The Day War Broke Out Read online

  When the gates were opened, there was a surge of children, most of them wanting toilets and a drink as they’d been standing in the road for a considerable time. By now, word had reached the factory. The roar of machinery stopped, the doors burst open and hundreds of men surged out to dash over, pick up kids and their bundles and also take them and their teachers to the toilet (we had two toilets in the Rail Weighbridge and they were soon overwhelmed).

  In those days, no women were allowed inside the factory. Even on rainy days, male clerks were allowed to go to the offices through the works, but the women had to walk outside and get wet. Consequently, there were no female toilets in the plant, so the girls and women were escorted to the male toilets as the men stood guard outside.

  The canteen in the plant was opened up and tea was made by the gallon. In the meantime, there was a steady flow of men carrying children and their baggage to the ships on the jetty. Not only were the children crying, several of the men were crying too. Even now I have a lump in my throat when I think of it all.

  Eventually the boats were loaded; they sailed some time mid-morning. They included the Royal Eagle, Crested Eagle, Golden Eagle, Royal Sovereign, Royal Daffodil, Queen Charlotte and City of Rochester. We all returned home late and very exhausted after walking up and down the road with children, bags, etc. My wife was very worried as I was so late, and indeed that applied to many of us men.

  In the end, it was really all in vain as the expected bombing did not take place until 1940 and, by that time, many of the kids had returned home. Maybe it was just as well. I went into the Army in 1941 and, saw Yarmouth and Lowestoft after they’d been heavily bombed.

  A HOLIDAY IN THE COUNTRY

  Katie Owen was one of seven children from an East End family who had been rehoused in the late 1920s to a small council house in Downing Road, Dagenham, Essex. She was just weeks away from her fourth birthday when she and her family joined the throng of other Dagenham families and unaccompanied children on the jetty at Fords for the evacuation from Dagenham.

  What an amazing spectacle my mum must have made with her two children under five and the rest of us. Like many working-class mums of the time my mum, Grace, was short and dumpy, no make-up (make-up is only worn by women who are no better than they should be), her hair tied back in a bun and covered by a hairnet. Even on warm, sunny days, she’d have worn her coat and hat, no matter if it was shabby, and stockings – thick tan lisle held up by a penny twisted into the top. The American GIs with their nylons and chewing gum were for the future – and to my mum’s way of thinking, no self-respecting woman would have had anything to do with such things, anyway.

  As for us, we already had our gas masks and little bundles of possessions clutched in our grubby hands, my bigger brothers and sisters helping to steer us toddlers. They were Grace, fourteen, Bobby, twelve, Ivy, ten, Ronnie, eight, Dolly, six, me and the baby, Teddy, two.

  The family climbed on board the MV Royal Daffodil, first launched in January 1939. It had capacity to transport just over 2,000 passengers and once it had set off for Lowestoft, the older children had a great time racing round the boat, convinced they had spotted enemy aircraft, which were, thankfully, not in the area.

  In the general mêlée, I got lost briefly but eventually they found me up with the crew ‘helping to steer the boat’ amid the hubbub of children, chaos, confusion and noise.

  When we got to Lowestoft, we were transported to a school by coach and taxis. We were each given a cheese sandwich and an apple; we went to sleep that night on straw. The next morning, people arrived to choose who they wanted to billet in their homes. No one was going to take in a mum with seven children so we were eventually split up: Mum, Teddy and me were sent to a village in Lincolnshire called Belton after spending a bit of time at a big hostel. My older siblings were sent on to a number of different billets in Sussex, Suffolk and Wales. For about six weeks, I stayed with just Mum and baby Teddy, but just after my fourth birthday, Mum decided to return to Dagenham with Teddy. Because I was four, the authorities decided I could be evacuated without her and I was dispatched – by train – to Somerset, an intrepid tiny traveller.

  And it was there, in Somerset, that my wonderful childhood ‘holiday’ began. War was breaking out all over the world, homes, people and countries were being devastated and destroyed, yet sheltered in those sleepy, quiet lanes of Somerset, I was about to learn to love and appreciate the countryside.

  It didn’t start well – my first billet was at a schoolhouse, with the schoolmarm, her very elderly mother and her daughter. I was very unhappy and frightened. The daughter, well enough into her teens to go a-courting, seemed to delight in pinching and bullying me. She would frighten me by reading stories from a large book, the cover of which showed a horrendous man with long fingernails dripping with blood, an experience which still, to this day, makes me shudder when I see long, red varnished fingernails!

  However, one of Germany’s bomber pilots came to my aid. Lost over the Mendip Hills while on a raid, he jettisoned his bombs; they hit the schoolhouse and we were buried under piles of rubble. After being dug out, I was taken by my hosts to see their lovely black and white dog, lying dead by the garden wall, killed by the blast. After that, I was deposited briefly at a boarding school. I remember I wasn’t allowed to play out with the other children because I had wet the bed.

  Only then, with the war nearly a year old, did Katie’s fortunes take a turn for the better. She was billeted with a woman she called ‘Auntie Ada’ and her husband ‘Uncle George’. They lived in a large and beautiful home in Axbridge, called ‘Fairfield’. Ada was very much involved with the Women’s Voluntary Service.

  They had two adopted sons – I can only remember John, who was in the Royal Air Force, and I was going to marry him when I grew up. Also, for a short while, a teacher stayed at Fairfield and she taught me to knit.

  Fairfield seemed enormous to me with its extensive gardens, lots of fruit trees, vegetables and flowers – orange and yellow nasturtiums growing on the walls.

  The weeks that followed were days of sunshine, walking around green and shady lanes, glorious hours spent in the nearby woods playing with the local children. I never met another evacuee until my sister Dorothy, two years my senior, was billeted at Cross, a village just a short walk away from us, near Compton Bishop. Later, she came to stay at Fairfield, along with the Stokeses, a family from Bristol. I attended the local village school, infants and juniors all in one large room: the village community hall. We sang songs like: ‘Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men, We always are ready, steady boys, steady!’ We also had Beetle Drives [an old party game in which, upon rolling the dice, players would draw a beetle in parts depending on the number which had been rolled] and dances to raise money for the Forces. Dolly and David Stokes soon outgrew the village school and took the bus into Cheddar for senior school.

  We spent whole days walking the Mendip Hills, reached through a hedge at the bottom of ‘my garden’. Tired and thirsty, we would stop and knock at isolated cottages for a drink of water, always greeted with smiling kindness by those gentle countryfolk. We filled bucket after bucket with blackberries and rosehips; these were collected from us by horse-drawn cart, earning us pocket money. Great competition grew up amongst us children to see who could earn the most, though we little-uns had small chance against the big-uns.

  My best friend was called Jessica, she lived in the cottage next door. She was from a large family and I was always made welcome, [I] felt at home there. One of our favourite places was the local quarry. I knew nothing of stones, their names, their uses; we played in the caves formed by the diggings of the quarrymen. Caves where the walls glittered and glinted like diamonds in the sunlight – a magical place for two little girls to play.

  Uncle George worked in the quarry, he also drove a steamroller. It would come rolling slowly down the lanes, smoothing down the tarmac, the smell of the hot tar permeating the air; a smell to bring back memories. S
ometimes I was allowed to ride high up there with him, the other children swarming around. Each evening, he would take a sandwich from his lunch tin, the cheese warm and soft, saved for me to eat as I sat cosy with him in the large kitchen, while Auntie Ada cooked dinner. What wonders for a small child from a poor London home where love and cuddles were totally unknown.

  I believe Aunty Ada might have been quite important in the WVS because she often attended meetings and sometimes she visited London on WVS business. She was a large lady and could appear formidable and strict, but I only received love and kindness. For a time after I arrived, she slept with me in the cubby-hole under the stairs because I was afraid to sleep upstairs.

  I remember the lovely smell of Sunday roast dinners on returning from church – cakes and treats, all such a luxury for this London waif. There was a gas stove in the kitchen, but most meals were cooked on the shiny black kitchen range which seemed to stretch down half the large kitchen. Uncle George would chop the wood to fuel the stove, which also served to warm the kitchen. A high-backed settle [a wooden bench seating three or four people] and large brass plates were displayed around the wall; this was our ‘welcome home’ place when we returned from school or play, where we did our homework, where we played. Just before Big Ben struck the hour for the Nine O’Clock News, we children chose one sweet from the sweet jar, said goodnight and went to our beds – this was the time strictly for adults listening to the atrocities of war, always shielded from us.

  On Saturdays, my job was to clean the big brass plates – some so big, I needed to sit in the middle to polish. To this day, I still love my brass and enjoy cleaning it.

  I remember snow – deep, white, glistening snow. Snow that so covered the lanes and fields that landmarks disappeared; snow that topped our wellies as we struggled through to school. Then the snow-plough would clear a path, another of Uncle George’s jobs, leaving a covering of compressed snow which we soon turned into magnificent slides. Local men went out with the farmers and their trusty dogs, well after dark, to rescue their sheep and lambs from certain death while we enjoyed snow fights and built snowmen under brilliant star-studded skies. Deep frost, thick ice and magnificent orange sunsets.

  In that other world, occupied by adults, the war raged on and slowly, but surely, the Allies were bringing it to a longed-for end. Many parents were already welcoming back their children, most of whom were thrilled to be going home, though quite a few shed tears as they left their wartime aunties and uncles. Mr Stokes was demobbed and the family all returned to Bristol; Dolly had already returned home to help my mum with the arrival of another baby. I continued attending the village school – I was one of the village children, my home remained Axbridge in Somerset. My Dagenham family was barely a memory: apart from Dolly, I had not seen nor heard from any of them since the start of the war.

  Unbeknown to Katie, Auntie Ada and Uncle George had asked to adopt her. ‘Auntie, on one of her London visits, had visited our house in Dagenham and she wasn’t happy for me to return there but my mum refused.’

  In the summer of 1946 Katie finally left Somerset: ‘I told Auntie and Uncle I wouldn’t go, I’d run away and come back to them – I can’t have made it easy for them. But one day I was driven away in a large black car, back to Dagenham. My wonderful holiday in the country had ended.’

  Katie’s memory of the day she went back to her home after six years in the countryside remains strangely vivid:

  It’s a house – the bricks are painted white but it appears so small, so dark. A house in a long row of similar houses; across the road more houses, row on row forever. Sunlight outlines two small children peering in through the back door; grubby, untidy blonde hair, thumbs in mouth, staring wide-eyed at me. A baby sleeps in an old pram, a woman stands near by – my mother, who has had three more children while I’ve been away, [so she now has] five girls and five boys.

  So many brothers and sisters but all strangers. Only one sister, Dolly, do I know. No one talks to me – they just stare. Later, it seems so dark in this small house with its gas lighting. I feel my way up the stairs, following these strange people; four of us sleep in one bed and a baby in one small room.

  Katie’s time away was never mentioned:

  Things were very hard for families like ours after the war – keeping in contact with people like Aunty Ada, miles away, was pretty low on the priority list. Sometimes Dolly and I would talk about Somerset, but in time it all became as in a dream, something that had happened to someone else.

  Later, when I learned of the hard times my other siblings had experienced, I realised why they just wanted to forget about it all. So, we settled back into our family, grew up, started work, married, had children and only when people started to ask questions did we look back, remember and wonder about how we’d lived in that other world.

  In August 1970, Katie was holidaying in Somerset with her husband and children: ‘I asked my husband to take us to Axbridge. We found Fairfield and I asked him and my children to leave me there and call back in a couple of hours. I needed to do this on my own.’

  Katie made her way to the back door. Everything she knew as a child looked exactly the same: the trees, the old shed, the vegetables, the hills, all still there. Even the horseshoe over the back door. An old man answered the door, not so tall, not so muscular, but still Uncle George.

  Ushered into the big kitchen she once knew as home, nothing had changed. The big brass plates still shone down from the wall, the big kitchen table, the settle, the dresser . . . Over a cup of tea, George explained that Auntie Ada had died a few years before: ‘He was proud of how he still worked in his garden but he no longer farmed, his brother had also died. He told me he did the paper round on his bike every morning for two villages.’

  Then it was time to leave: ‘He didn’t ask how I came there or where I would go. Perhaps, like me, he found it all quite unreal – the little girl he and his wife had wanted to adopt, now a mother with two children of her own.’

  They did manage to keep in touch by letter for a while – until a letter arrived from his son John to say that George had died.

  ‘On a frosty November day, we drove down to his funeral in the old church at Cross. I remembered many of the faces in the church but no one seemed to recognise me and I didn’t feel able to speak to them. I did write to John to say I’d been at the funeral – but I never heard from him again.’

  Katie still lives in Dagenham: ‘I’ve learned to love the place, know its people and made many good friends over the years. If you ask where my home is, of course it’s Dagenham, but in my heart, my home is still in the fields and lanes of Somerset.’

  The first casualty of the 1939 evacuation was the huge disruption of schoolchildren’s education, which deteriorated throughout the war years. The children who had been evacuated privately to stay with friends or relatives in the country fared well if they were being taught in private schools; many were able to complete their education. A number of large inner-city private schools, pupils and teachers evacuated in their entirety to safe areas, somehow managing to provide continuous education through the war years.

  One such school was the prestigious Mary Datchelor Girls School, located in Camberwell, South London, financed by the Clothworkers’ Company, one of the ancient London livery companies. The school was evacuated from London in September 1939, initially to Ashford in Kent.

  Irene N. Watts is a German-born award-winning Canadian author and playwright. In December 1938, just seven years old, she was one of nearly 10,000 Jewish children evacuated from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland as part of the Kindertransport, the British-organised effort to rescue children from Nazi persecution in those countries.

  On 1 September 1939, less than a year after arriving in London, Irene found herself, as a pupil at the Mary Datchelor Girls School, being re-evacuated by train from London to Kent.

  I cannot recall being formally told that war had broken out. Maybe the adults thought it was like osmos
is, that we just knew. Of course, my English was not yet perfect. Perhaps I presumed ‘this is war’. After all, it was like the Kindertransport: the same label around my neck, another train and people waving and crying goodbye. The days between 1 and 4 September, I spent being found a suitable billet – not easy to place a little foreigner with a German name and Jewish, many people had never met a Jew before.

  After lots of knocking on doors by my teacher, I was taken in by a lovely girl, probably about ten years older than me. She was on her honeymoon, her new husband had just joined the Navy. I was there for a few weeks. On one occasion my hostess sent me to the village (Hothfield) to buy a loaf of bread.

  I was thrilled to be trusted, but on the way home I lost the change in the grass. I was heartbroken, but I did not hear one cross word. Then the school opened a hostel for a dozen or so of us younger pupils in October. It was in a beautiful old farmhouse, but I was terrified of cows. I remember a man shouting ‘A calf is born’ and I hid because I thought he’d said there was a bomb.

  In June 1940, the Mary Datchelor School was re-evacuated to Llanelli, South Wales, for the remainder of the war. Here, Irene continued her education, completed degrees in English Literature and Modern History at Cardiff University, married, had four children and subsequently emigrated with her family to Canada.

  State-school pupils had their education severely disrupted by war, wherever they were. Evacuated children often had to share the premises of local schools. They were taught in shifts, attending school for half the day, the local children taught for the other half-day. Often, evacuees wound up being taught in village halls in big classes alongside children of different ages.

  In the cities where children remained at home, state education was equally haphazard, with school premises frequently commandeered for civil defence purposes. During the war, many state schools were bombed.