The Day War Broke Out Page 6

  Mum must have walked miles during those months in Upwell. Dorothy, of course, had a structured day and was sent off to school in the morning until Mum met her in the afternoon. She hated the school and was very unhappy there. She was only just nine years of age and being very quiet and shy, found it difficult to adjust.

  By the time arrangements had been made for me to attend the boys’ school, I too had had enough of Upwell, becoming fed up with trying to find a barn or other shelter when it was cold and wet. I often joined Mr Watson and his son in the fields – they always made me very welcome and let me ride on the backs of the two heavy cart horses they used for ploughing. If it was wet, they gave me a potato sack to drape around my shoulders. I think Mr Watson felt sorry for me being turned out in this way but he dared not say anything. We lived a very uneasy life, Mum battling with her old lady while Dorothy and I struggled along with Mrs Watson.

  Early in December, Mr Merrill arrived to spend a few days with his family. He knew all too well from his wife’s letters how unsettled they were and how badly they wanted to return to London. The rent on their London home was still being paid and after he’d seen the general situation for himself, he didn’t need much persuading to agree they should return home. Since the declaration of war, little had happened to suggest London was at risk and thousands of London refugees had already started to drift back. A week later, the family packed their bags and returned home.

  Mum was overjoyed to have running water and an indoor flush toilet again, to say nothing of our own gas cooker. Dorothy and I had our own separate beds and could go to sleep in a room free from scuttling mice. We had never appreciated before how lucky we were to have such mundane comforts until we no longer had them. We spent a somewhat muted Christmas: Dad managed to get home on a seventy-two-hour leave pass and we had a celebration of sorts.

  Eva and the Merrills came through the war, although they were re-evacuated on two separate occasions. Being moved from billet to billet as the war went on turned out to be a fairly common experience, however.

  Moving huge numbers from city to country living had several pitfalls. Twenty-first century mobility as we know it did not exist for millions of people in the 1930s. Many evacuated inner-city families had never ventured beyond the area of the street they lived in, let alone travelled by train or car to the countryside.

  For those living in the safe rural areas, the exposure to inner-city inhabitants, some of whom were impoverished and illiterate, their homes in slum-type conditions, was a huge shock. Had the war started in the way anticipated, i.e. with bombings, perhaps the rural householders might have felt more benevolent towards the strangers suddenly in their midst. As it was, the situation proved fraught, often uncomfortable for many.

  Britain in 1939 was very much a class-ridden society. As had been predicted, those evacuated under the official government scheme were mostly working-class evacuees attending state schools, often from large families, so this unexpected exposure to people outside their own environment was something of a culture shock for some, though there were positives too for inner-city children unexpectedly discovering the joys of the countryside for the first time ever.

  Many middle-class households taking in evacuees were horrified, for instance, at the way some of the inner-city children they took in were clothed: some were sewn into their underclothes for the winter, others had no underwear at all, nor did they have a change of clothes. Vermin-infested heads were reported too: in certain parts of Wales, half the evacuees from inner-city Liverpool were reported to have had heads crawling with lice, similarly the case with inner-Glasgow evacuees sent off to rural Scotland. There were also large numbers of complaints about children wetting the bed, a condition known as enuresis.

  An article in the medical journal, The Lancet, confirmed this, given the amount of press attention on this topic at the time saying: ‘Enuresis is proved to be one of the major menaces to the comfortable disposition of evacuated urban children.’

  Consequently, in June 1940 a modest allowance of 3 shillings and sixpence was allowed for householders with enuretic evacuees.

  Alan Everett was a working-class child living with his parents in a council house in Dagenham, Essex, when war broke out. He was nearly five years old.

  My mother and father always seemed to be deeply engrossed in conversation. Whether this was to do with the imminent arrival of my baby brother or the onset of war, I have no idea.

  My fears were soon confirmed when the gas mask arrived simultaneously with his birth, one for me and one for him. To this day I can see him nestling in the cradle-like mask. It covered his whole body and all you could see was his pink face shining through the celluloid fascia, as we re-enacted a mock attack from the enemy.

  The seriousness of the situation never dawned on me until my mother tried to convey to me that we had no alternative but to escape to the country to avoid the bombing. To tell a child of little experience must have been harder for a mother than to get the message across, and even harder for me to understand that we must part for no reason, other than we might get killed in the onslaught by an enemy that we did not know. Mum’s pattern of play was to say little and coax me into thinking that if all the children were going, why shouldn’t I?

  It finally came home to me when standing on Waterloo station with several hundred other kids as I waved goodbye to my mother. As the train pulled out, an eerie silence descended on the train. We were alone with our thoughts and then the stifled cries of children who could hardly believe that we had been abandoned – abandoned to a foster parent who had no idea of our individual sensitivity. I clung to my mum’s handkerchief, which she kindly left me, and for several days her lingering perfume was my only comfort. What hell was in store for us?

  The days of steam railways were fraught with delay. It must have been a good eight hours’ journey to Somerset. We were huddled together like lambs for the slaughter. The gas masks that hung around our necks on string were attached to a cardboard box that nearly decapitated us every time the engine jolted. Stop and start was the order of the day.

  Our arrival in Wells, which is in fact a small country town, although the existence of the beautiful cathedral makes this sleepy community a city, was a welcome relief. We literally exploded from the train to await our fate.

  We had been assigned to the Packer family, a rosy-cheeked friendly lady who drawled in her Somerset accent: ‘Yoor boys come with me.’

  I was coupled with another boy – a big ginger kid named Alan Bone – and our transport to Priddy (a small village) was by horse and trap. Mrs Packer wasted no time and we were soon on our way. She swung the whip and away the horse went and the trap seesawed us for six miles.

  Our arrival was expected and we met Mr Packer, a stocky man with arms that looked like young oak trees sprung from his torso. I could not assess him at that stage but we retired to bed that night with great trepidation, my lower jaw quivered and I just wanted to cry out for my mother. Alan and I slept in the same bed that night and we both expressed our fears for our family back home.

  The following morning, Mrs Packer called us down for breakfast and I awoke to find that Alan had peed all over me. Whether this was inherent fear of the unknown I had no idea, nevertheless someone had to tell Mrs Packer as the urine had made its way through the mattress onto the floor. She did not seem too happy when I told her.

  Alan pissed the bed every night after that, and Mrs Packer decided I would sleep elsewhere. But where to go in a two-bedroom cottage? It was finally decided that the floor was the only alternative and so the floor it was to be.

  Alan remained living happily with the Packers for two and a half years:

  I can never recall seeing my father visit me once, such was life then. The family love was only in the mind and it’s amazing how you soon forget your family and adopt new, such is the versatility of the young. Perhaps our forced absence was decided by the 7 shillings and 6 pence a week my family paid to keep me there. Where could one keep a c
hild all found for that money? All I can say of my enforced incarceration is that they were the happiest years of my life.

  The timing of the evacuation also made a difference: it took place at the end of the school summer holidays, so children had not had any supervision from their school medical service for several weeks. In addition, war’s outbreak came on the heels of a long bout of unemployment. Over one million people were unemployed in 1939, another three to four million were living in poverty. Family hand-me-downs and secondhand clothing were a fact of life, as were rural homes without electric light or running water. Some children came from deprived homes where, having never seen a bath before, they were terrified to use one, believing they might be drowned.

  Despite all this, the individual experiences of the 1939 evacuation varied considerably. Stories like that of Alan Everett, where urban children adjusted happily to rural life, were not unusual.

  Some evacuees were housed in better living conditions, which went on to have a positive impact on their lives. Kids who had rudimentary reading skills and found themselves living in a home full of books for the first time, for instance, developed a love of reading. There was a huge positive too in being exposed to a much healthier way of life, like early bedtimes, so typical of the countryside, as well as a better, more balanced diet, i.e. fresh vegetables and fruit. Nonetheless, the emotional effect of the upheaval of separating huge numbers of mothers and children from their normal environment into a very different one would prove profound and long-lasting. Open discussion of all this by all those involved did not, however, emerge until many years later. In September 1939, there was not the luxury of time or resource to ponder these complex, often painful human issues.

  At the end of the day, there was a war on.

  3

  THE GOODWILL OF STRANGERS

  THE EVACUATION PLAN WAS CONCEIVED UNDER THE HUGE threat of sudden invasion, so perhaps it is not that surprising that the listing of certain areas of the country as neutral or ‘safe’ zones threw up some errors of judgement.

  Dagenham in Essex was such an area. Today, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is a local authority encompassing both areas. Back in 1939, it comprised two completely separate boroughs to the east of London. Barking, slightly closer to London, was included in the Government Evacuation Scheme. Dagenham, however, was designated for the Neutral zone. After the initial announcement that the borough would be excluded from the evacuation plan there was a huge outcry of protest from Dagenham Council, the press and angry locals.

  Why had Dagenham been overlooked? How could the borough’s most vulnerable inhabitants be ‘safe’ in Dagenham? The area included important factories – obvious targets in air raids – including the big new Ford Motor Company plant, built in 1931 on marshland by the River Thames (in 1937, the Ford plant had produced 37,000 motor vehicles). Back then, bulk supplies of coal and steel were still delivered by water transport so the Ford plant’s waterside location made it suitable for such purposes – and for transporting large numbers of people.

  In June 1939, Dagenham was finally designated an official area for evacuation. Other London boroughs, including Barking, had already had more than a year to organise their evacuation plans: Dagenham had less than three months.

  By the time the official permission came for Dagenham to evacuate on 27 August, it was far too late to organise buses and trains to take the evacuees to safe areas: the buses and trains were all fully booked. The sole transport option was by water, using Ford’s waterside location. The General Steam Navigation Company would come to the rescue with their fleet of paddle steamers and cross-Channel ferries: they could transport the thousands of evacuees by boat from Dagenham to the safer coastal ports. The boats, however, were busy – it was peak summer season for day trips and cross-Channel work. Consequently, all the boats had to be urgently recalled to Dagenham Dock by radio.

  The delay in authorising Dagenham as an evacuation area meant the hasty, last-minute arrangements for the reception areas were muddled and inefficient, to say the least. Dagenham Council officials worked non-stop to organise the paperwork for the mothers and young children who were leaving; the teachers of the Dagenham schools carried out the registration of the schoolchildren. Yet when the final rushed arrangements for the evacuees’ reception and billeting at Lowestoft, Yarmouth and Felixstowe were set up (by the Ministry of Health and local reception teams), there was a serious miscalculation about how many Dagenham evacuees would actually be arriving.

  Far greater numbers than anticipated turned up at the reception areas, resulting in chaos. The late decision to move the Dagenham children meant there had not been nearly enough time to arrange for billeting or transport to other areas so when the children and mothers did arrive, instead of being led to billets or foster homes, thousands of evacuees were taken for hastily organised temporary shelter to church halls, schools and even cinemas, where some wound up staying for several days until arrangements could be made to transport them out to the surrounding country areas. (It is difficult to give an exact figure of the numbers involved; while 16,894 had registered for evacuation, not all of them turned up. Many changed their minds even at the point of embarkation, yet others, who had not registered, turned up.)

  At night, many of the evacuees had to sleep on straw-filled sacks, resulting in some children being infested with head lice. Only the teachers managed to save the exercise from turning into a total disaster. For several days they looked after the children, cooked meals in makeshift billets – sometimes in the open air – and helped provide hot food and drinks.

  Back in Dagenham, the worried parents of unaccompanied children had no idea where their children were. Eventually Dagenham Council dispatched staff to the evacuation areas. There, they went from door to door, enquiring whether a child had been billeted there.

  It was a distressing and unhappy situation. Some children only stayed a week or so, though these would eventually be re-evacuated when the Luftwaffe began to bomb London and its boroughs the following year. Other Dagenham children wound up staying with their ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ throughout the war, only returning home after the war had ended. In some cases, this prolonged separation had a profound effect on their rehabilitation back into their families.

  THE EVACUATION FROM FORDS

  Over two days, starting before dawn broke on Friday, 1 September 1939, the evacuees assembled in various schools around Dagenham. It was still dark when some started to clamber aboard the waiting ferries; some had been driven to Fords in the back of bakers’ vans or laundry vans, others were packed into buses but many had to walk all the way, literally marching to the gates of the Ford Motor Company’s works.

  When the first of many thousands arrived at the works gates they found them closed and locked. This was for safety reasons: the blackout was already in force and it would have been extremely dangerous to have allowed children and mothers with small babies and toddlers to wander around the busy works.

  In the early morning light, the gates were eventually opened and the swarm of evacuees streamed in. By then, the men at the works had become aware of what was happening, switched off their machines and went outside to help.

  Many spoke later of watching the pitiful sight of small children, clutching their tiny bundles, being led in the early morning through the vast factory. Waiting at the Ford jetties, jutting out into the River Thames, were the paddle steamers of the General Steam Navigation Company.

  With the help of the Ford workers, who carried the smaller children the considerable distance from the gates to the jetty, the embarkation began. When each boat was full, it edged out into the river to make its way downstream past Tilbury, Gravesend and Southend, then out to sea, heading for the East Coast ports of Felixstowe, Lowestoft and Yarmouth.

  Syd Kirby from Norwich worked at Fords as a weighbridge clerk in September 1939:

  I was in charge of the Road Weighbridge that night (to the right of the factory gates) and the Rail Weighbridge (to t
he left of the gates). There was a small office at the end of the road weighbridge for use by the factory security man so there were two of us on duty at the gates.

  I arrived for work at 11pm. I was part of the Traffic Department, which controlled the jetty, estate, railways, pig-iron field [an area of the plant where a raw industrial material called pig iron, a type of crude iron shaped like a block, was stored before being used to make steel in Ford’s steel foundry] and case dumps. I was surprised to find on arrival that the gates were closed and locked. Normally, only one side is closed at night.

  Syd discovered that orders had been given that no locomotives were to feed trucks containing materials onto the front of the factory. Nor were they to travel on the rail track that ran alongside Kent Avenue.

  Only a handful of people knew the reason why and they were very tight-lipped about it. The blackout was on, the windows in the factory had either been blacked out or replaced with steel sheets and the night itself was pitch-black – no moon, no stars, and of course, no street lights.

  In the early hours of the morning, the only people outside the front of the factory were myself and the security man. We could hear a most peculiar noise coming from the road: a murmuring, crying noise. As dawn broke, we were amazed to see the whole road packed solid with hundreds of children, some with grown-ups who were teachers, and a few mums with babies and small children. They had cases and bundles, many were crying – that was the funny noise we’d been hearing.

  We had found out during the night that some of the paddle pleasure boats had arrived at the jetty and that the children were to be taken on them to the East Coast. Nobody was very happy about this as we thought the ships would be very vulnerable if there were air attacks – as far as we knew, there was to be no naval escort.