Essay 6 of 7 - Evacuation

Reminiscences from the period of WW2.
A collection of seven essays.

Author - Brian E. Dowden - born 8th. October 1933.

Introduction

Both during and after the war I lived on an estate built by the (then) London County Council in Carshalton, Surrey. I was thus some 10 to 15 miles away from the London areas that suffered worst in the blitz, but yet close enough to be affected by the war on a day-to-day basis. Noted below are my recollections of the period.

Essay 6 of 7 - Evacuation.

By late June 1944 the intensity of the flying bomb attacks was such that the Government decided to evacuate school pupils and nursing mothers (of children under two years of age) from the London area. Mum therefore became an evacuation candidate, with my 16 months old brother Rodney, younger sister Brenda, and I scheduled to accompany our mother. In a few days, the time for our evacuation arrived, and Mum, Rodney, Brenda and I, with our suitcases, identity cards and ration books, made our way to Carshalton Station. A ‘special’ train took us and other evacuees to Victoria Station where we joined similar groups. Another ‘special’ train then took us all to Euston Square and from there we walked in crocodile fashion to Euston Main Line Station where we embarked on to our third and final ‘special’ train. During the journeying from home to Euston the increasingly large group of evacuees frequently sang:-
We don’t know where we’re going until we’re there,
There are lots and lots of rumours in the air,
Dee-dah dee-dah dee-dah and, (forgotten line)
Dee-dah dee-dah dee-dah but, ( as above)
We don’t know where we’re going until we’re there.
And nobody did know -- until we were there!

After about six hours of journeying from Euston, stop-start fashion, we were north of Manchester and in the evacuation zone. As part of the train’s schedule it took us onto the line between Oldham and Rochdale, and at Shaw and Crompton Station some thirty people disembarked. The train then continued its journey, but for the Dowden family, we had arrived at our destination. From the railway station we walked about 400 metres to a community centre where we were fed with generous helpings of Lancashire hot-pot. Then, after the meal, Mum was given to understand that some two hours would pass before we were allocated to accommodation.

For a young southerner at the end of his first journey north of London, the view from the community centre was incredible. Looking east ,the Pennine hills rose quite suddenly and steeply from the relatively flat land to the north, west, and south. Near the base of the Pennines were large cotton (spinning) mills built using the red bricks characteristic to the area. These had towers at the end of each mill that displayed in large white letters the name of the mill. LILY and LILAC are two of the names I recall. Now because we were scheduled to remain at the community centre for some time, Mum gave me permission to leave the centre and explore the immediate vicinity. In practice the local roads held no attraction, I was however fascinated by the massive hills that rose up in the near distance. Also, and with total disregard of my mother’s constraint, I thought that if I climbed to the top of the hills in view, and then took one step further, I would be in Yorkshire -- and I had never been to Yorkshire. So my ‘local’ walk was back to the railway station, over the level crossing, on to the lower Pennine slopes and uphill over a tussock grass surface. After (I think) about 800 metres I crossed a road, and on its far side I clambered about one metre over a stone wall and on to more tussocky grass. After a further 15 minutes or so, two problems became apparent. Firstly reaching the brow of one hill merely brought into view another hill whose summit was some distance away, -- how far away was Yorkshire? Secondly, by going beyond the hills I could see from Shaw, I discovered that I lost sight of my point of return. A decision to abandon the Yorkshire expedition was made when, out of sight of Shaw, I reached some boggy ground that, for all I knew, would swallow me whole in the manner of villains dying in quicksands in boys comics. The return journey was, I thought, merely a matter of running downhill, and in a short space of time I saw the top of the dry-stone wall on the high side of the road I had crossed earlier. I ran towards the wall, intending to jump the metre or so onto the road below, but, at a very short distance from the wall I tripped and fell. Then, as I got back on to my feet I saw that the road at this location was some seven or eight metres below the wall I was going to jump over. I can only presume that fate was saving me for something else that evening, but in any event it was a somewhat subdued boy that followed the wall to a low point alongside the road and then returned to the community centre. [In the above, the length of the day may appear incredibly long. In point of fact the journey from home started at 6-30a.m., the time of year was late June, and clocks were set to ‘double British summer-time’, i.e. GMT + 2 hours.] I did not tell of my adventure to Mum for purely selfish reasons, and in retrospect, did she not have enough on her plate without having to worry about a stupid, disobedient son?

Our first night in Shaw was spent in a cold, damp, slum house that was occupied by an elderly lady. And on the following day Mum persuaded the local evacuation authority to re-allocate us to the 1920’s - 1930’s houses located at 25 and 27 (I think) Oak Street, also in Shaw. Mum and Rodney were scheduled to sleep in number 25, Brenda and I in number 27, and meals were to be taken by all of us in number 25. This arrangement broke down fairly quickly and soon we were all billeted in number 25. At this point I feel I must comment on the situation from the viewpoint of our hosts. They lived in an ordinary terraced council house that they fully occupied, and hence did not consider that they had room to spare for evacuees. There was strict food rationing, and with two families in one kitchen there was much room for suspicion and accusations of purloining of rationed food. To make matters worse, the normal occupant of the kitchen and the evacuee mother were initially strangers with different ideas on how a kitchen should be run. Also, should the two families eat separately or together, and how should this be organised against a background of different ration entitlements depending upon age? The period of time spent in Shaw was thus one of tension for both Mum and our hosts and, without malice, both parties were pleased when, after nearly three months, we returned to Carshalton.

During our time in Shaw we visited Rochdale, Oldham and Manchester -- all great adventures for a boy from ‘the South’. Dad also visited us on two or three week-ends, and I recall being taken to see war-time league football at the ground of Oldham Athletic. My main memories however concern the ease with which we made friends with local children, the quality of schooling, a prize I won, and the attitude of the local adult population towards the doodle-bug menace.

In no time at all, evacuated children were accepted into their local peer groups. I was shown all around the local area, including clambers over the local hills -- but without any attempt to reach Yorkshire. We both fished and paddled in a local stream, played street games in the same way as at home, and made nuisances of ourselves in a railway goods yard located over a stone wall directly opposite our new home. Without recalling the exact locations, I remember that we had ready access to bales of cotton, shipped from the U.S.A. and due to be spun in the local cotton mills. Also, we all suffered from head lice that had to be removed using steel comb whose sharp teeth were painfully scraped along the surface of one’s skull. It was said that the fleas came over in the bales of cotton, but the truth or otherwise of this view was never determined.

For education, Brenda and I were allocated to the Greenfield Road Elementary School. This was a two-classes school alledgedly catering for the academic needs of children from 5 to 11 years of age. In practice the oldest local children in my class were from 1 to 2 years behind the oldest evacuees in terms of their education and frankly, when compared with council estate schooling in Surrey, the Lancashire Education Committee was failing its children. As an aside, I remembered into my late teens the name of a very bright local boy in my class. In 1953, while in the R.A.F., I met an airman from the Shaw area who knew the bright lad in question. He confirmed my view on his abilities and informed me that along with his peer group he left school at 15 years of age. I am sure that given my ‘Surrey’ education he would have passed the Junior Scholarship to Grammar School with its prospect of eventual university education. Whilst at school in Shaw I won an essay competition and was rewarded with a conducted tour round a local cotton mill. I was fascinated by all I saw; the coal-fired boiler plant, the de-greasing and cleaning of the cotton, the teasing of the threads and subsequent spinning of the product, and the noise and awesome complexity of the belt-driven machinery that performed these tasks. Though I did not realise it at the time, I was being given a taste of 19th century industrial practice. And while on the subject of northern industrial practice, we were in Shaw during ‘Wakes Week’. I leave the reader to investigate the significance of that particular week.

In practice the attitude of the local populace towards the flying-bomb menace was infantile. For filmed news and entertainment we usually visited the nearby cinemas once or twice a week. During the newsreels, film was often shown of our fighter aircraft trying to tip doodle-bugs off course by touching and tilting wings, or by shooting them down with cannon-fire. Evacuees were well aware that not all pilots survived these sorties. Also of course, when a ‘downed’ doodle-bug exploded on contact with the ground, destruction of life, limb and property was a possible consequence. But yet there seemed to be no understanding of these aspects of the flying bomb blitz, and the local populace behaved in the manner of children watching a juvenile Cowboys and Indians film. This left a deep impression on me and, also I believe, on other evacuees in the area.

On one visit to Shaw, Dad saw an opportunity to spend a little money in the short term and thus save a larger sum in the longer term. The opportunity also had the added advantage of avoiding the expenditure of precious ‘clothing coupons’. His son Brian (i.e. me) was in a mill town, and in mill towns one could purchase clogs without using one’s clothing coupons. I was therefore bought a pair of clogs and enough foot-irons (so it seemed) to shoe the Household Cavalry. I duly clattered in clogs on the cobblestones in Shaw, and subsequently on the concrete pavements in Carshalton. Back in Carshalton I quickly discovered that if you run on a concrete surface in clogs fitted with irons, you could slide along the pavement for a worthwhile distance because the iron nailed to the sole provided a low friction contact. But low friction is not no friction, and within six months of returning home I wore out the stack of irons that Dad had bought. Poor Dad, his wheeze for saving money was defeated by the misbehaviour of yours truly.

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