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EVACUATED — BOTH GOOD AND BAD

I was born in 1928 and therefor was 11 when war broke out. Because of the break up of my family some years before, I was being brought up by my Grandparents. Grandad was a retired policeman on a pension and there was not much money to spare. We lived in a council house in Barking, Essex. I believe it is now part of Greater London. It was a generally built up area although green countryside was not too far away. However, with our family’s limited resources it was only occasionally that an Uncle could take us out to enjoy it. Few people had cars but my two uncles were among that few.

The outbreak of war was at the end of our school summer holiday and I was between schools and due to go on to a grammar school in Dagenham, the next town. The rules we were given in our town was that we should be ready for evacuation with the last school that had been attended. Therefor instructions came from the junior school I had just left and we were told to be at the local station at a certain time on September 1st. As we were on the edge of the town this was Upney, a station for the District Line, part of the London Underground system and not used by any main line trains. However, on this occasion, a steam train did come in and we all got on it with our previous teachers in attendance. We had a small case each, our gas mask in its cardboard box and, although I don’t recall, presumably some food. No-one knew where we were going but we were off waving to our families as we pulled out of the station. I cannot remember any details of the journey but we went through London and, I believe we stopped at Reading station where some food was given to us. It was then that rumour went round that we were going to Bath which turned out to be true. Arriving in Bath station I was impressed by the sight of Beechen Cliff towering above us. I was used to flat country in Essex.

It was late afternoon and we were led in a file to a church hall in the old part of the city where we were fed and waited to learn where we might be staying. Various people came to look us over and to make their choice. It seemed to be much later when a couple did select me and another boy and took us along the road to their flat which was over a service garage where the man was the manager. I always remember that first evening. We had postcards to send home to tell parents where we were and I was taken along the strange streets to the Post Office. They were dark as the blackout was just beginning. I do not remember what happened to the other boy but a school friend of mine who did not come with the main evacuation wanted to join me. My Grandmother brought him when she came to see me and to find out what sort of place I was staying at. He only stayed a few days as he was badly home sick and crying himself to sleep every night. His mother had to come to get him. He was no longer my friend after that!

I had a few weeks enjoying myself and exploring the town as the authorities did not know what to do with those of us due to go to grammar school. They had only expected the junior school children. But eventually I had a place in the City of Bath Boys School. I enjoyed that school, it was fairly new, well equipped and in lovely grounds. The only problem was that it was at the top of Beechen Cliff and that had to be climbed every day by a footpath and steps — lots of them. The winter of 1939 was very cold and I have the memory of those steps being covered with a sheet of ice. We pulled ourselves up on the handrail. Nothing put us off getting to school on time.

At home, the war was still far away and all seemed very safe although schools were only working for limited hours. Whilst it was felt I should stay away for the sake of my schooling if for nothing else, there seemed to be no problem with going home for the Christmas holiday. I was therefor on the train home (rail travel was cheap in those days). At about this time my foster parents in Bath decided that an evacuee was too much for them and arrangements were made for me to move. I think it arose from some conflict with their own son. I therefor was with new foster parents, a younger couple with two children of their own, a boy of about six and a younger girl. They lived in a modern house at Odd Down, a suburb of the City nearly in the countryside well the other side of Beechen Cliff. It was quite a walk to school but downhill this time. At times I took the bus but also I went back there for lunch so it was four times a day the trip was taken. It was still very cold in the New Year and I recollect getting a bus back which dropped me on the other side of a large playing field. Walking across it I was rolling large snowballs until they got too big for me to move.

I stayed there until the summer of 1940 thoroughly enjoying the semi-rural district and getting up to all the usual mischief which you expect from young boys. But we did not cause any harm except perhaps for a little scrumping. I was still enjoying the school and even went in on Saturday mornings to do some cross country running.

In that summer, the Council back home had ruled that I either had to join my own school or pay to stay at Bath. That of course was out of the question so, after being at home during the summer holiday, I was off to Ilfracombe to where my school had been evacuated. Originally it had been sent to a small town on the east coast but, by then, it had been thought too risky to stay there. I think further such thoughts affected a lot of evacuees at that time and it was difficult to know where would be safe. Where I first went in Bath was flattened in a German raid later and I often wondered what happened to the people I stayed with in the centre of the City. Some years later I visited there and could not recognise the area.

At Ilfracombe things were very different. For one thing it was a mixed school so I had to get used to girls being around. Also my school shared the buildings of the local Grammar school so it was a bit of a tight fit. This was eased when we took over the vicarage next door, using all the rooms as classrooms. We also used the church with classes in the nave. One of the national papers had pictures and a story about us in the church. There was a shortage of teachers, particularly men, so that resources were stretched to the limit and I have a vague memory of some classes having Monday off but attending on Saturday.

I stayed at several places in the three years I was at Ilfracombe. The first was with a family on the outskirts of the town in a house near the gasworks. There was no electricity, lighting was by gaslight and candles. It was also a little crowded as another boy in my class was also there but with his mother and sister. His father was captain of an oil tanker and the family thought that they all ought to evacuate. I think I was there about a year before being moved on to a house in the town that had been a boarding house, three or four stories high. The owners were out for what they could get and had crammed it with children to collect their allowances and then fed us on very meagre and poor meals. The main meal was often packet soup containing virtually no nutriments and bread. Going home shortly after, my grandmother took me round to the doctor who diagnosed anaemia. I, of course, did not stay but returned to a nice house and caring couple where I was well looked after. That is where I began to really notice the girls, particularly Lila who was in the class below me and stayed two doors away. After helping each other with our homework we would wander off into the countryside and woods. I wonder if our initials are still on the chestnut tree.

Unfortunately for me, the couple I was with were offered the chance of be landlords of a pub in Tewkesbury and left and so I moved again. This was with a real country couple and I soon enjoyed working with man on his ‘garden’. This was a couple of plots of land he had out in the countryside beside a farm and a small church perhaps a couple of miles from his home. There he grew all his vegetables and I learnt a lot from him about cultivation. He also kept a pig there. We, or sometimes just me, went round to all the small hotels in the district (there were still quite a number working with semi-permanent older residents seeking peace away from possible hostile areas) and collected their kitchen waste for pigswill. When that first pig had matured it was to be taken into the neighbouring farm for slaughter and I had a day off school to help. Not the sort of experience I would normally have had at home! It was quite a primitive operation in those days. The poor animal had its throat cut and it bled to death. Then it was strung up on a hook by its back legs and was slit open to get its innards out before being taken down to have all its hairs cleaned off. Then, back home to be cut up and some of it salted down for preservation. Virtually nothing was wasted although some of the innards were an acquired taste.

Soon after we were off to another farm to collect a new little piglet. It sounds nice but this was a little demon. It was a job to keep it in the barrow and, in the pig pen back in the ‘garden’, you always had to be careful near it as it continued to be ferocious. Mucking out, which I helped with, was then a very difficult operation. Another job we did was to keep the adjoining churchyard tidy, cutting the grass around the tombstones with a scythe. I quite enjoyed this life although it was hard work but I did acquire a feeling about gardening which has lasted me through life. And there were also times when I was still the small boy, joining the others exploring the woods and downs, going for quite long walks and enjoying the sea. I had not been taught to swim but I enjoyed playing in the waves and searching the beaches.

Being very aware of the war and the possibility of eventually being in the services, most boys joined one of the cadet forces. Attached to our school was an ATC unit which I joined, regularly doing the extra lessons expected of us. In the harbour was an RAF launch which was used to tow targets out at sea for bombing practice. Sometimes they took one or two of us out with them overnight to see what was done. The night I went it turned so stormy with rough seas that it was abandoned soon after getting the target out and we had to stow it in again and return. Before leaving Ilfracombe I went with them to camp at an operational air station at Portreath in Cornwall. Its main purpose was to receive aircraft damaged in raids and repair them. Several times we were taken up in planes on their test flights after repair.

At 15 and a few months before returning to Barking all the time I began to notice that girls were attractive. I began to prefer dressing in my smartest clothes and, in the evenings, joining my colleagues along the sea front promenade and see who we could get friendly with. Unfortunately, the local girls looked down on us evacuees but it was worth trying. At the same time another boy and I rented our own allotment and started our vegetable growing programme. By then, 1943, bombing raids on London were getting fewer and more of the evacuees were returning home making the school in Ilfracombe rather small. V1s and V2s were still unheard of then. By then my Latin class had only two pupils, a girl and myself. She was good at Latin literature and I was better with the grammar so it was easy for the teacher to see that we tied overall in the exams. It was decided, that summer, that the school would close at Ilfracombe and completely return to Dagenham. For anyone who wanted to stay, arrangements were made for them to join the Ilfracombe High School which would then return to normal with the buildings all to themselves.

I returned home permanently then and started my fifth year leading up to the School Certificate exam in my proper school. Unfortunately, the height of the V1 raids were when we were taking the School Certificate exams; a rather harassing background for an important landmark in our lives. The corridors of the school had been heavily sandbagged and reinforced to act as air raid shelters and, eventually, we had to retire to them to complete our exams. V1 bombs, doodlebugs, being pilotless small planes continued flying until the engine stopped when they dived to earth blowing up whatever they happened to hit. All very haphazard but, when you heard the sound of one coming, you stopped and waited for that cut off of the engine. Several exams had to have slightly extended times to allow for these interruptions. It was also the time when the V2s, the rockets, started coming. You did not hear these terrible things and it was said that, if you did hear it, your chance of survival was slim as it would be coming straight at you.

In spite of all this, most of us passed the exam and went on to higher things. I opted not to stay on for the sixth form but to go straight to college to commence my professional training. Soon VE day dawned and later VJ day with peace at last although there was still the prospect of National Service to come. I did not do anything special for VE day but I was one of those in Piccadilly Circus for VJ day. That was the first real peace that we were fully conscious of!

There were bad times being evacuated and living with strange families with different backgrounds and habits to one’s own. But, against this, I learnt some independence and a love of the countryside and the sea which I could not have experienced at home. Throughout my life my philosophy has been to enjoy any situation for what it is and get the best from it. This has kept me in good stead in many situations. Evacuation was both good and bad.

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