Often when I was playing in the street I would see Uncle Joe sitting on his stool on the pavement and smoking his clay pipe, especially if it was a sunny day. When I asked him why he was always sitting outside, he told me that miners liked to take every opportunity to sit out in the fresh air. At work they were chiefly surrounded by darkness, kneeling down in the narrow mine shafts to hew the coal with a pick axe. There were no washing or shower facilities at the mine so sometimes when I went to his house I would be confronted by the sight of Uncle Joe sitting in a tin bath in the kitchen with nothing on but the cap on his head and his pipe in his mouth. Aunt Mary Ann would be pouring kettles full of hot water around him to heat his bath. On seeing me he would call out for someone to fetch his clean trousers from which he would extract a sixpence to give to me. He was a kindly man who stooped as he walked, which was testimony to having spent years working crouched underground at the coalface in the mine tunnel. His eyes were always bright and smiling but the rims were forever marred by a black lining of coal dust. On Saturday nights he regularly went to the Miners’ Arms Public House and got drunk. He died at the age of fifty-two from pneumonia and congestion of the lungs, a condition which in those days was called ‘Miner’s Lung’.
Gone and forgotten are many of the days of my early childhood but with some there is no forgetting. One such potent memory I can recall from the winter of early 1940, when I had just returned from London where I had been sent to stay whilst my mother gave birth to my sister Brenda. I was just five years old at the time. I was living with my grandmother at her big old house in the middle of Blaydon-on-Tyne because my father said it was best since my mother had the baby to care for and was too busy to look after me as well as the baby. I suspected it was really for his own convenience because he just didn’t like having me around. It was still dark outside when my grandmother roused me from a deep warm sleep. When I got up the bedroom felt cold. It was January and outside icy frosts abounded. After leaving the cosy old bed covered by the heavy patchwork counterpane and slipping out of my pyjamas, I hurried to dress in the dim light from the half-open door leading to the main room.
‘Come and get your porridge whilst it’s still hot,’ my grandmother called.
After quickly rinsing my hands and face from the cold water tap in the small kitchen I hoisted myself on to a dining chair and sat up at the long table that was set for breakfast. My mother, who had come from home to join us having left my baby sister Brenda in the care of a neighbour, looked across at me with an affectionate good-morning smile. I yawned and rubbed my eyes under the harsh glare of the gaslight. Together we ate our porridge mixed with honey and drank strong tea as we quietly listened to the voice on the wireless announcing yet more tragic news. Our country was fighting against Adolf Hitler’s German Army in the Second World War and the war was not going well for our troops.
Soon it was time to get going and, whilst my grandmother cleared the table and washed the dishes, my mother wound around my neck a thick woollen scarf which was knotted and hung down over my overcoat. She insisted I wore a cap that I hated, but she persisted. This was going to be a special day although I wasn’t sure what it was all about. I expected that it was going to have something to do with the war: everything did, from the air-raid shelters, the lack of street lights and the taped up windows with their coverings of thick black cloth to having to be careful about picking up strange-looking things that might be a bomb.
At first it had been exciting seeing the news reels at the cinema showing fighter planes like the Spitfire and the Hurricane duelling with enemy planes. Then there were scenes of bombs dropping and soldiers fighting in foreign places. But when the war came nearer and started happening to us at home it was frightening. At anytime the air-raid sirens might start blaring and everybody quickly had to go down into the shelters in case the German aircraft dropped a bomb on our street. It was cold and damp in the shelters, and it was dark except for some lighted candles and small torches that some people brought with them. Not far from our street there was an anti-aircraft gun battery with huge searchlights pointing at the sky. It was there to defend the armament factories and the shipyards along the River Tyne from enemy bombers. One night during an air-raid, the guns exploded into life and started firing – all the windows in the street rattled as if they would break. Some people in the shelter cried out with fright, which made me feel scared as well.
It was still early in the morning when I left the house with my mother and grandmother. The sky was just beginning to grow light. It was cold with white hoarfrost covering the roofs and the pavements, and I stuck my hands in the pockets of my coat to keep warm.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked my mother.
‘You’ll see soon enough,’ was all the reply I received.
Still curious, I asked my grandmother the same question.
‘We’re going to the railway station to see the soldiers off.’ This answer did nothing to allay my anxiety.
‘But where are the soldiers going?’ I persisted.
‘They’re going across the sea to France to fight the German Army,’ my grandmother answered.
I had more questions to ask but just then we were joined by a lot of other women, some with children and babies, all walking in the same direction. My mother and grandmother were soon caught up in earnest conversation with their friends. As we drew near to the railway station we became part of a large crowd queuing to go inside. At another entrance, which was sealed off from the public, there were lots of soldiers and more of them kept arriving in huge Army trucks. They all had a grim, fierce appearance. They were wearing steel helmets and had equipment strapped to their belts and across their backs. They all carried rifles. A young soldier, with two white stripes on his uniform, was unloading green boxes from the back of a lorry. When he glanced my way, he winked and gave me a broad smile. Not knowing what to do, I looked away shyly.
At long last the queue surged forward and we moved out of the icy January wind blowing down the street into the shelter of the station. Inside there was a crush of people struggling to find a place to view the departure of the Army. In front of us, an old man with a walking stick lost his balance, fell to the ground and had to be helped back on to his feet. He had grey whiskers on his chin just like my Uncle Joe, the coal miner. The old man was wearing some medals across his chest, which my grandmother told me were for his service in the First World War.
Everybody was trying to get to the front of the barriers the police had put on the platforms. The soldiers were now lining up on the other side of the barriers awaiting the arrival of the trains. We were pushed about and I held on tight to my grandmother’s hand as the crowd shoved their way around us. We got jammed into a corner and I lost my cap but I didn’t say anything. Then by a stroke of luck, when a group in front of us burst forward, we found ourselves on the bridge that spanned the railtracks and joined the two platforms. I was forced up against the railings of the bridge in front of my mother and Nanna. I felt a little bit crushed but I now had an excellent view of everything that was happening.
By this stage both platforms were packed with soldiers milling around, smoking, waving and sometimes calling across to someone they knew in the crowd. I gripped the cold iron railings so that I wouldn’t lose my place at the front and kept turning round to make sure my grandmother and mother were still close behind me. I passed the time by watching people’s breath making small clouds of steam in the freezing air and kept stamping my feet to keep warm. It wasn’t long before there was a tremendous rumbling. The earth shook and the bridge trembled in protest at the roaring blast of a monstrous steam-powered railway engine as it thundered into view. It belched clouds of steam and groaned and hissed its way into the station like a giant living thing. Then a hush descended over the crowd of public onlookers and soldiers alike. Next, there came the sound of many carriage doors slamming as the soldiers began to embark. Somewhere in the midst of all the noise a baby could be heard crying but no matter how I craned m
y neck to see where, it was impossible to tell in that vast multitude of people.
As the hush of expectancy was broken there was a feverish onset of talking again within the assembled crowd. Some people on the platforms started shouting messages to loved ones they thought they might never see again and the station was filled with an anguish that was tangible: the air itself seemed to vibrate with emotions of imminent separation and desperation at the going of the soldiers. Tension wracked the atmosphere of the station and impassioned the crowd. Then, at the far end of one of the platforms, a tall, importantly dressed soldier carrying a long stick began shouting orders to the remaining soldiers who, at his command, began hurrying to get on to the train. One soldier was suddenly singled out for everyone’s attention. He was the young happy looking soldier who had winked at me outside the station. He was standing apart from the others who were scrambling to get on to the train. I could see him talking to some of the officers who nodded at him and then I knew that something special was about to happen.
Suddenly he drew himself up, standing alone on the platform, and in a clear tenor voice that carried all over the station he began to sing. At the sound of his voice all the other sounds slowly stopped and all talking was hushed as people just listened to his voice. A palpable wave of emotion swept through the assembled throng. Then as the familiar tunes he sang were recognized the waiting crowd gradually began to join in and sing along with him. The songs they sang seemed to be cheerful and yet had a deep and pervading sadness about them as mothers, wives and children became aware through the words of the tunes what it would be like to lose a loved one in this hateful war. ‘Good bye Dolly I must leave you, though it breaks my heart to go . . .’
Soon everybody was joining in. When I looked up I saw that my mother and grandmother were both singing and crying at the same time, as were many of the other women I could see. At the sight of their tears I was overwhelmed and began to cry, too.
Finally, all the soldiers had boarded the train. Some of them leant out of the carriage windows, still singing, whilst the train, in contrast to its noisy arrival, started to pull away almost silently as if in deference to the heartache of the charged situation. Abruptly, as if the sentiments could not be left unspoken, the tune they sang changed to the words of a familiar song that I often heard on the wireless. It rang out loudly through the station in a defiant as well as hopeful tone: ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day . . .’
As the train gathered momentum and finally disappeared into the grey light of a bleak winter’s day the singing gradually petered out. Handkerchiefs that had been used to wave goodbye were now pressed into service to wipe away tears as the crowd slowly and quietly left the station in a kind of reverential calm. Gone was the excited babble of the last two hours to be replaced by looks of grim-faced reality as, alone with their thoughts, everyone made their way home. Many would be returning to a house that wouldn’t be the same until the man of the house, whether father, husband or son, returned home, safe and sound.
Meanwhile the horrors of war continued to assail my little boy’s mind. At school lessons were constantly interrupted by air raids of German bombers which pummelled the areas around our small town with high explosive bombs that kept us awake at night and frightened us with scenes of devastation in the morning. One night in 1940, when my mother was staying with us at my grandmother’s house, the warning siren had hardly sounded when a terrific bomb blast shook the house and caused the ceiling in my bedroom to collapse on top of me. The plaster covered me completely and my mother had to pull me out by the feet. She hurriedly brushed away the plaster from my face and pyjamas. I was coughing and spluttering because some of the dust had got into my mouth and up my nose, but my mother yelled at me in great urgency to get downstairs and into the bomb shelter whilst she carried the baby and blankets to keep us warm. On the wireless the Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it ‘our darkest hour’.
Later in June, near my sixth birthday, we learned of the tragedy of Dunkirk, when after suffering a heavy defeat what remained of our Army had to be evacuated by ship and virtually any kind of seaworthy boat the military could obtain. The soldiers were standing on the shore or in the shallow water like sitting ducks, waiting to be rescued whilst subjected to heavy enemy artillery fire and strafing from German fighter planes. In the days that followed my grandmother was kept busy in her spare time consoling the many young wives living in the streets around us who had received the dreaded telegram from the War Office telling them that their husbands or sons had been killed or were missing. My grandmother remarked to me, ‘There’ll be no cheerful songs for the singing now.’
It was a very harrowing, sad time to then see the many men in uniform wearing bandages covering their wounds as they hobbled, grim-faced, around our streets suffering the fear that they would soon be back fighting the war. They were the lucky ones who got rescued from the beach. Many didn’t, my grandmother said. It made me think of the young soldier who had winked at me on the day the soldiers had left and who had led the singing in the station. I hoped he had survived but I never got to know. If he was still alive, I doubt that he was still singing to the crowds. Everyone knew that we would need more than songs and a brief show of emotional fortitude now. Our Army had taken a severe beating and there was the imminent threat of a German invasion of our country. People were afraid and spoke about it constantly. The talk on the wireless was all about how we should be ready to fight but I was just a young child, already scared by what I had seen of the war on the newsreels. I was very frightened but I didn’t dare to say anything because I knew that all the grown-ups around me – family, teachers and neighbours – were dreadfully fearful too.
All civilians, even children, were soon supplied with gas masks in case the German planes dropped bombs filled with poisonous gas. I hated to wear mine and adults, even family, looked hideously frightening with their faces covered by the masks. It was a very worrying time for everybody but it was an enormous relief to me to be free from my father’s presence. There was a different mood in our home and the dread I always felt when he was at home was thankfully missing. I continued to hope that he would never ever return, but of course he eventually did.
Our community suffered deaths and destruction of property during the early years of the war and many families we knew lost loved ones, but there was still an air of defiance abroad amongst the local population. People were prepared to accept all manner of privation and still make the most of it. Once when the local grapevine spread the news that supplies of fresh fruit had reached shops in the town, my grandmother sent me to queue at a shop selling bananas while she queued at another shop where oranges were for sale. After queuing for two hours I was given a ration of two bananas. On the way back to my grandmother’s house I met up with a crowd of people who could not get any further down the road because a huge swarm of bees had infested the walls of the lane and they were buzzing angrily. I had to backtrack around two streets to return home. Later it was learned that some criminals, probably black marketeers – the men and women who acquired food illicitly and sold it at inflated prices – had raided a local man’s beehives for honey and destroyed them in the process, forcing the bees to take flight with the queen and look for a new home. Several people got stung and there was an awful hullabaloo. My grandmother returned from her shopping trip with two oranges, which together with the bananas was the first fruit we had seen for nearly two years.
Early in 1943, while my father was still away with the Fleet Air Arm, there were signs that the war was beginning to turn in the Allies’ favour. Late one night the sirens started screaming as usual. As the German bombers were making their approach to the north-east coast to bomb munitions factory targets along the River Tyne, a fighter squadron of seventeen Spitfires were scrambled from Acklington Airfield to engage them in combat. My Uncle John, who was an air raid warden at the time, came to the shelter and took me up on the iron
bridge over the railway track to see what was happening in the sky. There were several other people already on the bridge watching the scene taking place in the air. It was a moonlit night and from the bridge we had a clear view of a fighter plane attacking a German bomber. My uncle said the enemy plane was a Dornier which would use flares to illuminate the route to guide the bombers to their target. As we watched it was shot down and crashed not far from the bridge over the Tyne at Scotswood. The small group of onlookers on our bridge broke into shouts of ‘hurrah’ at this and applauded with much clapping of their hands. Later, I learned that several more enemy planes were destroyed by the Spitfire squadron that night.
I felt really excited by seeing the Dornier shot down, and next day at school I drew a picture of the aerial skirmish in art class, but my schoolfriends said that I had made up the story. When we got back to the house my grandmother reprimanded Uncle John for putting us both in danger but he said that he thought it would be good for me to see how we were beginning to win the war. As indeed we were. The news on the wireless was much more positive from our point of view and there was a lot of talk in the street and around the town that before too long the Allies would be invading Europe to finish off Hitler and the Nazis. Most people thought that the war would soon be over and these sentiments even percolated down to the children’s games we played in the streets. We pretended to be commandos invading German-occupied Europe and we lay in ambush to shoot at anyone who passed. This game-playing escalated one night into a real fight with some boys from another street and we all suffered bruises and bloody noses. I also had a rip in my pullover but my grandmother sewed it up before my mother could become aware of it.
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