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MY WAR Part II conclusion.

The next unexpected twist of fate came one morning when I was eating breakfast. Suddenly I realised someone was missing. “Where’s my brother?” I innocently asked, fully expecting a mundane reply. Instead I was simply told, “He’s gone to another school, so he is now living in Wellingborough” Now-days, it would be simplicity itself to go in a car or grab a bus to the next village. But not then. For there was little in the way of transport during the war, and the next village might just as well be at the other side of the moon. Sufficient to say that Leonard and I didn’t meet up again until we returned to London, some four years later.

If it was difficult for buses and cars to travel in, it was even more difficult when it came to trains. Troops and ammunition packed every type of transport going, so the only way we were able to see our father, was on a couple of occasions when he mounted his trusty bicycle. There were also few telephones so we couldn’t even dial our parents for a spot of comforting re-assurance. For all we knew, they could easily have been killed when we heard of London nightly being bombed on the radio.

Food and clothes were rationed but we somehow managed to get by. Auntie Annie cut up some of her old, and very huge, frocks and made June and I dresses fit for Princesses. Uncle Bill also came into his own as he sat on the doorstep, with a mouthful of nails, forever repairing the entire family’s shoes. When he wasn’t busy cobbling, he was knocking off the earth of his freshly grown vegetables so as to eke out the meagre rations we were allowed. With very few sweets and other children’s delights it was up to Auntie Annie to try to give us a taste of the exotic. So, one evening she decided to make us “chocolate” from mashed potatoes and cocoa. It sounds revolting, it was revolting, but because we all wanted to please her, we pretended to like it and enthused “Oh, isn’t it lovely?” Looking back I don’t think this wise woman was taken in for a moment, as the recipe was never repeated again
So, me and my surrogate family settled into some kind of routine. Children’s matinee at the cinema on Saturday morning and, if funds stretched to it, we went again with the adults on Saturday evening. If an alert sounded it was flashed on the silver screen and it was up to the patrons to decide whether or not they wanted to leave for an air raid shelter. As it was, if we did decide to brave it out, cheers went up when the “all clear” appeared on the screen.

Sunday morning found me attending Chapel then, after dinner we would all trudge up to the cemetery to lay flowers on the family grave. Later, us children would sit outside the “Five Bells” drinking Lemonade while the grown ups went inside. Every weekend was predictable and, in those unstable days, we wouldn’t have it otherwise.

It was on the day Bert’s picture fell off the wall brave Auntie Annie’s mask slipped. She had opened her home to other soldiers while her own boys had served in the army. However, up until now she hadn’t shown how worried she really was deep inside. Now, as she scooped up the shattered glass her hands shook and she grew deathly pale. Bert was in a bomb disposal squad and his picture falling from the wall was a bad omen. She now only had to await the dreaded telegram from the war office.

The telegram which would starkly say, “We regret to inform you….” thankfully never arrived. Instead a letter from Bert told us of his miraculous escape on that dreadful day. His squad had been tackling a bomb and, at the last moment he had been sent back for further equipment. It was then it happened. All his group had been killed in the blast. Thankfully he had survived. Once again Aunt Annie’s hands trembled, as tears flooded her eyes. But this time they were tears of relief and our hearts went out to her.

Although my parents were living in the hell of the London bombing, their thoughts were very much with us children scattered throughout the midlands. It was far too dangerous to bring us home, they decided, but they would still prefer us to be staying with our own flesh and blood rather than with strangers. Leonard was very much into his studies but me..well maybe I could be moved to one of my cousins so that I could be closer to my little brother. So it was that I was once again uprooted and sleeping in an unfamiliar bed in Mansfield. True, I was told, it was with my Cousins Beattie and Fred, with my other brother living close-by. But it was still a huge upheaval just the same.
The toddler I had kissed “Goodbye” had grown beyond recognition and was now going to the local primary school. Although Paul had “landed lucky” with a doting auntie, uncle and three teenage girls to spoil him, he was still haunted by the fact that his mother had simply upped and left him when he was scarcely more than a baby. Years later he told me how he had watched through the window for her, and how the rain streamed down the pane only to be matched by his tears streaming down his face. Even after parent and child were re-united, the picture of that little boy eternally waiting for his mother was so etched upon his mind he became incapable of forming a permanent man/woman relationship for the rest of his life. But that was in the future. Now, as far as both of us were concerned, I was now the elder sibling and felt the same need to protect him as Leonard had with me.

Life in Mansfield now took on a rhythm of its own. As Beattie and Fred were keen Salvationists there were no visits to the cinema and certainly no visits to the equivalent “Five Bells” public House. Still there was plenty to do on a Sunday and I banged my tambourine with the best of them. I enjoyed going to the open-air meetings and thrived on the thought of saving the world and preached Hell and damnation with gusto. It would appear I had found my calling!

A year or two later an even greater calling took place, one my parents had been eagerly awaiting over the past six years. Although London was still being bombed they considered it safe enough to bring all their children back home. So it was Leonard, Paul and myself were re-united with our tearful parents. True, we were still sheltering from Hitler’s bombs, but at least we were encouraging each other. For a time we even tried to get our tabby cat Tibbles to join us in the shelter, but he would claw and scratch his way out of our arms and chase the red-hot shrapnel when it plummeted to the ground. Then he would let out a mighty “yowl” as nose or paw inspected it. One night, my father and I once had a close encounter with shrapnel as we headed back home from the cinema. The fragments of bursting shells plunged from the Heavens and dad crouched over me as we heard it thudding against the other-side of the fence we were leaning against. It was all very frightening.

Just as we had done in the midlands, we children still had to attend school after all night air raids. Then, just as the aeroplanes began to leave us alone, Hitler launched his secret weapons. V1’s and V2’s. Seeing their children daily leave for school must have been a nightmare, as far as my parents were concerned. For although the schools had shelters they were on the surface and not buried deep in the ground, like ours. Every parent, at that time, must have continually questioned as to whether or not they were doing the right thing. All they could do was hope and pray the war would soon be over.

Then, quite suddenly it was. Sadly not the war in the far east but it was as far as Europe was concerned. As a now, very independent fourteen year old, I headed for Buckingham Palace to celebrate our victory along with thousands of others. We shouted for the King and Queen who had stubbornly remained in London during the blitz and, after they had appeared we again shouted. This time it was for Winston Churchill who had somehow managed to capture the spirit of the nation and said just the right words at just the right time.

Now it appeared we were victorious, but at what a cost. For not only did people sacrifice their lives and their bodies but we evacuees in part, were left with the grim reality that life could never be safe and secure. That our relationships, our dreams and our children’s world could be shattered overnight. Re-bonding with our parents was as painful for them as well as for us. For they had waved their little children goodbye and now we had each returned, so many years older, carrying our own problems and uncertainties. We had seen too much, been through too much for life to be the same. Only one thing was for sure in this sad, mad world, and that was we evacuees never wanted to see war again. All three of us, later, set out on a spiritual quest in the hope it might provide the answer. For Paul it was studying Eastern religions and philosophies. For Leonard it was with the peace-loving Quakers. For myself, it was the Unification Church and their international weddings which are designed to bind nation to nation.

Finally, I did return to Northampton to look up Auntie Annie and Uncle Bill. I took my husband and my own two children with me this time. Sad to say, the mustard gas which had caused this brave man so many chest problems, in the past, had now affected his hearing. So, for most of my visit he could only nod and smile. Still, after I returned home I wrote an article for their local newspaper so its readers could know how kind these people had been to us. For I know it is purely because of them, I consider my time as an evacuee hasn’t been all bad. However, I sometimes grieve for the childhood we were denied and those lost and wasted years which can never be recovered. Perhaps, most of all, I feel pain for my parents who were robbed of the joy of rearing their own children. For not only our world changed, when we were evacuated, but also theirs.

THE LOST YEARS.
by Joan
I did not know, why my mother cried
When I caught the train that day.
I did not know, on that fateful ride,
How long I’d be away.
While teachers and pupils thronged around
I sought my brother’s hand,
Too awed to speak, I made no sound
Yet I knew he’d understand.

He did not know, that boy of ten,
What we were doing there.
He tried so hard to be a man
To show he did not care.
And yet, a tear crept in his eye,
Which he quickly brushed away.
To see my elder brother cry
Fair broke my heart that day.

They did not know, my parents then
As bombers throbbed above.
If e’er they’d see us both again
But they knew the power of love.
For icy fingers gripped their hearts
As they touched each empty bed.
The war had torn their world apart
There were no more tears to shed.

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