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MY WAR Part I
I was eight years old, when world war two broke out. In the morning I had climbed out of my old, familiar bed in London blissfully unaware that by that very same evening, I would be trying to sleep in a stranger’s home miles away from my family. Because very little was explained to children in those days, I had to try and work out what was happening for myself.

In the morning I had left for school with an unfamiliar rucksack, packed with my clothes, strapped to my back. When I had arrived other children were lining up, then (and I have never been able to understand why) we walked round and round the playground until we became “used” to the weight we were carrying. It was all very strange.

We didn’t return to our classrooms, instead we were guided towards the main road where parents and well-wishers had gathered around a fleet of coaches. It was all very puzzling. It was then I caught sight of my father, frantically waving his arms in my direction, with my brother Leonard, who was a few years older than me, by his side. Later, I learned, my mother had stayed at home with my baby brother, because she had been too upset to see us off.

My father must have also been too upset to tell us we were leaving our family behind to face the bombs and they didn’t know when, or even if, we would be seeing them again. Instead he spun us a tale of my brother and me going off on a long holiday and that Leonard must look after his little sister. With little time for “Goodbyes” we were seated on the coach and we were on our way. Suddenly, we caught sight of our father running along the pavement. He beckoned for Leonard to come to the window and pressed a coin into my brother’s hand.
“Look Joan” Leonard said as he sat down and opened his hand. “Look, a whole shilling. Dad said we had to share it” Such riches. Like most children, in those days, my brother and I weren’t given our own pocket money to spend, so the pair of us grinned and playfully pushed each other, all the way to the station.
If there had been a crowd of us before, it was unbelievable now. Hundreds of children and teachers with placards showing the schools they had come from. It seemed as if all London was there. Were all these children coming on holiday with us? I asked myself. Anxious and a little bewildered, I reached for my brother’s hand. “Don’t worry, Joan” he said, as he gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m here” He had tried to sound grown up and in control. Many years later, he confessed he had been just as scared as I was!

Our destination (and even our teachers hadn’t been told) was Northampton, a mere hour or so from London. Why the powers that be had decided to uproot us and send us there I will never know. For, in just a few weeks time, our parents would be sitting in their shelter in London, with bombers throbbing overhead, while we would also be sitting in our shelter in Northampton, sheltering from the aeroplanes on their way to bomb the factories in Coventry. But that was for the future, now we were just arriving.

Something else I couldn’t understand on our strange outing was our visit to Bective Road School. First we were all given brown paper carrier bags then asked to pass a long line of ladies who had a whole pile of “goodies” behind them. Huge chocolate bars, tins of evaporated milk, masses of fruit, mountains of sweets and other delights. What Leonard and I, and probably the rest of children couldn’t understand was “Why were all these ladies crying while they were dropping these same goodies into our bags?” Not only that, they kept saying things like “Poor dears. Just look at them. Just think what their parents must be going through” Since we children were now all convinced we had come to kiddies Heaven it just didn’t make sense.

It also didn’t make sense when we were told that we were now all going off to our homes. Yes, we loved our overflowing carrier bags but it seemed strange we had come such a long way to collect them! Little did I realise that we were not going back to our parents that night, but being pushed onto unsuspecting strangers. Because war had broken out so suddenly, there had been little time to prepare for the thousands of evacuees from London and other major cities. So our hapless billeting officer kept knocking on doors and pleading on our behalf.

Because my poor brother had been told to “keep an eye on me” he had found himself in the girls section. This, we later realised, wasn’t altogether a good idea. For where as families might just be persuaded to take a girl, no one really wanted a boy. Boys, they thought, were trouble. So it was on a steadily darkening September night, just Leonard and I trailed after our very unhappy billeting officer. As our little legs grew steadily more tired we sat down on a kerb at the roadside, trailing our feet in the gutter. By then, with me shedding a few tears, and my brother’s arm placed around my trembling shoulders, these two little evacuees must have looked a sorry sight. So forlorn, in fact, a couple’s heart was touched and our very relieved billeting officer called us over to our new home. So, it was, later that night I crawled into a strange bed with the only re-assurance being that my brother’s bedroom was next door. Just before I closed my eyes, I was still asking myself, “Why are we here?” and “What are my mum and dad doing?”

Many years later I learned that my parents, knowing they may never see us again, did something they had never done before. They drank a full bottle of wine, to kill the pain. For one moment they had had three noisy children in their home. Now, they just had toddler Paul who would be going to live with his auntie the very next day. The pain of losing us, the fear they may be killed in a bombing raid, overwhelmed them. The very fact that they had never drunk alcohol before opened the floodgates until they fell into each other’s arms and cried their hearts out. War was a terrible thing and it didn’t help to know millions of others were going through the same, bitter experience.

I don’t know when I also had to face the same bitter truth. What I do know is that I was terribly unhappy at our first billet. True they had bought a Christmas tree that year but that, I soon realised, was mainly for their own little girl. My own comforting Christmas bush grew on a piece of wasteland just over the road. I stood quietly sobbing in the snow as I tied pieces of coloured paper to its bare branches. As I wished and prayed a miracle suddenly burst through the gloom, for I noticed my father watching me intently from close by. He had cycled up from London to see how we were getting on in our new home. Having just seen my face he didn’t really need to ask how we were being treated. So it was, with a very big push from my father, another miracle took place the very next day. For Leonard and I were moved into a far happier home, with the fun loving, children loving Annie and Bill .

“Auntie” Annie as we were asked to call her, was huge and had the type of figure you could hug and cry on. It was every child’s dream when the going got tough and you sat frightened in the air raid shelter. “Uncle” Bill worked his own brand of magic at times like this. For he had been a soldier in the First World War so quickly taught us a few of their marching songs. “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile” cheered us up in the shelter just as it had encouraged the soldiers who had gone before. Through old soldier Bill, sitting alongside us, generations were reaching out to each other as we were once again facing our old enemy.

When the Anderson shelter had first arrived Uncle Bill had had to dig a huge hole in order to sink it in the back garden. Not content to simply cover it with grass, as most of our neighbours did, he had planted all manner of flowers over the top, with nodding pansies and marigolds leading to its entrance. Finally, as the finishing touch, he had laid a white tiled path to guide us to the shelter in the pitch-black nights which lay ahead.

Leonard and I were sound asleep when the air raid siren first wailed over Northampton. Quick as a flash I rushed to my brother’s side and shook him in blind terror. “Leonard, Leonard” I shouted, “Wake up! Wake up! The sirens have gone and we’re going to be killed” In a matter of moments we were all sitting in the shelter, biting on our rubbers (to stop our jaws breaking) with plugs in our ears and gas masks at the ready. Even Auntie Annie and Uncle Bill looked as white as the tiles outside.

Looking back, it’s amazing how quickly we all became used to getting up in the middle of the night and trooping off to the air-raid shelter. It is also amazing how fear went and we discarded our earplugs and bits of rubber and, sometimes, even forgot our gas masks! Even more amazing was Auntie Annie braving the bombs, to dash inside the house, to make us cups of cocoa while Uncle Bill conducted us in one of his sing-a-longs.

Even after all night air raids we still had to go to school the following day. For a time we only attended school for half a day. The other half was either spent in the village hall or wandering around the countryside with our teachers. Then, we evacuees, along with most of the local children, went to the very modern Bective Road School which stood on the top of a very steep hill. At the bottom of the hill was another, much smaller and older school, where the rest of the local children went. Once the Northampton children realised we evacuees were being better treated than they were, our very own children’s war broke out! As, most of the time it was simply name-calling, it did us all far more good than harm. For it was then, amidst the “Get back to London” and “Northampton kids smell” an unusual type of bonding took place, for amidst the yelling and excitement of it all, locals and evacuees alike, forgot the real war raging all about us.
My own battle, with the Northampton kids, didn’t last very long. For it was unexpectedly cut short by the school doctor who decided I wasn’t strong enough to tackle the steep Bective Road Hill everyday. So, without any more ado I was cast into the “lions den” of the local school and left to fend for myself in the best way I could. Leaving my old school friends, for me, was almost as traumatic as leaving London itself. For now I felt abandoned and completely alone. However, as they say, “As one door closes another surely opens” and this, for me, came in the form of suddenly discovering I had an imagination. Now, when no one wanted to be my friend, I had an instant escape route. For as the local children laughed and skipped about the playground, I would sit in a corner, quietly creating a magical world of my own.

If I was alone at school, we certainly weren’t alone at Auntie Annie’s. With her big heart and outstretched arms she made way for two more evacuees. I would like to say Leonard and I were just as welcoming to June and John, when they first arrived on the scene. Truth to tell, we weren’t at all happy about it. For Auntie Annie and Uncle Bill were ours and not to be shared. Not with anyone. Certainly not with two other children who also had just left their parents. However, our very understandable jealousy didn’t last for long. For as June and I lay in the darkened bedroom and swapped stories, and Leonard discovered someone who actually wanted to play “Cowboys and Indians” with him, we soon agreed they weren’t so bad after all!

There were two other people also living in the same home. Bert and Sid , who were awaiting their call up papers from the War Office. Bert, the elder, was the joker and sometimes pretended to hang me on a hook on the wall. He would lift me up by my legs and, amidst my mock screams for mercy, he would threaten to walk away and leave me hanging there! Of course, he never did.

Sid, on the other hand, was the quiet one and attended the local chapel. One Sunday, Sid took me there with his fiancé, and even after he had left to fight in the war, I would often attend by myself, on a Sunday morning. Sometimes I would also attend the impressive Kingsthorpe Church which was bedecked with tattered flags recalling previous battles. At other times I would attend Chapel and remember Sid who was now “fighting the good fight” we knew not where. Truth to tell both Church and Chapel comforted me when I was evacuated. Once, when I knelt in the Church I picked up a Sunday school card which showed Jesus surrounded by little black children. With the faith of a very young child I prayed, “I would like to preach to black children when I grow up. Just like Jesus is doing there.” Years later I suddenly remembered that prayer when I became a missionary in Mississippi. So, it could be said that Northampton set me on the path to being not only a writer, but also a missionary. But that was in the future.

To be continued….

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