In late summer 1939, the order came to send children away. Around the country mothers didn’t know when they would see their children again. It was named operation Pied Piper.
In September 1939 my twin brother Terry and I arrived at our school, Parkhill Ilford. We each carried a small suitcase carrying our clothes, toothbrushes and gas-mask. When we arrived at school there were coaches waiting for us, and we thought that we were going on a coach trip. Then one of the teachers told us that we were going on a long Journey by train, we could not understand why a lot of the parents were crying!
We got onto the coaches and arrived at Paddington Station, and were then put onto a stream train and off to a journey that was to change our lives for ever.
During the journey I was looking out of one of the windows to look at a train that was coming from the opposite direction, when it went past our train the rush of air took my cap off of my head and that’s the last I saw of it. I cried because I thought that I’d be in trouble for losing it, I often wonder who found it.
After a very long journey we arrived at Taunton in Somerset, around 30 of us were taken onto a coach and after half an hour we arrived at Cothelstone Manor, a large country house going back to SAXON times. It was only then I noticed that my brother was not with us. I was not all that bothered as I thought that he would arrive on the next coach, but he never did turn up. We were led into a large dormitory where we ate as well as slept.
The manor house had large grounds and lovely gardens where we’d spend most of the time as well as walking the local lanes. I still have a scar on my knee to this day as a reminder of my time there, when I won the longest jump down the steps to the entrance to the Mansion. My teeth ended up embedded in my knee.
After a week or so my Mother arrived with my Brother, was I glad to see them again! I was taken to the village Hatch Beauchamp where my brother was staying. We stayed with a Mr and Mrs Newman who were a nice couple who lived in a council house with their son Dick. Dick was older than us and went out to work, while we went to school.
The head teacher at our school was a Miss Brown, we spent a lot of the time roaming the countryside, picking wild strawberries along the railway bank (it had a railway station in those days), occasionally we would travel to Taunton on the train.
One night in June 1941, several Berman bombs dropped locally. One landed in a school playground in the next village, and blew the school to bits, thankfully no-one living in the school, the only other damage was a few windows and doors blown out in nearby cottages with a few of the occupants had cuts an bruises. Another bomb landed beside the railway line a couple of miles away and another one in open farm land.
Most evenings you would see the German Bombers flying overhead on the way to bomb Bristol and Bath and Yeovil, they would drop silver strips of paper to try and disrupt the radar, it would be hanging from the trees and phone lines. The bombers made a loud droning noise, you could see the German crosses on the planes, some of the farmers used to fire their shotguns at the planes, and one chap who was in the Home Guard would fire his Sten-gun at them, I don’t know where he got his bullets from?
A few days after this bombing raid our Mother came and took us back to Essex again as their was very few bombs being dropped there. After a few weeks the bombing in Essex was getting worse, so mother took us back to Somerset again, we arrived at the village of Wrantage. My mothers friend Mrs King was taking her boys back to Essex so my brother and I replaced them, but in the mean time we had to stay temporarily with Mr and Mrs Ernist Dove at “Newport Manor” which was a large country house, with a Chauffeur, Gardener, also a maid, they also had a games room and stables.
About a week or so later we were taken on the back of Mr Dove, and his Daughters bikes, they couldn’t take us in their Rover car as they had no petrol. We were taken to a Mr and Mrs Edmond Duke, (Uncle Ed and Auntie May), they lived in an old cottage which was about 200 years old, it was built of cob walls with a thatch roof, it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Uncle Ed was a stone mason and Auntie May used to be a post girl and also a cook (and what a good one she was), after we had been there for about twenty minutes the front door opened and in walked a boy of about seven, this is David! Auntie May said, he is also staying here with us, and is also an evacuee. David had come from Plaistow also in Essex, he had had several billets before coming to Auntie May’s, and was not treated very well at some of them, she felt sorry for him so took him in, now she had three evacuees to look after. This was a hard job as the cottage had no electric and the toilet was about fifty yards down the garden. Once coming from the toilet a posh lady who was visiting said to uncle Ed I noticed that there was no lock on the door and Uncle Ed with a deadpan face said “we’ve been here for over 20 years now and no one has taken a bucket of s–t yet!
There was an open range fire with an oven where all of the cooking was done, the fire had to be kept going all the time, and the kettle was always on it. At Christmas time Auntie May would be busy making Christmas cakes and making about a dozen for various people in the village as well as Christmas puddings, with silver coins in them (we would have two or three helpings just to get the silver coins). I used to help her ice the cakes, and after a while, I got quite good at it. We liked Christmas and would go up in the woods and get a Christmas tree, holly and mistletoe. We also made paper chains to decorate the cottage.
The garden was about a third of an acre, which produced all of our fruit and veg. Auntie May would make jam from the Strawberry’s, Blackberries, Plums, Gooseberry’s, and Blackcurrants. There were also a few fruit trees in the garden Victoria plums, greengages, as well as apples we were self-sufficient with all the produce from the garden. When we were older we had to help out in the garden doing an hour of gardening after school before we could go out to play. Once after school, we had to put some cabbage plants, as we were eager to go out to play, we put them as quickly as we could.
When Uncle saw them he made us put them in all again as the rows were not straight enough for him.
We would saw up logs for the fire with a crosscut saw, Dave and I were very good at it, we could saw through a large tree trunk in one go without stopping. When a farmer had trees taken down you could buy one for ten shillings, and they would deliver it for you in a farm wagon. We began to be quite adept at tasks in the garden, I was responsible for cutting the privet hedge which went up and down like the loch Ness monster. There was a well in the garden where all the water for the garden was drawn. We made our own liquid manure with chicken droppings, you put the droppings into a sack and submerge it into water into a metal container, (we used the liner from an old boiler), after about a week or so the liquid manure which you diluted with water would be ready to use. I was responsible for collecting the milk from the farm about half a mile away. I only spilt the milk once and that was on a cold frosty morning when it slipped out of my hands. I had to go back to the farm for some more milk.
When the weather was bad we played indoor games like snakes & ladders, draughts, cards and ludo. We played cricket and football with the local lads in the fields, and spent many an hour in the woods, making hideouts and playing cowboys and Indians
The kettle was always on the boil at Auntie May’s. When any tradesmen called such as the baker, butcher, and the Indian gentleman who travelled around on his bike selling handkerchiefs and silk scarves, Auntie May would give all of them a cup of tea and a piece of her homemade cake, it was more like a cafe than a cottage.
Uncle Ed had served in the army during the First World War and was now a sergeant in the Home Guard. We and some of the local lads would watch them every week when they were on manoeuvres. We liked to watch them when they were on the rifle range. They had a man “who was a crack shot” who would teach them how to shoot. Uncle Ed would bring home a lot of the Home Guard equipment to look after, we found a smoke bomb amongst it one day and let it off in the garden, it caused a traffic jam in the village.
One time when we were watching the Home Guard training there was a hay-rick which was on fire nearby, several of the Home Guard and ourselves went to try and put the fire out.
Uncle Ed burnt his Home Guard trousers in trying to put the fire out, he was really angry about it, it’s the only time that I have seen him so angry as he was such a mild-mannered man. Uncle Ed he had a hard but simple life, besides gardening, he was also the village cricket club’s umpire. In the evening he loved to listen to the radio and when Lord Haw-Haw was on we were not allowed to speak. He had a tin of boiled sweets next to his armchair and most evenings would have a half pint of home-brew beer, but never went to the pub.
The cottage was at a crossroads and there were rumours of ghosts. One dark evening I had a strange encounter, I was walking down a country lane towards the cottage when I saw a figure approaching me, wearing an old-fashioned cloak. When they were level with me I said good evening but received no answer. As I turned around the figure was no longer there it had disappeared. I mentioned this to the locals they all seem to know about it, claiming they had also seen it. We would often see a figure in a white sheet around the cottage, we would all run indoors and tell Auntie May what we had seen. It was quite sometime later that we found out that it was uncle Ed having a game with us.
Opposite the cottage was a patch of grass and two or three times a year Romany Gypsies would come and stay there for a week. They lived in a barrel-top caravan pulled by horses and would come to the cottage for water and old tins such as corn beef etc. They made Dolly pegs that were used for hanging the washing on the line and used thin strips of tin to tack around the pegs. Auntie May would get all of her pegs from them, they made other things as well. Us boys would sit around their fire for hours watching them, Dolly pegs are quite collected now, sometimes they would get their horse shod by the local village blacksmith Ted Spiller.
Once a fortnight when we were at school we would go to Taunton for woodwork lessons, we would travel by a local private bus company called Hutchings and Cornelius which was nicknamed Hot & Cold. The woodwork teacher would throw your woodwork at you if it was not correct, he would often throw tools at you as well.
Americans
We came in contact with the Americans on quite a few occasions and got quite friendly with some of them, I can still remember some of their names, (Garza, Chuck and Butch). The USAAF Station AAF-464 at Isle Abbotts was renamed Merryfield.
At the airfield, there were up to seventy C47 planes and gliders dispersed on the airfield, which was about three to four miles from Wrantage. We and some of the village lads would cycle there from time to time and help them to unload and load up the planes. Wounded soldiers were flown from the war in Europe to the airfield and then taken to the 6th general hospital in Taunton, which was built by the Americans, and now called Musgrove hospital.
When the Americans were filling in the canal at Wrantage with bulldozers to level a field for a local farmer, we spent hours watching them. They would give us gum, butter, jam etc.
On one occasion an American Tank-Carrier had driven onto the grass verge outside our cottage to let an RAF lorry by, but the weight of the Tank carrier broke the pipes underneath it that carried the ditch water. It was stuck there for about three days until the engineers came along to recover it, Auntie May supplied them with tea and cakes until they had finished.
On another occasion, we saw an American convoy that had stopped for a break outside our cottage. It was a hot July day, there was a knock at the front door and standing there were two American privates. They asked if they could have a drink of water. Auntie May replied she had something better than that and gave them a bottle of her potent homemade elderberry wine! Twenty minutes later a loud voice bellowed where did get that from, they had both got quite intoxicated through drinking it, “you will both be on a charge when we get back to camp a sergeant said”. They had to get another driver to drive their Jeep back to camp.
Quite often that the Americans would get drunk on Somerset cider in the local pubs, it was quite cheap at about 3p to 4p a pint, and the Americans had plenty of money to spend. All you could get in the pubs during the war was beer or cider, occasionally the landlord would have a bottle or two of spirits, but it would only last a couple of days, once word got around.
I once fell into a canal while throwing large rocks into it from a wooden bridge. I lifted a heavy one above my head to throw into the canal but I followed it in when I lost my balance. As my head came up I heard Dave say that was a big one Tone, little did he realize that it was me that had fallen into the water as well. On getting out I noticed that I had lost one of my shoes in the water, so Dave lent me his shoes to walk back to Auntie May’s. It’s a good job that the Italian prisoners of war taught us how to swim in the River Isle.
We would come across them helping out on the farms etc, I can remember us having an apple fight with them once when they were picking up cider apples on a local farm.
We went to the village school, (the village hall, which was an old army hut from WW1), it was also used for dances and other functions, such as whist drives. I can remember us going to whist drives when we were about 13, there would be quite a few whist drives just before Christmas time. The prizes were mainly goose, chicken, turkey, pheasant and pheasant. The villagers would take it quite seriously as they were keen on winning. If they did manage to win It would solve their Christmas dinner, as you would only have poultry at Christmas time. At one whist-drive, Dave and I were sitting at the same table but with different partners. Dave’s partner had already won the trick for them, but Dave who was the last one to go and couldn’t follow suit. Instead of throwing away a low card of another suit down, he stood up and slapped the ace of trumps down and said “that’s mine Kiddy”. With that his pensioner partner got up and was about to hit Dave over the head with his walking stick, we managed to restrain him just
in time.
The School had been bombed several weeks previously, but we also had to move as you only stayed there until you reached eleven. We had to make our own way over to our next school in the village of North Curry two miles away.
One lunchtime while at school in the village hut, several of us boys ventured about 200yds down the road and went into an orchard. They had various types of apples, Morgan-sweet, Tom Puts, Cox, Beauty-of-Bath, cookers, cider apples, as well as pears and plum trees. In the middle of the orchard was a Barn, we all went in to have a look inside and found some barrels.
One of the lads pushed the bung in at the top of the barrel and said look all the barrels were full of cider! I then noticed that up in the loft there was some straw which farms used for thatching their ricks with, so we got some and used the straws to suck up the cider from the barrel. We had to help one or two of the boys back to school, as they were quite intoxicated. When we got back to the school one of the boy’s sisters told one of the teachers what we had done and the teacher then marched those of us who weren’t intoxicated, back to the farm to apologise to the farmer. We were expecting the worse but the farmer Mr Whittle said you have been naughty boys don’t do it again.
About five years later Uncle Ed and I were doing some building work on the same farm as I was working for him then and the farmer remembered me as one of the boys who had drunk some of the cider. He said I can remember the day the teacher brought you lads back to apologise to me, and said I was not a bit annoyed with you boys, in fact, I found it difficult to keep a straight face. I thought that it was really ingenious how you boys managed to get the cider out of the barrel, and with that said my cider cellar is down there on the left help yourself to it.
We would spend hours roaming the fields and woods, playing at cowboys and Indians, also we would catch fish in the streams and ponds such as minnows, sticklebacks and newts. Another hobby that all the boys had was collecting birds’ eggs, and we would only take one egg from each nest, I think that we had about eighty in our collection. I remember climbing the cliffs at Seaton Hole to get some seagulls eggs, but I had to climb up them twice as the first egg that I had put into my shirt pocket, had broken on climbing down. I had to climb all the way up the cliff again to get another egg. When I go past the cliffs these days I wonder how I ever climbed up them.
In the next village Curry Rivel, high above the village stood a tall column, called Pynsent Monument. It was 140 feet tall with a ledge on the top and we would go there often to play and climb up to the top of it. The top was a ledge about 24in’s wide, we would take our bikes up there and ride them around and sometimes do handstands on the ledge.
We would pick cowslips and elderberries for making wine, and primroses, blackberries, wild strawberries, field mushrooms, as well as hazel nuts and chestnuts. I would climb up the chestnut tree and jump onto the branches so that the nuts would fall to the ground, Terry and Dave would collect them. Once when I was jumping on a branch it broke and I came crashing down but fortunately managed to cling to a branch near the bottom of the tree. Auntie May would make wine from the cowslips, and elderberries, as well as wine from some of the garden produce, (parsnips, rhubarb, etc), what a lot of people do not know is that besides cowslips you occasionally would come across an Oxslip which is larger and darker than a cowslip, they would stick up in the field like a sore thumb. When we saw one we would all rush to see who could get to it first, I would win nine times out of ten. We would also catch the odd rabbit, pigeon and eels which would help to supplement our war rations.
If we were lucky we might get a pheasant, one could live quite comfortably off the land in the countryside. We also got quite good at making things such as catapults, bows and arrows, slings, and kites in Uncles Ed’s shed.
Another country pastime was to catch eels with worms, which was called ‘Clatting’, you would do this after heavy rainfall, which would make the water in streams/rivers muddy, to catch them would involve getting large worms about six to eight would be enough. With a large needle threaded with wool, you would thread it through the worms, join the ends of the wool together then fold it over a few times.
You’d then tie them onto a pole or stick and with a weight such as a large nut or a lump of lead, put it on the end of the string then put the worms into the muddy water. When you caught one they would give a sharp tug, you could then gently lift it out of the water and shake it into a bucket. The first one I caught I flicked it over my head and it landed about 10 yards behind me. The amazing thing is that they would make their way back towards the water, they must have built-in radar as they seem to know which way the water is. They are very difficult to pick up with your hands from the ground as they were as so slippery. An old local man (Jack Duke) would sometimes be sitting next to us clatting, but he would catch about six eels to our one. I noticed that he had a piece of wire running up his pole when I asked him what it was for he said! “It’s a lightning conductor” but to this day I still do not have a clue what that wire was for. I have a theory that the reason that he caught more eels than us could be to do with putting something like aniseed on his worms to attract the eels.
During the school holidays and at weekends and sometimes in the evenings we would help out on the farms, mainly for Mr Richards at Hammons Farm. We would do most of the things on the farm such as cleaning out the cow stalls, feeding the animals, working in the fields, and even driving the tractor.
We would help put on harnesses on the horses and take them to the fields and load them up with various things, such as mangos and logs. Jack Richards had a pony and cart and used to deliver milk and eggs to the village of North Curry. The customers would bring their jugs out which would be filled with milk from a brass churn which had a tap at the bottom of it. Later he had milk bottles for the customers, as well as the school. Us boys used to fill the bottles with milk when we worked on the farm during the holidays and at weekends.
On school holidays and weekends, Terry would go with Mr Richards to deliver the milk and eggs. On one occasion Mr Richards told Terry to take the pony and cart onto the next customer while he was dealing with another one, unfortunately, Terry went too close to a grass bank and the large cartwheel went up the bank and the milk cart turned over on its side. There was milk and broken eggs all over the road they had to go back to the farm to get some more.
During the harvest everyone would help the farmers to get the crops in, even the village policeman would help, (every village had one in those days). Some farmers would bring a cream tea onto the fields in the evening for the helpers also the cider jar which would be handed around. One local farmer had two or three Land girls working for him and he never had any trouble in getting help during the harvest time, Dave had a soft spot for one of them her name was Lilly, she later married a farmer and had a son, Dave managed to track her down in the 1980s.
We would help to load the farm wagons with corn sheaves, and also help out on building the ricks, I have one interesting story about thrashing on one of the ricks, Terry Dave and myself were working on a farmers rick, (Mr Totterdells), some farmers would put wire netting around the rick when they were thrashing, this was to stop the rats from getting away. There could be up to two to three hundred rats in one rick), they would also be a couple of terriers around the rick as well. We were working on the rick one day and were near the bottom of it when there was a lot of blood around we all thought that someone had put his pick into a rat, but a few minutes later Terry turned white, as the blood was coming from him. He that had put the pick through his boot and into a vein in his foot, right opposite across the road was the Canal Inn, they took Terry over to the pub and the landlord gave him a brandy, and then took him to have it stitched up.
Sadly the pub is no longer there (it closed in 2008), up to then my brother could probably have been the only person to have got a free drink there.
Mr Richards’s son Jack had an old 1930s Wolseley car and occasionally he would take us to Beer (a fishing village in Devon), to go mackerel fishing. We did manage to catch a few mackerel from time to time. On most Saturdays he would take us to Taunton cattle market we would dress up in breeches and leggings and look like young farmers, he was quite proud of us.
It was quite a dangerous job working on farms and there were quite a few accidents, Jack Richards was gored by their bull once, and he broke his arm when trying to start up his tractor with the starting handle and it back kicked on him. I nearly had an accident once on the farm, I was ridding the cob from the fields there was no saddle on it I was ridding it bareback, at walking pace at first but then the cob started to get into a trot and then a gallop. As he came into the farm yard I could see that the five-bar gate which led out onto the road was shut, I thought that if it tried to jump it I would be bound to fall off but I managed to stop him just in time and got off ok, I then noticed that the strap around his tummy was undone, I have often wondered if it had come undone on its own or someone had undone it? When the farmer and his son come running into the farm yard they were so relieved to see that I was still in one piece.
The time that I liked the best was when they were harvesting, and cutting the corn, barley and oats, It was very exciting. When they got near to the centre of the field with only a small strip of corn left to cut, sometimes there would be rabbits running everywhere or hiding in the corn especially when there was not much corn left to cut. As many as a hundred rabbits could be in one field of corn. Most farmers would give you a couple of rabbits if you caught any, but there was one farmer who would not let you have any. I remember one time that there were only two rabbits in his cornfield, and I managed to catch both of them. The farmer would not give me one, so after that, if we caught any rabbits in that farmer’s fields while he was cutting the corn, we would hide them either under a hedge, then go back later after dark to retrieve them.
Some farmers did not like you in their fields at any time and they would set their dogs onto you, but the dogs never got me, but I think they did get Terry and Dave a couple of times. If you came across and gate or hedge when you were being chased by the dogs, you either had to jump over it or go through it, I think that’s why I was so good at running and jumping. I used to win everything in the school sports, 100 Yards Dash, High Jump, Long Jump and Hurdles, Terry won the slow bicycle race.
In the summer of 1946, my last year at school, we decided to finish our education in Somerset, even though the war had ended.
Several schools were competing against each other for a cup. After having won all of my events, and with only the girls and boys relay to come, we were level on points with another school. I told our head teacher, Mr Johns, that I could not run in the relay as we had to be home by 6pm, he begged me to run in the relay and would come back to Mr and Mrs Duke to explain if we were late back. Mr Johns persuaded the other schools to run the boy’s race first and the girl’s race after the boys. Our boys won their race. I came home without knowing if we had won the cup or not, while we were at home having our tea there was a knock on the door and Mr Johns was standing there with the cup in his hands, he apologized to Mr and Mrs Duke for us being late home, he thanked me for staying for the boy’s race and said that the girls had also won their race.
When we reached eleven we had to go to the school at North Curry, which was over two miles away, we used to walk there at first and used to meet other children on the way. Most of them had bikes to ride to school, so we decided that it would be best for us to get ourselves some bikes so we could ride with them. I was lucky as I had a bike given to me but it was a heavy 1920s model, the make was an Armstrong, its probably a collector’s item by now. I think that Dave’s mother bought him one, but Terry didn’t have one, so we decided to get him one.
In the summer months in the evenings and at weekends the three of us would go out picking blackberries and sell them for between 5p and 6p a pound, about 2p to 3p in today’s money. It was difficult getting bikes during the war, as new ones were not being made, and second-hand ones were very expensive, but we did manage to get him a second-hand one for £7 and 10 shillings, about a farms worker’s wage for about a week and a half. It took a couple of days to learn to ride them and Terry slightly longer. While he learning he fell into a ditch which was outside a farm and was full of effluent that had discharged from the farm. He had to have a good bath when he got back.
We had a lot of fun with our bikes over the years and learnt how to do tricks on them, we travelled miles on them, but it was hard work riding bikes with no gears. When we reached fourteen we bought ourselves new bikes which were just arriving in the shops, so we bought one each, they had three-speed gears which made it a lot easier for going up hills.
We were made to clean them every weekend, we got on fine with the local boys and we would ride miles on our bikes with them, about eight to ten of us would cycle to Weston-Super-Mare, Seaton, Pollock and Minehead. We did have an accident once when one of the boys who was in the front fell off, and we all piled up on top of him. I was lucky as I was also at the front, and did not fall off. We all carried on with only a few cuts and bruises and arrived at our destination which that day was Weston-Super-Mare.
There was a lot of flooding in the village in winter times or when we had heavy rain, when the roads flooded we would come home from school at North Curry the long way around which was over a mile further, at the bottom of a long hill “Newport hill” the road would be flooded for about 100yds. We would come down the hill as fast as we could put our feet on the handlebars when we reached the water and see who could go the furthest. After about 20/30yds our bikes would come to a stop. We then had to pedal through the rest of the flood getting our feet wet.
We also had a youth under 15 football team and all of the team would have to cycle to the away matches, which could be up to ten miles away.
We held dances and raffles to get the money for football shirts and balls etc. On Sunday evenings the lads would go to the pictures in Taunton, about five miles away. On the way back from the pictures, some of the lads decided to have a race. Dave and another lad, whose name I have forgotten, were leading in the front riding with their heads on the wrong side of the road and not looking where they were going and also going around a corner when they collided with a 1930s Morris Minor car. One of them went through the front windscreen and the other one took the wing off the car, they both ended up in Taunton Hospital. The occupants of the car were shaken but not injured, Dave and the other lad had cuts and bruises and one of them had a broken arm. I think that the car was a write-off, while the bikes were badly damaged. We managed to repair Dave’s in time for him to use when he was released from Hospital.
Most people in the country during the war went to chapel on Sundays, and we went twice, once in the morning and in the evening. We also went to Sunday school in the afternoon. One Sunday we were early for chapel some of the local boys were playing football in the field behind, so we decided to join them.
After a while we heard them singing the first hymn, so we decided rather than be late not to go to chapel, and carried on playing football. The next day it was all over the village that we had missed going to chapel, we might have gotten away with it but the lady who played the organ mentioned it to Auntie May when she saw her the next day. We didn’t get into trouble and Auntie May and Uncle Ed decided that we need only go to chapel on Sunday mornings. On some Sundays, we would cycle with the Dukes to Uncle Ed’s sister Mable, who lived in the next village at North Curry where would all go to the chapel there. Afterwards, we’d go to Uncle Ed’s sisters for tea. Occasionally all five of us Auntie May, Uncle Ed, and ourselves would cycle to Auntie May’s sister who lived in Porlock, about 25 miles away. We’d have tea there and ride back. The roads were empty during the war and had hardly any traffic on them, also not many people had cars in those days, and if you did have a car you couldn’t get petrol for it.
In the 40’s we had quite a few bad winters, during one I think that it was 1945/46, we had about 18in’s of snow overnight and had to walk to school. It took us quite a while to walk the two miles there and when we arrived it was closed and stayed closed for two or three weeks.
On another occasion, all of our class had to write out a hundred lines. The ceilings were very high with dark boards and if you looked carefully you would see dozens of pens stuck into them. Pens in those days had a wooden handle with a steel nib. Several of us boys were throwing our pens up into the ceiling when someone called out that the headmaster, Mr Johns, was coming. As he was walking through the classroom one of the pens fell out and landed on the floor in front of him, so hence the hundred lines became “we must not throw our pens into the ceiling”.
Uncle Ed made us a wooden sledge and we had some great fun going down the hills, even the hill on the main road, on one very steep hill we let Terry have the first run down it. As he sped down the hill on the sledge as he went over some large bump, his cap came off his head and landed on it again, before he disappeared into a thick hawthorn hedge. Dave and I ran down the hill and pulled him out, he had a few scratches on his face and hands, but he was ok. The local Baker would tie our sledge behind his van and tow us around the village on his rounds in the snow, Uncle Ed also made us a trolley from pram wheels, large ones on the back and smaller ones on the front. You could steer it with your feet or a rope and also stop it with the hand brake, we even use to come down the hill with it on the main A378 road.
About 200yrds from our cottage was the local Blacksmith Ted Spiller. Us boys would stay and would watch him for hours shoeing the horses and mending the farm implements. We would also pump the bellows for him to keep the fire hot. One day some men came along to cut down his railings and gates and loaded them into a lorry and then took them away, they also took all of his old horseshoes “it was all for the war effort to make guns tanks” he was quite upset as he had made all the railings and gates by hand himself. He would often send you down to the village shop to get him some cigarettes (woodbines),
I think that they were about 5p a packet, Mr Spiller also had ducks and chickens Auntie May would get all her eggs from him.
When we had some money on us which was quite often, we would go down to the village shop to buy some cigarettes for ourselves and say that they were for Mr Spiller, we managed to get away with it quite a few times, until one day when we went into the shop to get some cigarettes for ourselves but the shop keeper Mr Goss would not give us any. Mr Spiller had just sent someone down here about ten minutes for some, so we got caught out. The strange thing is that neither of us has smoked throughout our adult life, I expect that it was to do with Mr and Mrs Duke being non-smokers.
Every winter the Somerset levels flooded over with water, it would only be about 12in’s deep, when it froze over in the winter every one would go skating on it. We didn’t have any skates ourselves so we would go on the ice and slide on it with our hobnail boots which had steel clamps and studs in the bottom of them. When the ice began to thaw there would be about an inch or so of water on top and when you fell down your clothes would get wet through.
We’d get some twigs from the hedgerow and lit a fire to dry them. Once when we went looking for more sticks for the fire our socks fell down into the fire and got burnt, we had some explaining to do when we got home.
One day the Americans gave us headphones with a mouthpiece. We had great fun with them, I would climb up the telegraph posts connect them to the wires and listen to phone conversations, we would also have conversations ourselves. I expect that it was illegal, but we never got caught doing it.
Most cottages in the villages did not have electricity, so people’s radios worked by using large 120-volt batteries plus acid accumulators. When Terry was 14 his first job was going around helping to deliver the batteries and accumulators to the local villages in an Austin Van. One day whilst Terry was at the top of a steep hill delivering to a cottage and seeing to a customer the driver said to him I’m going down to the next house Terry when you have finished with that customer get into the van let the hand brake off and coast down to the next customer where I will be waiting.
Terry got into the van and let the hand brake off ok and the van started to move off slowly down the hill but as it gathered speed he could not stop it! It was quite a long hill with a bend halfway down, and a main road at the bottom, there were about three to four people pursuing the van down the hill. When Terry got to the main road he was still going too fast, managed to turn the corner ok but landed up with the van on its side in a ditch. Terry was ok but it could of be serious with all the acid accumulators in the van.
Well, that’s some of my experiences as an evacuee, I think that we were very privileged to have been evacuated to the west country, and to have had such nice foster parents as the Newman’s and the Duke’s. I learnt so much about country life and meeting country folk. That was over 70 years ago now, and it’s a different world today, children living in the country these days don’t seem to know very much about it. The other day I ask some school children how many eggs a pigeon lays also a pheasant, none of them knew the correct answer, (pigeon lays two and a pheasant about a dozen or more), and some of them said none, even their teacher didn’t know.
I still see one or two of the lads from the village from time to time but most of them have all moved away to the towns now or have passed away, and are old men like myself. It would be nice if you could turn the clock back again to those days.
In 1946 when we left school Terry and I went back to Essex, Dave was still staying at Auntie May’s, and still going to school. Terry and I got a job in a factory in Essex, but neither of us liked it, so we both came back to Somerset to stay with the Dukes again. I worked for Uncle Ed when I came back, that’s was until I had to go in and do my national service in November 1950.
Terry got a job in the village learning to become a sign-writer, and then got a job with a local builder as a painter and decorator but only stayed with them for a short while and then went back to stay with his mum back in Essex. Unfortunately, Uncle Ed passed away while I was stationed in Ceylon. On my demob from the RAF and with no job to come back to, I got a job at Heathrow working for the Civil Airport Authority, working in Air Traffic Control.
I stayed with them for 35 years, Terry went into the RAF and stayed in for 22 years, Dave joined the Grenadier Guards, and after had his own business as a panel-beater and sprayer. Terry and I are both still in contact with Dave until this day, and we still see each other from time to time, I am now back living in Somerset, Terry lives in Dorset and Dave lives
in Bucks.
Tony Brown
