There were many Dunn children around for companionship. Mrs. Dunn had been married previously to a Mr. Austin and had three children from that marriage, all now in their mid-teens—Basil, Joy, and Bill. At their holiday visits it was a full house when they joined the three Dunn children, Pierre, Hugh, and Minette—all slightly younger than me. With Bill, who was a couple of years older, I explored the attic and roof parapets of the large and impressive country house. Joy Austin, sixteen, was lovely, and I promptly, and privately, fell in love with her. Basil, the oldest, asked me to pump air for the organ in the village church next to Battle House, and I was enchanted with its sound. I appreciated the instrument even more years later after I married my wife, a trained musician who concentrated her music studies on the organ and became a church organist. A seventh child was added to the Dunn household a year later when Petronelle was born. Mother helped take care of her and I was fascinated to watch the baby being bathed and diapered since I had never seen a newborn close up and knew nothing about their care.
Although Battle House could boast no hunting dogs, there were three dogs in residence. Rounding out the household was Simba, a lion-colored African breed of hound dog with a unique band of hair, about eighteen inches long, that stood straight up on her spine, and she was fiercely devoted to Mrs. Dunn; Susi, a calm, lovable black lab was my favorite; and there was Rory, a mangy old brown cocker spaniel who smelled and was seldom allowed inside. But I gave Rory attention and liked to feed him since he was so grateful and rewarded me with a fast wagging of his tail. There were also servants—Sheila the cook, Beryl the maid, and Mr. Duck, chauffeur, gardener, and groom, whom I was immediately assigned to help. Theirs was an active household.
Since Christmas was coming soon, it was decided that I should not start school until after the holidays. Mr. Duck placed me in charge of the chickens, feeding them and collecting their eggs. But I learned even the most straightforward job has challenges. One day a fox burrowed under the chicken coop, disrupting my newly learned routine and horrifying me when I realized several of my chickens became his victims. I was sorry for the chickens and disappointed that I had not seen the fox because I had never seen one. The next day I worked with Mr. Duck to fortify the henhouse against intruders, a formidable task.
Over time I gathered other assignments. The adults at Battle House showed great creativity in devising a variety of jobs and responsibilities for me. In the house it was my duty to tend the coal stove that heated the entire house, and I learned how to correctly bank it for the night so the fire never went out. I was proud to be assigned this responsible task. Before turning in at night I also had to place hot water bottles at the bottom of each bed in the house since bedrooms were barely heated, if at all. One of the most enjoyable outdoor jobs was grooming the horses. They enjoyed being brushed and fed, and I liked doing this when they were brought into the stable, which they preferred over the paddock, especially in winter. My love of horses began at Battle House. They were not ridden very often, but occasionally the Dunns hosted a foxhunt. On the scheduled day, the courtyard swarmed with horses, and dogs were underfoot everywhere. The dark-colored horses and white-spotted dogs made a lively collage. Soon they were off to hunt, but, the time that I was there, their intended prey “outfoxed” them all, and I liked that.
I celebrated my first Christmas in England at Battle House, where I shared a room with Pierre, the oldest of the Dunn children. Waking up on Christmas morning we found many presents at the foot of our beds. This was a cornucopia I didn’t expect, so different from the stocking filled with coal, onions, and just a few small presents I was used to receiving at home on St. Nicholas Day, which we celebrated on December 6. The origin of giving gifts to children who were good, and coal to children who had been bad, goes back to the legend about St. Nicholas from the Orthodox Christian tradition. But in Czechoslovakia, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, it was a national tradition that Jewish as well as Christian families participated in.
When spring arrived, tending the kitchen garden was added to my chores. I harvested the vegetables in season and brought them to the kitchen. The garden had every type of vegetable, including leeks, artichokes, turnips, and other growing things I had never seen or tasted. It always made me think of the Garden of Eden, and it inspired me to try my hand at “farming” on a smaller scale by planting my own vegetable and flower patch on another part of the property. I was proud of my efforts when I gathered a respectable harvest from my plot. Apples from the orchard were stored in an outside cold-storage shed, and for the first time I enjoyed eating good crisp apples all winter. I realized I was starting to like life on a farm.
Later in my stay I moved in with the older Austin boys, into a large bedroom in the old section of the house. The room had a low ceiling with exposed wood beams and a creaky sloping floor, an ideal setting for the ghost stories we heard and told. When I became ill the next year with appendicitis, I was moved into one of the two guest bedrooms at the front of the house. There in the bookcase I found Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia featuring Hercule Poirot—and so began my life-long interest in the adventures of the little Belgian.
As I became integrated into the routine of the Dunn household, the history of the place that was my temporary home interested me more. I appreciated the naming of Battle House when I learned the old part of the house dated from the sixteenth century; it was said that Oliver Cromwell, in the years he was fighting to overthrow the English monarchy, slept in the same timber-ceiling room that I occupied for a time. But in retrospect, Cromwell was probably reputed to have slept in as many different houses in England as George Washington in America! The spacious attic, a great place for us children to sneak away and hide, might once, I imagined, have stored mysterious treasures from past centuries, and if one didn’t look down, a climb out on the parapet that encircled the outside of the house was a great thrill.
Mother tutored the three younger children in the nursery, and sometimes I participated, but more often than not I was helping Mr. Duck. As my scope of contacts widened, I became aware of the rivalry between Mrs. Dunn of Battle House and the vicar of the parish church who lived at the vicarage, the only other large house in the village. The vicarage, built of cold gray stone with an imposing front door, looked forbidding. I frequently banged the knocker on that door because it was there that I was sent to supplement my lessons in geography and other subjects.
The vicar was the Rev. Mr. Phillips, a well-educated, austere looking middle-aged man. He and Mrs. Dunn were either on good terms or at dagger points with each other, depending, perhaps, on the alignment of the stars or some other obscure reason. During one of the favorable periods in their relationship, someone suggested I be released temporarily from my chores at Battle House so Mr. Phillips could tutor me. Each week I took the fifteen-minute walk to the vicarage where Mrs. Phillips, who was much younger than her husband, greeted me and later breezed in with a plate of cookies. One day Mr. Phillips invited me to join the boys’ choir since I had a good soprano voice and liked to sing. I proudly became the fourth choirboy in the Church of England services. When Mrs. Dunn saw me robed and proceeding down the church aisle, she exuded loudly, “Doesn’t he look angelic!” Arriving at my seat in the choir, this “angel” was pleased to notice a perfect observation view of the girls’ choir dressed in their Sunday best, unencumbered by the heavy robes of us boys. I passed the time looking at them during the long sermons that I did not understand.
American troops began to arrive in Britain in 1942 and some were stationed nearby. The village decided to invite these servicemen for tea and a social, but where should such a noteworthy event be held? Mr. Phillips thought the large grounds of the vicarage were the logical spot, but Mrs. Dunn wanted it at Battle House. Everyone at Battle House was excited when Mrs. Dunn prevailed, but the downside to her victory was that massive preparations had to be made in very short order. The large lawn was to be trimmed, manicured, and precisely cut with a hand-mower, now vintage of
course. The flower beds had to be weeded, the bushes trimmed and shaped, and the driveway perfectly raked. For days before the appointed hour, Mr. Duck and I worked steadily and looked for ways to make sure everything was spiffy for the GI’s. When the Americans came, they came in droves, a few hundred of them it seemed to me, and their lounging bodies covered the expansive lawns. I wondered if they were aware of our intense beautification efforts. This was my first exposure to people with dark skin since there were some among the soldiers, and I could not help staring at them, curious what made them so and wondering what they were like. They seemed the same as everyone else.
By the end of 1941, the Battle of Britain had been won and the nightly bombings of London had ended. My stay at Battle House lasted a little more than a year, and then I was sent to the boarding school for refugees organized by the Czech government in exile. For whatever reason, Mrs. Dunn decided to buy a house in London and move to town. The town house was a couple of blocks from Buckingham Palace and convenient to almost everything, so perhaps that was the reason. Mother moved with the family to London, and whenever I was on holiday from my boarding school I visited my parents in London and stayed at the Dunn’s town house. The following year, Mother took a position as secretary with the Czechoslovak government in exile and served Czech leaders Hubert Ripka and Ivo Ducháček. When she moved out of the town house, my relationship was severed with the Dunn family and Battle House. I have often wondered what happened to all those Dunns because, unfortunately, we lost contact. I remember my days at Battle House fondly as some of the happiest ones of my stay in England.
Forty-five years later, in 1985, I returned to England with my wife to visit places I lived during the war. As we drove up the long driveway to Battle House, we saw row upon row of Quonset huts and greenhouses where lawns had once adorned the property. The paddock now had no horses, only the huts. The house seemed to me to have shrunk since 1942 when I was living there as a boy. I rang the doorbell at the familiar entrance and met the lady who answered and now owned the house with her husband. She invited us in and was joined later by her husband. To my great surprise, he was also a Czech. He settled in England after serving in the Royal Air Force and later married this English woman. Together they ran a horticultural business with the plants grown on the property. Much had changed there, and when the visit was over I decided that I prefer to remember the Battle House of my boyhood.
One evening when I was visiting my parents in London in 1942, we attended a gathering of fellow Czechs. A recording of Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau), a reminder of Vltava River, which flows through Prague, was played in complete silence, punctuated only by barely suppressed sobs as each person now in exile recalled happier days in our homeland. The deep emotion that permeated the room moved me and increased my own homesickness for my country. I was a boy who wondered what lay ahead for me, what was I alive for, and how the purpose of my life would evolve.
Chapter Five: From School to School to School, 1939–1944
ATTENDING FIVE DIFFERENT schools in eighteen months because of my many moves that year is not the usual prescription for a good education, but that is how many I attended, and these schools provided me with my academic foundation for life.
When I arrived on the Kindertransport in London in May 1939, I was immediately enrolled at the local elementary school even though my knowledge of English was almost nonexistent. My fluency in the new language greatly improved during the summer when I played with other children at the seaside. Shortly after school resumed I was evacuated to Northampton, and there I attended the local school for only two months before I was reunited with my mother. Together we moved into the Dunn family residence. I was starting to be a little more confident speaking English; however, I did not attend any school right away, and I was delighted by another holiday so soon after the one in Ramsgate during the summer.
My distinctly accented English marked me as “foreign.” In the past I had not considered nationality to be my primary identity, but now I was being called the “Czech Boy.” I was proud of my country and knew that it had been victimized by Hitler, so I accepted the new designation, which neither offended nor thrilled me.
As I adapted more to English culture, I tended not to disclose my personal history even though my Czech heritage remained an integral part of me. How many times I contemplated the question, “Should I open up to new people I meet and tell my background, perhaps adding some information about my home country, or should I keep quiet and let them guess the origin of my accent?” I most often chose silence for fear of appearing to exploit my past, perhaps as a reaction against my occasional earlier exaggerations or maybe because that was the easier path for someone naturally shy.
For my mother, the school further away always seemed better than the one nearby: the educational grass was always greener on the other side of our fence. The first time I noted this quirk in her was in Bromham, Wiltshire, when I came to live at Battle House. My education was directed by Mother. The local school was a five-minute walk away, but I had to attend the school in the next village. Every morning that cold winter, I bundled up and set out walking across the fields, traversing one to another by climbing over wooden stiles sometimes covered with snow, then arriving exhausted and nearly frozen at the two-room schoolhouse. Usually the iron stove in each room was going full blast, so thankfully it was cozily warm inside. Once thawed out, I forgot the arduous trek to get there until it was time to go home.
Before walking back the same way, I often diverted to make a favorite stop. Opposite the school was a little shoe repair shop where sometimes I took shoes to be mended. I found the cobbler likeable and, seeking companionship, often stopped by even when I didn’t bring him any business. My visits to the cobbler increased, and over time I stayed longer. As I looked around his tiny workshop, I was impressed with how neat everything was; he knew where each tool belonged, and they were always returned to their designated place. We talked more and more frequently as he continued to work. I was pleased that he was interested in my story, and I was glad when he encouraged me to develop it for him in detail. I described my happy times in Czechoslovakia and told him about my present life in the big manor house where Mother and I now lived. Even being shy, I felt no reluctance in conversing with the cobbler—conversation flowed easily between us. He told me about life in his village, how he became a cobbler, and described his military service in France during the previous Great War, vividly recalling several battles. The cobbler and I thought how ironic it was that we should now be in another world conflict with the same enemy he had fought not long ago! I felt the cobbler was my true friend, and much later I reflected on how, at this time of preadolescence insecurity, he had provided somewhat of a comforting substitute father figure for me.
The hardworking cobbler also encouraged me, especially when it came time to sit for the exam to be admitted to the academic high school, for which I felt unprepared. I failed the exam with a score of eighty-nine, needing one hundred to pass. I was tripped up on several questions because I did not know the difference between the time designations of a.m. and p.m. as this had not been taught in my classes. But I took comfort that the other three students taking the same exam had a combined score of eighty-one. Even though I had done considerably better than they had, I was disappointed in myself; and as a result of my score that autumn, I was forced to attend the trade school in Calne which required a half-hour ride by bus and ended the pleasant visits to my cobbler friend. But I continued to think fondly of him.
At the trade school I had my first brush with real danger. When the air raid siren sounded, we all scurried under our desks as we had been drilled to do. One time when we heard the planes approaching there followed a sharp rat-tat-tat and suddenly shattered glass clattered around us and fell all over the room, covering desktops and floor. We realized the Germans were machine-gunning the school. We were more terrified than we had ever been—luckily, though, no one was hurt. The next night a German plane dropp
ed a bomb that landed in the field next to the meadow in our village and created a huge crater. Once our fear subsided, everyone was curious, so we all went cautiously to inspect it the following day.
Before the autumn of 1940 was over, I was preparing again to move to a new school—this time to attend the boarding school that the Czechoslovak government in exile in England was starting for the children of Czech refugees. Located near London, the building was well suited to be transformed into a school with dormitories, classrooms, and dining facilities in place. But this year was also the height of the blitz, and every night we heard the relentless droning of Nazi planes on their way to London with their deadly loads of explosives. That was very unsettling to me.
I developed one very positive lifelong habit at the Czech school: daily exercise. Each morning, no matter how cold and damp the weather, we students were herded out for calisthenics in the frigid air to do prescribed stretches, bends, and exercises. The set routine of physical exercise in the morning has stuck with me throughout my lifetime with only some adjustments for age—but in my bedroom or a gym setting, not outdoors!
The best news for students in that school year was the announcement in December that the British government had requisitioned our building and we would have no school to attend for a couple of months. Again I had free time to help the gardener at Battle House and continue to build a love for growing things. The interruption was necessary in order to create classrooms, dormitories, and bathrooms out of a large private residence called Hinton Hall by tearing down walls and constructing partitions. These changes transformed this country manor into our new school. Located in Whitchurch, Shropshire, Hinton Hall was a working farm run by a Mrs. Lewis and her two sons. Some of the older boys at our school were recruited to work toward getting the building ready and there was much dismay when one of them climbed out clandestinely onto a second floor stone balcony that gave way. He suffered a broken leg which reinforced for the rest of us the rule we often ignored—not to climb on places where we were not allowed to be.
My Train to Freedom Page 5