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Continued from Chapter1

JOHN BOWMAN JORY —Evacuee Chapter 2 of 2

Mum goes back to Croydon
The Blitz eased in 1941/42 and Mum returned to Croydon although soon to be pestered by flyng bombs.
This left me at the ripe old age of 8 to fend for myself. I’m sure Mum wouldn’t have seen it other than leaving me in Auntie’s tender care .Well a couple of tales to make you wonder!!
Agnes
Mum and I had both been instructed on what to do if Agnes( Auntie’s 35 year old step daughter) showed signs of having an epileptic fit. Face slapping with a newspaper was supposed to prevent the patient going into a coma.Seeing Auntie do it —sometimes it did and sometimes not.
So it’s a winters evening, I can’t recall why there was only Agnes and I in the house , but that was the case and the worst happens ,Agnes begins to flop and I begin to slap with the newspaper. .May be too well because good old Agnes pulls out of it and comes to find me slapping her face.
I think the scissors were too blunt for the job but she grabbed a pair and threatened to “cut my head off”.
I made for the stairs which lead directly from the living room and were enclosed by a door with a single slide bolt which I hastily slammed and waited for Auntie’s return.

Rations
Auntie believed rationing was for other people and was convinced that when clothes were rationed all the crofters around, who never went anywhere, would donate their coupons to her and son Colin.
And so it was when sweets were put on ration that Auntie had control of my coupons, and my sweets because I never saw any.
Only 8 but I knew how to read and write and how to nick and lick a stamp but no post box. So offer to go up the Ken valley and open the sheep gates to save postie getting in and out and managed to get a letter, telling Mum in Croydon what was going on, into his collection tray.
Mum writes to Auntie —Auntie sends sweet coupons to Mum -Mum sends me a food parcel every month.
Job done —not quite -16 year old Colin felt entitled to contents of my parcel .So for something like a year I had to find different hiding places each month. The best place was in the tin bath on the kicthen wall —No one ever used that and the rats couldn’t get at it.
Out of my Sight
It seemed to me that Auntie sent me to bed early on the slightest little pretext often without tea. Maybe she was still trying to preserve the rations.
Uncle would take pity and in the summer time would lob radishes and carrots up through the bedroom window(unwashed)

Mealtimes were pretty satisfying and I can’t ever remember being hungry .Considering that this was war time and city dwellers in particular were on short rations we seemed to live as I recall with plenty to eat.
Locals made their own butter and cheese and of course oatmeal and flour were bought in 5 stone(70lb)(30kg) sacks and everyone made their own scones etc- soda scones —treacle scones —pancakes-potato scones (lovely fried)
Potatoes were harvested and ”clamped” to protect from frost and provide a year long supply.
If you went visiting, as I frequently did, you were always offered food and usually milk to drink. Often warm, straight from the cow..
Everyone inc’ Uncle kept chickens and a pig .Starting early in the year as a piglet it was fattened up to around 25stone (350lb) and killed in Nov. The killing and preparation process needed a few pairs of strong hands to help remove the pig from its sty where it had been slaughtered and string it up on a goalpost arrangement to bleed and be shaven using masses of water boiled on a nearby pot.
I think it was hung for 24/48 hours and then butchered. The resultant cuts lasted for a year in one form or another inc’ pork joints and chops-trotters-brawn —potted head- and of course bacon. The latter took the form initially of 6 slabs (3 from each side of the pig) approx’ 15” to 18” square. These were placed in a tin bath completely covered in salt and kept under a muslin sheet in the Front Room for 6 weeks.
A local expert would come along and roll and string the slabs to produce cylinders of bacon.(hams)
Each living room ,usually with stone floor and scrubbed table would have a minimum of 6 hooks in the ceiling for the storage of the hams
At this stage they were ready to eat but having lifted the ham down and cut off the required number of rashers they had to be soaked in water (steeped) over night to remove the excess salt .Even so they always tasted very salty.
Porridge was also prepared overnight and left to simmer again with plenty of salt/ and in the summer quite often a maggot or two .Honest I do not tell a lie. It would depend on the location of the hooks relative to the table, but at the Dalziels of Strahanna one was directly above the other and plop” .Fish it out or increase your protein intake.
During school summer holidays I spent some time at Strahanna and helped with haymaking etc as I did also at Fingland with the Mc Cubbins but the closest home to Stroan freggan was a few hundred yards up the hill at Stroanpatrick where the Hunters lived.

Self Sufficiency
Being closest Stroanpatrick was where where I spent most of my “farm” time. Haymaking -Corn harvesting and rabbit catching, stacking- thrashing and resultant rat catching- lambing sheep —dipping —shearing- face washing ready for market. The worst job was standing inside huge sacks and trampling down the newly sheared fleeces as they were thrown in on to our heads .Most of these activities were communal particularly dipping and shearing when the locals would band together whereas at lambing time each shepherd brought in outside help
At home my jobs included tending to broody hens —caring for the chicks (stock had to replenished) as the broilers were used for the pot. Guess who the executioner was.

Schoolboys adventures
Looking back now and comparing with later standards our daily play was an adventure and this was made so to a great extent by the scattered nature of the dwellings and the local geography.

Army
The army held massive exercises in the area and is was quite common to see troop and equipment convoys go through on one occasion lasting all day with Trucks —Field guns —tanks —Bren gun carriers —Armoured cars -Motor cycles and a variety of equipment and supplies but best of all for me the soldiers themselves.
The other 14 at the school lived as I’ve said in 2 valleys which left me as the only child living on the through road , albeit a very small one. So much so that it was common place for vehicles , in particular armoured cars where drivers visibility was limited, to end up off the road and bogged down .
Net result the occupants were billeted in Uncles garage or in the school room for about a week at a time until recovery equipment got them out, usually when the convoy returned from their exercises.
Compared with being on exercise they were comfortable and well fed with oatcakes and scones and of course ham and eggs.
They usually had a good supply of chocolate and as the only kid on the block that’s where I came in.
As we were the only roadside house for about 9 miles Uncle always thought they ditched their vehicles purposely .As a first world war soldier he no doubt knew the form.

Airforce
As mentioned earlier the German bomber raids were in the main repulsed, I believe to some extent because they were nearing the limit of their range .In the event a Dornier 217 was damaged- 3 crew parachuted to safety but the pilot was killed when he tried to crash land 2 miles to the east of Stroanfreggan at Cornharrow (home of another family of Hunters —related to the Stroanpatrick Hunters)
Unfortunately one of the army weapons disposal squad lost a finger or two when a cannon shell he was handling exploded.
I was in Auntie’s front room when a medic brought him in and asked to use Auntie’s phone to summon help.
How communications have changed.
I remember thinking how unlucky the pilot was to have been forced down at that particular spot. It was generally open boggy ground but a 5ft high dry stone wall stood in his path no more than 30 yds from the first ground marks.
In the early hours of the morning we had been awoken by aircraft noise and gun fire but had been unaware that a plane had crashed so near.
At daylight we saw them -3 German aircrew in leather flying gear standing on a hillside about half way between the schoolhouse and the crash site at Cornharrow .Doors remained locked and Uncle rang policeman in Dalry who duly turned up single handed in an Austin Ruby driving past the school house ,parking ,walking up the hillside and “collecting” the Germans and trundling off to the cell in Dalry police station.
With their bulky flying jackets the little car was packed tight.
After the Bomb disposal and other debriefing groups had done their work we were allowed to visit the crash site.A spot vivid in my memory I could take you their now. It was in fact off to the left of the Cornharrow track about halfway between the Moniave Road and Cornharrow.
We returned to the site for many weeks treating it as an adventure playground and collecting souvenirs.

Extra school activities
Willie Hunter from Cornharrow was a school friend I visited regularly but this meant a bicycle ride
But my return time summer or winter seemed of little concern to anyone and so, it was often after dark or at least moonlit when I road my bicycle home .Passing the Dornier crash site was eerie but as I kept moving it never seemed so scary as actually stopping to open the gate as I had to at the road end.
Even though there was no traffic I still had to have a shielded lamp on my bike.
This was a gas lamp which required lumps of carbide to be placed in a lower chamber on to which drops of water fell from the upper reservoir thus generating a gas which issued through a nozzle set in the middle of a reflector. The draw back was the need for a naked flame to ignite the gas, so it had to be lit before setting out unless you carried matches. Running out of water was never a problem!!

The stream provided a good playground in the summer and had a good supply of edible sized trout which were sometimes “guddled” (caught by hand from under the rocks).
The stream however in full spate after heavy rains was a dangerous place.

A pane of glass in a schoolroom window broken by me remained unnoticed by Auntie mainly because of the war time requirement for wire mesh and the removal of the remaining shards .Unnoticed that is until Tommy Gillespie reported the matter to Auntie after he and I had had a falling out.I don’t blame him ,I had promised a cigarette ,which I didn’t possess, if he would run through a patch of nettles.

The Royal Mail van called every weekday and usually while we were having school midday break. .Alternate drivers were Hugh and Anton. The mail van was a little old Austin 7 and on more than one occasion we gathered round the back of the van as the postman got in after making his delivery and just lifted the rear up so that the wheels were off the ground. Much spinning of wheels and flying grit when we let go.

Leaving Stoanfreggan
Uncle had decided to move premises into the small towm of Dalry.This gave him the opportunity of a hardware retail outlet as well as his blacksmith and engineering work.
As part of the SF lease agreement Uncle had to leave his garage site in its natural state and Dad came up from Croydon to help Uncle dismantle the site and subsequently took work in Gelston in Autumn of 1943 where we lived until the end of ww2 in 1945.
The “village” life of Dalry and Gelston were never to match up in my memory to the islation and adventures of Stroanfreggan

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