I had two relatives who served in the army and were involved in Tobruk and El Alemein and from time to time they would visit us when home on leave. Fortunately they survived the war but both died in their fifties which was the life expectancy indicated to them on their medical discharge from the Forces. One Uncle was a member of the local Fire Service. I also had an Aunt and Uncle who lived in Hartlepool and during 1942 a land mine hit the lower promenade opposite their home. The resulting explosion blew off part of their roof and shattered all of the windows. Their youngest child was lucky to avoid injury from flying glass which landed in his cot while he was asleep. Their home was so badly damaged that the family had to be evacuated. Their eldest son Ronnie who was 12 years my senior came to live with us in Gateshead which was considered safer than living on the coast. His parents and the two younger children were also re-housed nearby. Bombs seemed to follow Ronnie around as on one occasion he was in the Odeon cinema in Gateshead when one dropped close by in an unsuccessful attempt to blow up one of the railway bridges over the river Tyne. My cousin stayed with us until he was old enough to join the army in 1943. This was also the year when my grandmother died.

As my father managed a wholesale warehouse in Newcastle he was exempt from joining the armed forces for a few years and it was not until December 1941 that he enlisted into the RAF. I have a group photograph signed by all of the recruits on his training course but unfortunately I do not know the location. I believe it was at Uxbridge but I cannot be certain. After training he was assigned to the RAF Police and spent some time in Wales before being posted to the Isle of Sanday in the Orkneys. While there my father made a wooden box divided into 24 compartments each lined with felt. He used this to send 24 eggs by post to the family in Gateshead and amazingly it was only on a rare occasion that an egg would arrive broken. My mother would post the box back to the Orkneys to be reused. The arrival of the eggs was a special treat as due to rationing powdered egg was often the only alternative. Sometimes my mother would pickle the eggs to make them last longer. I recollect them being kept in a pail filled with some sort of solution to preserve them. On the Isle of Sanday my father and his colleagues discovered an “Aladdin’s” cave in the upstairs room of the local post office. There were items of clothing and household goods such as table cloths which were not obtainable on the mainland at that time. Needless to say many of these items were purchased and parceled off to servicemen’s families all over the country. Memories of the Isle of Sanday include a photograph of my father with a group of people taken on Christmas day 1944.

From Sanday my father was posted to Wick for a short time and then to the small coastal village of Rosehearty near Fraserborough in Scotland where he manned a guardhouse at the entrance to the RAF base near the village. In early 1945 my mother and I were able to join him. We were billeted with two different families during our time there, the Cruickshanks and the McNabs. Mrs. McNab had two children, Jim and Barbara who were about six years older than myself. Her husband was in a Japanese war camp. As we were to stay in Rosehearty for some time I was eventually enrolled in the local village school which was very different to that which I had been used to.

At my school in Gateshead I was very much aware of the war which always featured prominently in our lives. For example I was issued with a gas mask which I carried around in a cardboard box and we were all encouraged to collect newspapers for the war effort. We were awarded badges starting at corporal and rising upwards to major depending on the number of papers we handed in.

In Rosehearty I found that the education of the children in my age group was more advanced and I had to quickly play “catch up”. For example I was still printing words whereas the village children had already mastered “joined up” writing. Initially I also had a problem with the local dialect with phrases like “D’ya ken” and the terms “queenie” and “looney” which referred to girls and boys respectively. Despite these problems this was the beginning of an ideal life as Rosehearty was like an escape to another world. I still treasure two letters written by Miss Buchan, my class teacher, which I found among my mother’s effects after her death.

In this part of Scotland there appeared to be no strict rationing of food and people seemed to be able to buy what they wanted. There was real ice cream sold in a little shop known locally as “Baldy’s” because of the owner’s lack of hair. I remember the ice cream forming a sandwich between the most delicious round sponge biscuits I had ever tasted. We were able to obtain gooseberries from the “goosegog man” who lived up a hill. At last I discovered what a beach and the sea really looked like. What’s more I could play on the sands and paddle in the sea which was amazing for a six year old at that time. I well remember the exciting visits to Fraserborough to watch the trawlers arriving in port and the fishermen unloading their catch.

The children had fancy dress parades marching around the village behind a pipe band which made us feel very important. The fancy dress parades were very competitive. I remember once Barbara McNab went as Eve dressed in a loin cloth with leaves stitched to it and a cleverly made snake draped from one shoulder round her back to her waist where the head met the tail. My mother managed to hire a Snow White costume for me which I was delighted with but unfortunately I did not win a prize.

From time to time we returned to Gateshead to check on our house using the overnight train from Aberdeen which was sometimes the Flying Scotsman. I recollect the train always being crowded mainly with servicemen with their kit bags and very occasionally we would have to stand for the entire journey. At some stations where we stopped volunteers offered us tea served in old re-cycled baked bean tins from trolleys. This of course always happened in darkness as blackout conditions had also to be strictly observed on the railways.

I recollect my mother being distraught by Churchill failing to be re elected in the 1945 General Election after leading the country during the war. I also remember the delight of Mrs. McNab on VJ day at the prospect of seeing her husband again. I have often wondered if he returned home safely from Japan. My Mother and I left Rosehearty late 1945 and my father was discharged from the RAF in March 1946.

It was to be many years before I revisited Rosehearty during a holiday in Scotland with my husband. It was like stepping back in time. We approached the village down a steep hill where I noticed several new properties had been built. I wondered whether this was the hill we had climbed to visit the goosegog man. The original old school I had attended was still there but a large new school building had been built behind it. The Kirk was just up the road from the school and seemed unchanged. The beach and little harbour remained much as it had been all those years ago. It was unfortunate that I could not remember the location of the two properties where we had stayed but it was reassuring to know that the place had not been affected by the passage of time. As I walked around taking photographs I was suddenly aware that the streets were devoid of people. I began to feel uneasy - almost as if I was trespassing.

Driving back to our hotel near Aviemore we stopped at a café for afternoon tea. The waiter asked us if we had heard of the planes flying into the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon. My husband and I exchanged glances as we both thought that he must have a vivid imagination and was delving into the realms of fantasy. On returning to our car we turned on the radio to be confronted with the awful truth. It was the 11th September 2001. The day I had chosen to return to the village where I spent part of the Second World War was the day of the terrorist attacks in America. Perhaps the streets of Rosehearty had been empty as people watched those horrific events unfolding on television as we had gathered around our radios all those years ago. It was chilling to think that with this dreadful incident the world was again in danger and our lives and freedom at risk once more.

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