The Evacuees arrive....
Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Mon, 9 Feb 1998 08:44:18 +0000
When I was six years old the second world war started. With
it came rationing, queues and evacuees. Evacuees were kids
from London who were taken from their families and sent to
safer towns and into the countryside, away from the German
air-raids and bombs. One summer's day all the mothers on
the street were standing outside their front doors. From
the Iffley Road end of the street came hundreds of kids
from London. Brothers and sisters hand-in-hand, gas masks
in card-board boxes hung on strings over their shoulders.
Streams of frightened five to fifteen-year old kids.
Our mum said to the volunteer who was herding them along
"I'll take those two", and so we had two more kids in the
house. They were called Peggy and Leonard Lamb. All I
remember about them is that they cried every night.
We had some great times during the war, even though it
seemed we were always hungry. At the bottom of our back
garden, over the hedge, was a large area of land divided
into hundreds of allotments. Allotments were plots of land,
about 20ft by 50ft, which were allotted to members of the
community so that they could grow their own vegetables. Our
dad had an allotment; of course, because it was run by the
government, he had to ride his bicycle about 2 miles to get
to his plot. We would climb over the hedge and steal
rhubarb from the man who had the plot behind our house.
Then we had to also steal sugar to dip it into.
Because of the danger of air-raids every house and business
was blacked out. It was called the blackout! The pubs all
had a shelter over their entrances to prevent light escaping
when the locals went in for their pint. These shelters were
perfect for letting off smoke bombs. We would get a roll
of old Kodak film, which used to be very flammable, roll it
in newspaper, light it then quickly stamp out the flame.
The film bomb w ould then pour out gobs of fantastic stinky
smoke, which when let off in the shelter would empty the
pub really fast.
The blackout was great for our gang because we could pull
off lots of tricks and not be caught because of the cover of
darkness. We would tie the door-knocker of a house on one
side of the street to that of one on the other side of the
street with thread, then wait for someone to ride by on
their bike. The bike would break the thread and knock both
doors at the same time. Then the home owners would come to
the door to find no-one there. We were hiding behind a
wall to watch the fun. That was always a big deal to us at
age 9 or 10.
We would go scrumping apples, by climbing over 8ft high
walls topped with broken bottles cemented in place to stop
us getting over to steal the apples. We threw a couple of
our coats on top of the wall then stood on Dixie's
shoulders, up and over the wall. One more tear in our coat
didn't matter. I don't remember how we got back over the
wall.
There was a dump about 3 miles away, up by Morris Motors
where my dad worked from when he was 15 years old till he
died at age 52. They had some German airplanes on the dump,
we would sit in the planes and pretend to be pilots. The
windows of the plane were made of what we called German
glass. It was really Perspex or Lucite, but it was good for
making rings to wear for our gang. I made the rings then
and I've been able to make anything ever since. Dad could
also make things, he made us a great castle once for
Christmas, he also mended all our shoes and did any sewing
on our treadle sewing machine. I don't remember ever
getting a hug from dad. I didn't like him anyway.
Ron Norris