History
Children were evacuated from London to the countryside leading up to WW2
Somewhere in the mists of memory I see a young boy standing in the school playground trying bravely to hold back the tears, there are other children, parents too, most of whom were showing some signs of distress . It was dark but a cold moon showed through occasionally, illuminating the scene. There were buses too and suddenly voices began giving directions, the children and parents began moving toward the buses but when they reached them only the children climbed aboard and the sounds of distress increased. Then the engines started and the crying was covered by the sound of the accelerating engines and the long low buses moved slowly through the school gates and onto the road leaving the school and parents behind. Here the clear memory fades, there is a confusion of men and ropes and ships , water and gangways ,the dull thud of engines, being ushered down a passageway to a straw covered floor where the thudding vibrated the walls. It resolved that we were aboard a paddle boat which had been used to joy ride holiday makers. We were told to bed down in the straw and try to sleep.
I cannot remember more until waking the next morning, the engine noise had ceased the boat moving gently gently on its mooring at a dock . We heard later that we had trave lled along the east coast of England to a fishing habour, this route would later become known as the ‘shooting gallery’ where U boats would see the convoy ships silhouetted against the land en route to Russia , sometimes sinking as many as thirty or forty ships during the night.
Then more buses and a house on a hill where kind people had offered to take in children from the danger of possible air raids. I vaguely remember a maid and trying to be on my best behaviour during the following week by placing a pair of underpants in the linen cupboard, unfortunately they were soiled from my nerves on the trip and I have no further memories of that house.
The change of billet was a tremendous change for the better, a wonderful couple whose adult children were away fighting in the war, a couple who took me in as a son and gave me such love and kindness that it remains with me to this day. He was a fisherman and also an ex-coxswain of the lifeboat, she was a loving mother who would cook wild, freshly picked mushrooms in a huge cast iron saucepan on the open fired oven range , filling the tiny kitchen with delicious breakfast smells. Their narrow four storey house was one of two side by side in a row of houses of lower height and different shapes. We were next to the wild north sea where in the rough weather the spray from the waves would reach my bedroom window on the second floor. Next door in the other four storey house lived the current cox of the lifeboat. It was just a small fishing village but the lifeboat played an important role. I had not been there for very long when I was awoken one night by the sound of a town crier, swinging a bell as he walked, calling…. ‘lifeboat…..‘ lifeboat’…..into a dark and wild night. Of course I was up in a flash, people were outside moving toward the lifeboat where it sat in it’s own shed above the beach with a sloping ramp which ran from the shed into the waves. We lined the side of the ramp quietly watching the lifeboatmen arrive and climb into the lifeoat still high up in the shed at the top of the ramp. Then a voice called, a hammer blow knocked a pin where it secured the lifeboat to it’s towing steel hawser and the boat began to roll slowly forward , suddenly tipping then sliding down the ramp with gathering speed until it struck the violent waves with force, it’s bow disappearing under the water the crewmen gripping the rail to save being washed overboard. Then there was a long wait after the lifeboat had faded into the curtain of storm filled night.
It was exciting for me the first time but the horror was yet to come. It was still dead of night when the whisper went around that the lifeboat was returning. It came lifted onto the beach by the rough waves. Somehow they began unloading the poor wretches, they had been pulled from the water choking on swallowed oil, some wounded and moaning, some quiet, eyes wide. That night the war began for a small boy. It made a vivid impression and later in poetry I would write in ‘Night Time Person’….
’Or have you cried the night time tears evoking,
’Mongst lifeboats rolling stark upon the sea ?
For seamen plucked from oily waters choking,
The hell of night young eyes should never see !
There was however no noise of war, there was evidence around me but no noise. I was a somewhat withdrawn child and loved rising early in the morning going for long walks on the beach and sometimes a few hundred yards ahead would be a round shape rolling in the waves or stuck fast on the beach and I knew by the spikes projecting from it, just what it was, a sea mine! Run home and inform the coastguard!
But that was nearest we came to war, people began calling it the ‘phoney war’ and parents began to take their children home again, my turn came and I can still see the tears in his eyes as my foster father waved his temporary son goodbye, I was to see him again but some years into the future.
Back home again it was still quiet and we carried on as usual, but the war soon found us and the air raids began.
I cannot remember it coming, but suddenly there it was, our own Anderson shelter. Dug half into the ground with a rouded roof it was made of corrugated steel. Little did we know what lay ahead with this little ‘tin room’.
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