蜜芽传媒

Evacuation 1939-40 of children
from Leeds to Aberford part 2 of story

Who did we share a house with and how did we cope sharing with another family?
Number 2 ___ ____ was the home of Mr and Mrs E_____ and their grown-up daughter J___. The first thing I noticed at that house was that the cutlery on the table was very shiny and had really white handles.

Mr E_____ was an outdoor worker on the Becca Hall Estate. He wore leather boots with leather laces and leather gaiters 鈥� like leg shields. The boots and the gaiters were dull grey/black 鈥� dull with sweat, wet, and dirt. J___, the daughter, was not quite as old as E___ S_____ had been, but she had a poorly head and she couldn鈥檛 stand noise. I was always being told to 鈥渂e quiet鈥� and, of course, I couldn鈥檛 play ball or do any skipping. That would be too noisy. Instead I was taught to knit. The trouble was I never had the same number of stitches on my needles at the end of a row as I had had at the beginning 鈥� sometimes there were more stitches, sometimes there were fewer stitches - what happened between the beginning and the end I didn鈥檛 know.

J___ E_____ had a grey cat called Mephystopholes (Meffy for short), which she loved, and she used to talk to Meffy and hold her in her arms when she came home in the evening. J___ was in the Land Army. Margaret and I were not to touch Meffy as Meffy had a very sore ear, and she was likely to scratch us if we went near.

In the evenings after tea Mr E_____ sat in his armchair right in front of the coal fire, which was up off the floor, about level with the seat of his chair. Mr E_____ smoked a pipe and he took a long time mashing the tobacco into the end of his pipe before he lit it with a match. I thought he sucked the flame of the match right into him, but then the flame would flare up again. He would ask me to undo his boot laces, then he stretched out his legs in front of him, and he dozed, with his eyes just one little slit open. Every time I passed round him 鈥� to have my knitting stitches counted 鈥� he KNEW, and shouted that I had to 鈥渕ind his corns鈥�. (Corns are very painful little areas that people get on their feet.) From time to time Mr E_____ spat juices, out of his mouth, with great force. These bullets of spit landed on the red hot bars of the fire-grate, and burned, by bubbling back to dryness.

Whilst we were at Becca we went to the same Church school as we had done when we lived with Mrs S_____ and Mrs A_____, but we were now 2 陆 miles away from that school, and we had to set off at 7:30 every morning. Every day, for lunch, we had meat paste sandwiches, which we ate in the classroom, and we had a bottle of school milk.

I spent a lot of my class time twisting the front strands of my hair, and putting a clip in to try and make my hair curl. At the end of the day, we walked back the 2 陆 miles. It was often getting dark by the time we got back to Becca.

Sometimes Bramham Moor Hunt came riding through the fields, and Margaret had to open the big iron gates close to Becca Hall for the huntsmen to go through. I clung on to Margaret鈥檚 coat when they came near. I was so scared. The horses were like giants. They snorted and I was terrified of them and of the dogs who were always panting with their mouths wide open and whose tails went from side to side, like windscreen wipers.

Monday afternoons were often rabbit-shooting days - the men with guns would shoot rabbits in the fields for eating. The guns they used, were not as heavy as the ones we had heard during the air-raids when we were at our own home in Leeds.

Sometimes when we were on our way home from school the man who was the owner of Becca Hall and all the fields around it, used to come along the track in his car, and he would open his car door and take us back to Becca. His car had squeaky leather seats and had a lovely smell. The car had one front seat right across the car and that鈥檚 where we sat. There was a clock inside the car on the dashboard and it ticked. Mr F____ was a very nice old man.

What type of food did we get?
We had porridge every morning. Mrs E_____ was softly spoken but she could not cook porridge. The milk was usually only just warm, and the porridge oats were in lumps. In the evening when we got back from school we had boiled potatoes and spam or a small piece of bacon with the potatoes. We didn鈥檛 seem to have any vegetables. Instead of the brown gravy with little floaty meaty bits that we were used to, Mrs E_____ poured bacon fat from the frying pan over our potatoes.

Fridays were different though. We got the bikes out then and J___ E_____ took us back to the village 2 陆 miles again, to get fish and chips. Friday was the best night, 鈥榗os then we had a whole bar of Aero chocolate (the chocolate with little bubbles in it) all to ourselves.

What was it like in the blackout? Was the blackout dangerous?
Blackout was difficult. In your home you got used to it eventually. You didn鈥檛 have light bulbs in the light sockets 鈥� you might have one shaded light bulb on a stairway, as long as no light ever shone through a window. Outside however, it was more difficult. If it was a clear night, you relied on the moon, but if there was a lot of cloud, you had to feel your way with your feet and your hands. When I came home to my proper home from Becca, and Margaret stayed on with Mr and Mrs E_____ my mother and I visited Margaret. We went by bus and we had a long walk, which took us about an hour to get from the bus to 2 ___ ____. And when we said goodbye to Margaret again in the evening we had to walk all that way back again in the dark. There were no houses on this road at all, but there were about 3 sets of tall stone gate posts with round carved balls on top. Just in the same way as I had clung in fear to Margaret鈥檚 coat when we were surrounded by the hunt horses and dogs, so I now used to cling onto my mother鈥檚 coat every time we passed these gate posts because in the darkness I thought the posts were people, I thought the ball on top was a head, and every few steps I would be looking round, hardly able to breathe, thinking someone was coming after us.

The second part now, 鈥渨as blackout dangerous?鈥濃��

You could, as you can imagine, certainly fall more easily if you couldn鈥檛 see the kerbs and the ditches and the big stones. You couldn鈥檛 see vehicles except when they were nearly up to you, but on the other hand, vehicles didn鈥檛 travel nearly as fast as they do now.

What was it like in the country?
At our home in Leeds we had warm or hot or cold water and that water came through our taps. We had a lavatory inside the house and it was a lavatory that you could flush 鈥� you pulled a chain. We also had a proper bath in the bathroom. When we were evacuated water had to be pumped from an outside pump. We had to get washed in cold water in a bowl on the floor and never once, all the time I was an evacuee, do I remember having a bath. Our lives were quieter in the country. I loved the smells in the woods and the fields. In the early mornings going to school through Becca Park it was scary. We had to go through the fields and the gates. There were no people about but there were horses and cows there, and they were curious, that is they showed an interest in us, because we were going through their fields and they came towards us, but we thought they were coming after us, so we were frightened and often ran.

At the E_____鈥檚 in Becca the lavatory was across a brick yard which got very slippery with rain and with frost, and there was a well-head which stood up in the centre of the yard. You had to cross the brick yard to get to the lavatory. The lavatory was in the corner alongside the fence of the first field. At night, when you went to the lavatory before going to bed as soon as the cows heard our footsteps they came running across the field 鈥� no doubt they thought we had brought food for them. These frosty faced cows appeared like dragons, because by the time they got to the fence almost touching the lavatory door, their breath was coming out of their noses like smoke from dragons nostrils, and their big eyes shone like glass in the moonlight.

On the way home from school we sometimes saw the fox. We used to try not to stand on sticks on the walk home as we went along on the edge of the wood, as every time we stood on a stick we made a loud cracking noise and then we wouldn鈥檛 be able to see the fox.

All around Becca were dense areas of woodland. There were hundreds and hundreds of trees. Wood from the trees was needed now for the war effort and during my stay as an evacuee in Becca these trees were cut down and taken away on enormous lorries with chains around them to prevent the trees falling off. Day after day after day the lorries came and the trees were sawn down. The trees were needed urgently. They were needed for
q pit props in coal mines,
q they were needed to make Wellington heavy bomber aeroplanes,
q they were needed to make Mosquito light fighter bomber aeroplanes,
q the wood was needed for the power stations,
q for the furnaces in the munitions factories.
q For making dummy ships and dummy tanks so that the enemy would think that we had more people in our Navy and Army than we actually did have.
Some wood was needed near to Becca for fencing the fields, for gates, for general repairs, so some trees were sawn up into posts and planks neatly, in the woods, near Becca. The estate workers erected a sawing bench and used electric saws to cut the wood. I loved to watch the trees being fed towards the sawing blade and to be lifted off at the end of the sawing bench in neat lengths of clean white wood. Most of all I loved the smell of the sawdust.

In the autumn I loved the earthy smell of the leaves as we walked on the edge of the woods hoping to see the fox.

Do you know, after all these years, I went back to Becca just a few weeks ago and the air there still smells the same as it did then. I did the 2 陆 mile walk from the school up to Becca and the distance seemed just as long.

At number 2 ___ ____ we had a soft wind that moaned round the gutters at night. It was like having a companion.

Were we rationed?
A lot of food things were rationed. Sweets and chocolates 鈥� in some months the government would allow you to have 3 handsful of sweets in that month, and in other months they would let you have 4 handsful of sweets. Biscuits were rationed. Meat, tea, sugar, cheese, butter, eggs鈥� clothes and furniture were all rationed.

When we found ourselves hungry, really really hungry, we used to have some cocoa powder and dried milk powder and mix these together with a teaspoon and we liked to put a tiny amount of sugar in with that, but as you realise sugar was rationed so it wasn鈥檛 easy to get sugar from our mother. We used to mix the cocoa and the milk together and put that in a small piece of paper and then we would go out to play, and we used to dip our fingers into it and lick 鈥� like dip dab, but we could only do that mixture when we were at our proper home in Leeds.

Fresh fruit was very scarce. We didn鈥檛 get bananas but shops often had stickers that were pictures of bananas, still on their windows from before the war started. When there had been a shipment of oranges into the country and they had reached a shop in your area the news spread quickly and mothers would send older children to the shop with some of the family ration books. If you showed the shopkeeper 4 ration books you could have 4 oranges, every person had a ration book. And if you had only 3 ration books in the family you could only have 3 oranges and so on. At home in Leeds we kept hens so we had chickens and we had eggs. We kept rabbits, which my father killed for eating (you will remember that I mentioned that when we were at Becca men with guns shot wild rabbits, so that some people could have a little more meat to eat,). At home in Leeds we grew lots of vegetables in a large garden and we also had an allotment.

How did it feel when the sirens sounded? What time did the sirens go off the most?
Today in schools and work places people have fire practices. You have fire practices so that you know what to do and where to go in case one day you have a fire. During the Second World War we had to have siren practice and when we lived with Mrs S_____ at Bunkers Hill we went home to her house from school for lunch. On siren-practice-days we were given a piece of paper when we left the school with the time on it, and Mrs S_____ had to write on it what time we arrived home. This was to see whether, if there was a proper air-raid, we would have time to get to her house, or whether we would be safer staying at the school. We didn鈥檛 seem to get air-raids proper whilst we were at Aberford, but in Leeds we had many. Most frequently they occurred at night, because at night the enemy thought their aeroplanes wouldn鈥檛 be seen as easily as during the day, but in England we had searchlights which showed the planes up in the sky, even at night. On the evenings when my mother and I had visited Margaret at Becca, we found that the sky was lit up with searchlights, which were long, strong beams of light, moving across the sky, searching for enemy aircraft. We could see them clearly on our way back to Leeds on the bus.

When the sirens did sound that was the time to go quickly to the air-raid shelters. At home in Leeds our shelter was in the garden. We had an Anderson air-raid shelter, dug into the garden. When we were at home in Leeds we had the one small light on the stairway that I鈥檝e mentioned earlier, and as we had a landing we used to get undressed there, and we used to arrange our clothes neatly in a pile so that, if we had to get up quickly because there was an air-raid, we could get them back on really quickly and get into the air-raid shelter for safety. In fact there was eventually in the shops some special clothing. It was like jacket and trousers all-in-one and it was called a siren suit, and people, instead of waiting to put their own clothes on, could just put their legs in quickly, bring up the top part, zip the front, put the hood up and be into the air-raid shelter speedily.

It was at this time also that a new type of hat, particularly for children was either knitted at home or bought. It was called a Pixie hat, and it was especially useful at night to keep your head and ears warm when going to and from, and staying in the air-raid shelters.

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