Wartime Evacuee

byJohnEdwards1

282 followers

6 years ago

Evacuated.

I had arrived at the home of the kind lady that had taken me in as a wartime evacuee from the Midlands town of Birmingham.

“And were you born in Birmingham, Dennis”

“I think I was born in Somerset but my mother had too many children so she sent me to live with my uncle John in Birmingham”

“And were you very frightened during the air raids”

“At first, yes but you get used to them.”

“So how many children did your mother have.

“Well, I had two older sisters and an older brother and I was one of twin boys”

“You must have missed your twin brother”

“I did a little bit, but I was very young when they parted us”

"You poor thing, anyway, you do not have to worry now, we are not a target for the German bombers" she put her arm around me and gave me a tight squeeze.

My deputy mother was a nice lady and I got to be very fond of her, we lived in a public house in the middle of the town, it had a lovely big fruit tree orchard and further on a huge vegetable patch.

The son of the house was three years older than me, but we got on okay, he was attending the local secondary school, so he used to get a lot of homework, he did not have as much time to play as a result, there were ducks, chickens and even a couple of pigs, it was all new to me. I was fascinated.

I went to the local boys only school, there were a few other evacuees, but we were all accepted into the community, it was fortunate that there were a couple of teachers evacuated from Birmingham at the same time, to help with the additional teaching load, they were more like real teacher’s than the local staff, they introduced new classes such as singing and drawing. Without them it would have been a very poor school.

We used to get air raid warning’s quite regularly, but we never saw any enemy aircraft, I think the town only had two bombs and they were in the surrounding areas. One was an oil bomb that landed in a cornfield and the other was a high explosive that landed in the woods on the banks of the River Wye, not far from the Castle, we went down to dig the shrapnel out of the trees.

The public house did not have an air raid shelter, but it did have a smelly cellar that we used to go down to if we received an air raid warning, no electricity, just a few candles and plenty of cockroaches, we used to leave a drop of beer in a bottle, this served as a good trap.

I soon got to know the local boys, we used to gather at a farm up by the racecourse, which was used by the American army who built a big camp there, the farmer used to get some of the boys to help milk the cows but I managed to avoid doing that because I was a city boy that did not know how, we were out in the field most of the time playing cricket or smoking cigarettes in the barn.

“Tell us about the airaids then Dennis, did you see a lot of dead people?"

“Of course, we did Brian, we would come out of the shelters and they would be dead people lying all over the roads and rescue teams would be digging them out of the wrecked buildings for hours,”

“That must have been really scary, were you afraid?"

“A little bit at first but you got used to it, the first thing you did when you came out of the shelter was go to see if you still have a house to live in.”

I piled it on to my friends, none of the locals could tell such scary stories, I had seen some bodies but only a few and they were covered up.

I joined the local junior section of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade and they taught me some basic first aid, they used to use me as a victim during their practice sessions, on one occasion I was hoisted from the bottom of the Castle keep covered in bandages and strapped to a stretcher, now that was scary. It must have been 100 feet deep and these ambulancemen made a temporary crane to pull the stretcher up.

Every Monday, when I went to school my mother would give me two shillings and sixpence to buy a national savings stamp, these were stuck on cards and when your card was full, you changed it for a savings certificates valued at 15 schillings, by the time I left school I had several hundred pounds in savings certificates.

I was an entrepreneur even in those days, every morning before school, I would gather the windfalls under the cider apple trees and take my satchel full of apples to school to sell to the other kids in the playground for halfpenny a piece, it has been known for me to leave my friend Brian selling the stock as I cycled home to refill my satchel.

From the playground, because the school was on a hill we could look out over the River Severn and watch the rocket firing typhoons doing target practice on some bouys they had moored in the river. We took a great interest in the aeroplanes of the time, we all knew the Hurricanes and the Spitfires with their clipped wings as well, as the German bombers that were attacking England.

We followed the progress of the war by listening to an old radio in the kitchen at the pub, the radio was situated on top of the chimney breast, it was an old Kolster-Brands radio and if it would not work mother would use the sweeping brush to hit it until it did.

It was on this radio that mother heard of the sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse in the seas off Singapore. This was sad news for the family as the eldest son had been a Royal Marine serving on the Repulse.

Some months later, the Red Cross notified us that he had not perished, but had been taken prisoner by the Japanese, with the fall of Singapore, he somehow managed to survive and return to England in 1945, and after some months in hospital building up his strength he was finally reunited with his family.

Mother bought a hotel in Weston-super-Mare and mother moved to get it set up so that father could retire later, I was due to leave school in six months, so between us, we decided that I need not go to school any more, but I was not idle.

Mother could get a hotel ration of cigarettes and spirits which she did not need, so once a month. I was given the job of taking these supplies back to the public house where father was very glad of the extra rations, on the return trips I was loaded up with fresh eggs and other supplies from the country that mother could use in the hotel.

So, at 13 I was made into a contraband smuggler, I took a taxi from the hotel to the railway station with two large suitcases, I then bought a monthly return to Chepstow and boarded the train to Severn tunnel junction, it went through the four a half mile long tunnel under the River Severn, changing trains to the Wye Valley line to complete the trip to Chepstow, once there, I took another taxi to take me and my two suitcases back to the public house.

I was used to travelling on the train’s, one of the older sisters had married a special Constable and was living in Essex close to the town of Billericay, when I was 10 years old they decided I could go and spend the summer holidays on the farm helping to grow vegetables, but I had to travel alone, I boarded the train which went to London Paddington railway station from my hometown of Chepstow, had to find my way across London to Liverpool Street station via the underground, in the blackout to catch a train to Billericay.

This was in 1941, at the height of the Blitz and we all had to pull our weight to win the war, I remember the incendiary bomb that was sticking out of the mud around the pond at the entrance to the farm. It is probably still there. A little later on the area was known as Doodlebug ally because it was in a direct line between France and London.

At any time of the day or night, you might hear this distinctive engine noise, the pilotless aeroplanes had a simple Pulse Jet engine with a sound somewhere between a drone and a rumble, if you could hear them flying on overhead there was nothing to worry about, but if you heard the engine stop you knew it was coming down and you quickly took whatever cover you could.

But that is all in the past, I am now 18 years old and working as a motor mechanic for the Bristol Tramways in Weston-super-Mare, I was in a reserved occupation, so I did not have to do my National Service until I was 24, but I was courting strong and preparing to get married so I decided to go in the army at 18 to get it out of the way.

September 1949 I was a serving soldier doing my basic training at Catterick camp in Yorkshire, mechanical training was continued at Norton Manor in Taunton, Somerset, when I completed my training I was sent to Padderborn in Germany to join the Fifth Royal Enniskillen Dragoon Guards, I was assigned to C Squadron where I was given the job of driving the mechanics half-track, this was a White scout car fitted with tracks.

When the regiment went on schemes we followed on behind picking up the broken pieces, they had been to a range for gun firing practice and would return to Padderborn at night, as usual we followed behind, my Sergeant decided he wanted to drive the half-track, I think he must have fallen asleep, he drove off the road and into the deep ditch, I think he survived but I did not. I died instantly as my head went through the windscreen. The last thing I remember as I left the scene was watching the rear lights of the other vehicles as they disappeared down the road.