The First Day of War - Evacuation

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I was in a crocodile of children walking with our teachers along the seafront at Deal. It was a crazy place to which to evacuate a bunch of London kids. Deal is but twenty miles from France. On a clear day the continental coast is visible. It would have been about 11.00 a.m. and the air raid siren sounded. This was the first sound of War. The teachers, no doubt flustered and confused hurried the class of young children into the Tudor gun emplacements of Deal castle. There are various narrow passages with openings for small firearms and into such a passage we were led. There was no danger. This was the phoney war which last some months.

But consider the mental torment to my mother! A few days before, it may have been no more than two; I and my next older brother – I had two brothers – were bundled off with the rest of the school into a train. My mother did not stay to see us leave. She had no knowledge whatsoever as to where we would lay our heads that night. Not any idea. Imagine how she must have felt as she returned to our home. She would not know for days where we were living, what family we were with, whether we were distressed or happy. There was no telephone. She laid her trust in the teachers of the school. London had no children. It was as though a Pied Piper had whistled them all away, and gardens and parks and streets between the terraced houses had no sound of children at play.

When we arrived at Deal we were put on a bus. Some previous arrangements must have been advertised in the Town for families who had space to accommodate the Londoners. The bus stopped by a small house, ‘Can you take two boys here?’ asked a teacher. We were the two boys. We were given a packet each of Jacobs Cream Cracker biscuits and ushered into the home of Mr and Mrs Rennie. They were retired and found us perplexing. But every circumstance brought a new expansion of my mind. ‘Would you like to see the goldfish in the pond’ said Mrs Rennie. The ‘pond’ was an old sink in the tiny back garden and in its shallow dirty water swam the imprisoned fish. But kindness was offered and I repaid it by wetting the bed.

We listened to the wireless, powered by an ‘accumulator’ which had to be recharged at a nearby garage. Mr. Rennie had constructed internal shutters to the windows which were effectively airtight. These were mounted in case of a gas attack from the air.

Towards the end of September my parents visited. It was close upon my birthday. They gave me a Rupert Bear annual which is still a precious possession.

This evacuation was the beginning of a torment for my brother who accompanied me. Not at Deal but the later consequence. I was six, and he was ten. His supposed education was at a more important stage than mine and that age in formed in his mind a disturbance which lasted till he died.

But I return to the experience of Deal. As throughout my years of education I recall little of formal lessons, but the other experiences of life left great impressions. I often looked across the sea. Wrecks of boats on the Goodwin Sands were close enough and I made childish sketches of them. War did not impinge itself except for the instance of the ‘Naughty Nora’. This small cargo boat struck a mine at sea and was disabled. It floated on its side into the pier at Deal and demolished the structure. It looked huge stuck into the wreckage. More non-education followed thick and fast; The shoals of sprats which marooned themselves on the stony shore gave us meals of fried fish; The picking of outdoor cucumbers on Mr. Rennie’s allotment; The huge falls of snow which rose above my tiny Wellington boots and gave me chilblains; The smell of dog-shit in a back alley way; The taste of a millefeuille filled with raspberry jam; The watching of my schoolmates throwing a stink bomb into a fish and chip shop.

Life for the Rennies with two street wise boys was getting difficult. We had to go. My brother said to me in bed ‘Let us pray that we can go to Mrs Field’. We were good Roman Catholics! We did so move but with an interim stay with a third household. All this life continued without the knowledge of our parents, who could in no way have an opinion on our lives.

We went to school in some Convent in Deal and some of our lessons were conducted by nuns. Only a few memories remain; The huge fire in a large fireplace in a large stone hallway where some spelling bee on a blackboard was conducted; The single remarkable lesson by a nun who drew upon the board a ladder and indicated heaven at the top and hell at the bottom. ‘If you do something good, then you climb a few steps to Heaven. If you do something naughty (like throwing stink bombs?) you slip down a little towards Hell’. No other memory of the school remains. What can I make of this?

I guess that young boys are rather like young animals, exploring their environment; a kind of Huckleberry Finn experience. At times they need the direction of a firm hand and rules to be laid down. ‘Always use two pieces of lavatory paper’. Said the fifteen year old daughter of Mrs Field. Even this rule I followed for many years. It is the Sound of Music syndrome, where the ex-nun directed the children. By God, we need this direction today in our society.

March 6th 1943. The night the bombs fell.

March 6th 1943. Early in the morning I sat at the edge of the Morrison shelter, the rubble of bricks and plaster pushed aside by my mother so that a cleared area of the flat steel top could receive a plate of eggs and bacon. The gas stove was still working. My father and brother had dusted themselves down and were also ready to eat. I recall some hours before the echoing sound of the voice of an air raid warden crossing the back gardens and crying ‘Are you all OK in there?’ . Across the road thirty terraced houses had been flattened or blasted. Six people had been killed, among whom was Mr. Ireland.  He was a quiet man who talked to me , a boy of ten, gently.  Mrs Spinks led her husband, who had long been blind, amongst the rubble.

In our little terraced house the interior wall between the living room and sitting room had been blown down and only the wooden supports which held the bricks in place remained. A column of bricks lay athwart the fireplace in which a fire still smouldered. The small light fitting, fashioned as a bowl, from marble, was shattered on the floor amongst fragments of plaster. All this was caused by a stick of six bombs dropped by the German planes in an attempt to cut the main A2 road out of London towards the Kent ports.

And what followed? We four went to a rest centre, whilst my parents could sort out some place for us to stay. My brother immediately went to volunteer for the RAF. He left that day. For some time he had been training in the ATC (Air Training Corps). He was a young man with personality difficulties, and remained so throughout life. He detested the Germans, and the Jews and the Americans, or said he did. His Britain, in his mind, was a country of quiet ways and peace and changelessness. He went to fight for that England ‘O peaceful England’. ‘A Merrie England’. A gentle England. An England that in spite of the efforts of our generation, seems to have been destroyed. He was not yet eighteen. I was not yet eleven. In two days the scholarship examination for entry to the grammar schools was due to take place. Whatever the destruction around me I still went to school. At the rest centre we slept in bunks and men were separated from their families. And sometimes the children were separated from their parents. We queued for the meals. I recall the time I was queuing alone and the kind woman server said ‘Would you like two pieces of jam tart?’, and she placed two on my plate. At that moment someone told me to go to my mother. I cannot recall why. When I returned, my plate was still there but it carried only one piece of tart. The disappointment stills stays with me.

I still went to school. This school was Henwick Road Primary in Eltham, south east London. The headmistress was Miss McDonald, who was an angel of kindness. ‘You must sleep in my office.’ A camp bed was made ready and I slept. The examination made little impact on me. I passed.

London 1944 - The Choice of School

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Before, during and after the War there were in the region of South London a multitude of ‘Grammar’ schools and minor independent schools, where able children could be educated. I could have attended:- Shooter’s Hill School (which my mother considered to be of inferior standard), Colfe’s, City of London, Eltham College, Emmanuel School, Haberdasher Aske’s, Archbishop Tennison’s, St. Olave’s and probably more. These were all for boys only. There were also Girls’ Grammar Schools such as Eltham Hill, and St Saviours – that being the female twin of St Olave’s. All were a channel of improvement for able children from poor backgrounds. Before the 1944 Education Act either one passed the Junior County examination which opened the door to these or if one was of borderline ability one might be able to go to a ‘Central’ school- as was the case with my elder brother. If you did not ‘pass’ then you might stay at school till fourteen and then leave to get a job, or apprenticeship.

This pattern for social improvement or ‘social mobility’ was destroyed by a later socialist Government, in the desirte to promote the impossible, - equality-. The socialist intelligentsia never grasped the notion that equality of ability is unattainable, though equality of opportunity is not.

My mother, with some idea of social enhancement for me, first proposed Eltham College. She and I went along for an interview with the head master. The broad wide acres of playing fields did not appeal to me. I was never a sporting type, indeed my physique was hardly inspiring to any one looking for a sportsman. When I had a ‘physical’ before evacuation, so later my mother informed me, I was described as ‘below normal’. The headmaster turned me down.

I ended up at St. Olave’s school next to Tower Bridge.

Some of the boys who attended with me were from even more impecunious families than mine. Example:- William Ainsworth. It was not until the VIth form (the last two years of schooling) that I understood his circumstances. At sometime around then, the headmaster put his name forward for an adventure holiday, fully paid, to Canada. Jealous, I inwardly wondered why he should be so selected. Later I realised the justification. I invited him to visit me at home and he came. I took him to Oxleas Woods and the long meadow beyond. These woods are the joy of Eltham. He spoke in the same terms that I had used when I visited Robin Angel on Shooter’s Hill. He felt that compared to his family, we were well-to-do. I visited his home. He lived in Peabody buildings. These flats were built by a charity for poor working folk in London. The toilets were on a communal landing, the flats were small and a pervading odour of rot or urine seemed all about. William later won a County Major scholarship to Oxford, where we were for some time close friends.

Now, sixty years later I am appalled at the political jealousy whereby the socialist system destroyed this pathway to a meritocracy which was well on the way to refashioning the brilliance and commanding position of Britain in the World. These accursed politicians still assert that prior to them only the middle classes could aspire to University. It is an absolute lie. In the years after WWII very many poor boys and girls went to the best universities at the public expense.

I digress! And look back in anger.

St. Olave’s and St Saviour’s Grammar School Tower Bridge was sited on a very small patch of ground near Tower bridge. In 1943 the school was for the most part in evacuation but some classes for new entrants had opened. Again, I suppose the staff had in some manner avoided the War. The war was still on. The doodle bugs had been replaced by the V2 rockets. These you did not hear coming. They were the forerunners of space rockets, sent up from Holland or Northern France and took a high parabolic trajectory before coming down vertically on London. There was no protection from them, nor was any warning possible.

I went to school by train from Eltham station to London Bridge station. On one occasion Eltham station had been blasted by a V2 between my going and returning in the afternoon. I saw one explode in the distance from the train window.

Four years of War had seriously modified London. I, with an exploratory mind, suggested to a friend that one day, instead of going home from London Bridge station, we should walk across Tower Bridge and traverse the City of London to Cannon Street Station and catch our train home from there. We did just that, encircling the ancient walls of the Tower of London, and passing across the bombed area of the City, we passed by small rough built brick walls protecting pedestrians from falling into the basement holes of buildings, whose remains had already been taken away. The rosy red fireweed blossomed from all the broken brick and stonework. It was extraordinary that so few important buildings or monuments had been destroyed. The Tower itself, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The single column of the Monument to the 17th century Fire of London are all still intact. Some renaissance churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren were seriously damaged, but he designed a great many, and some few were not missed.

The journey home was nine miles by train. The cost was entirely borne by the London County Council. I had a free season ticket. It enabled me to go to London at any time, and I used it to visit Museums and to go the theatre in later years with my mother.