by John Wright
One of the farmhands lifted Jimmy up onto the back of the horse and led it a few yards up the field. Jimmy sat there with his legs sticking out, as they were too short to go round the horse’s flanks, and he was terrified as he hung on to the mane for grim death. He shouted, ‘I don’t like! I don’t like! Get me down! Get me down!’ When asked if I would like a go, I said, ‘Not on your nelly!’ Being too little to work a full day we walked back to the house in time for our frugal dinner each day. Mrs Harris put George to bed at seven; I went at eight, and I tried to get to sleep before Jimmy and Ducky got into bed at the other end and let the cold air in.
Soon afterwards, a frisson of excitement ran through the two villages when a Halifax Mk II bomber on an air test from RAF East Moor crashed behind The Black Horse in Wigginton. It came down near Crow Lane, which was an ancient snickleway that came out by the old Vicarage up on Moor Lane. Derek Robinson was there like a shot of course, determined to add to his collection of military treasures. He had been potato picking for the Midgeleys at nearby Manor Farm when the crash happened. He had to keep a sharp lookout in case his old enemy PC Manging was already there on his bike, as he called regularly at the farms to check shotgun permits and the like. We saw and heard ever more aircraft flying out at dusk as the gallant crews set off on their hazardous bombing missions, and we often heard them coming back in the early hours of the morning.
The nights had started to draw in and the leaves on the chestnut trees were turning brown and curling up at the edges. It was a time for the closing of doors and the pulling down of blinds but there was still a bit of light after tea due to the double summertime. As we went for walks, there was a feeling of wistful melancholy in the air that was congenial to my spirit. The hedgerows along Usher Lane, which had become ragged and overgrown, were silhouetted starkly against the crimson sky to the west. The evening light tinged the fields and trees a ruddy, rosy hue, and as we reached Jubilee Farm the upper windows of the old stone-built farmhouse reflected the orange orb of the setting sun. Birds, their feathers ruffled by the breeze, sat in long rows on the telegraph wires preparing for the long journey south. As we came closer they took flight and the sky was turned black by their rolling and wheeling movements. I could hear the wind soughing softly along the wires and the countryside was peaceful and still. I missed Mam and Dad so much and wished that I could fly north, and, if they didn’t come soon, I feared that I might start to forget what they looked like.
When Gran came again she said to Mrs Harris, ‘I’m glad to say that I’ve had word from the Red Cross that John is definitely a prisoner of war. The Italians ’ave got ’im.’
‘Well, that’s a relief for you,’ replied Mrs Harris, pretending to care as she always did when Gran came to visit. ‘They say that the Italians treat them better than the Germans, and much better than the cruel Japs.’
Around that time the tide of war had begun to turn in our favour and Mr Harris learned from his newspaper that Churchill had sacked General Auchinleck and replaced him with General Bernard Montgomery. He felt that the small, sharp-featured Montgomery, who had total confidence in himself, was the right man for the job and so it proved. Very decisive and thorough in his preparations, the men rallied behind him, and by now the Eighth Army had the most powerful armoured force that had ever been seen in the desert. Its strength lay in its American Sherman and Grant tanks and it now outnumbered the Axis troops in men and weapons. Montgomery set about making a stand with the aim of defeating Rommel once and for all. The Luftwaffe had been weakened due to their supplies not getting through and the Allies had regained air superiority.
At a little place called El Alamein the Allies attacked while Rommel was ill at home. On Friday evening, 23 October, Mr Harris sat listening to the wireless and he shouted up the stairs, ‘The Germans and Italians are copping it at El Alamein! Come and listen to this, kids!’ On coming downstairs, we could hear the tremendous din of the big guns, the whoosh of mortars and exploding mines that was being broadcast. It was said to be the heaviest artillery barrage ever carried out. In early November they attacked again, with Montgomery’s ‘Desert Rats’ carrying out relentless tank and infantry assaults until they finally broke through. For the first time one of Hitler’s field marshals was being thoroughly thrashed in battle. Rommel’s troops retreated 1,000 miles back through Libya and the Allies retook Tobruk on the way. On 15 November, as mouldering leaves littered the gutters, Winston Churchill gave the order for church bells all across the country to be rung in celebration of the great victory in Egypt. The people of Usher Lane poured out into their gardens to hear the joyful sound of the external bells of St Mary’s that had been silent for two and a half years. Churchill spoke to the nation with the now immortal words: ‘We have a victory, a remarkable and definite victory … Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’
That month the first of the new Canadian squadrons took over at East Moor airfield equipped with well-used Wellington Mk III bombers. This meant that we saw a different type of aeroplane flying over the village and many Canadian airmen came over to Haxby on their blue RAF issue bikes as their airfield was only three miles away. The Americans had arrived in this country earlier in the year and at first we thought that the Canadians were Yanks. Whenever we saw them we would say, ‘Got any gum chum?’ and they gave us packs of small white sugar-coated pieces of chewing gum called Chiclets that were wrapped in shiny red paper. Some of the cheeky lads would ask them for cigarettes and they usually gave them Passing Cloud or Sweet Caporal’s. The Canadians seemed to be well liked by both the RAF lads and the locals – especially the ladies, some of whom were now wearing the aluminium rings that they had made for them. Their smart uniforms with the Canada shoulder flashes became a familiar sight as they came and went between the three pubs.
The day before we broke up for Christmas, Anthony Eden stood up in a hushed House of Commons and condemned the Germans for going along with Hitler’s plan to exterminate every Jew in Europe. He said, ‘Those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution.’ This was evil on a gigantic scale and it was anything but a happy Christmas for thousands of people across Europe. The terrible plight of the Jews – men, women and children – was often reported in the newspapers.
At school we got swallowed up in the mounting excitement as we were kept busy preparing for the forthcoming Christmas events, and time passed quickly. I had a walk-on part in the Nativity play but was far too shy for any speaking parts. We got stuck into the eats and enjoyed the fun and games at the school Christmas party. Women were allowed to attend church without a hat for the first time, as their old ones were becoming too tatty and new ones were hard to come by. Gran came through on Boxing Day and brought a few sweets, nuts, lead soldiers and a wooden fort made by one of her brothers, which I thought was great, and Mrs Harris even let me play with it in the front parlour.
On New Year’s Eve Mrs Harris let us come downstairs just before midnight to see the annual first-footing ritual: an ancient custom thought to have been brought to these parts by the Norsemen. There must have been a temporary cease-fire in the long-term bickering between Mrs Harris and her husband; their relationship seemed to have been one long series of storms and calms – with more storms than calms. Mr Harris stood outside in the snow like most of the other men of Wold View Terrace, the majority of whom had dark hair as that was considered lucky. They were all shivering from the cold with their hands deep in their pockets and each of them clutched a piece of coal and a silver sixpence ready to herald in the New Year. Inside the house Mrs Harris had a small whisky and a piece of cake ready, and as the midnight chimes of Big Ben were heard on the wireless Mr Harris knocked on the front door. His wife let him in and he said, ‘’Appy New Yeer everyone. I ’ope t’war will soon be over and that this yeer will be t’best for a long time.’ He handed over the coal and silver saying, ‘’Ere’s ’oping we ’ave warmth, wealth and good ’ealth in t’ye
er ter come.’ Mrs Harris handed him the whisky and cake along with a perfunctory peck on the cheek. This routine was carried out in all of the houses in the village.
It was to be another long, hard, snow-covered winter. One night early in the year we were woken by the unsynchronised sound of a German plane overhead, and as we peeped around the edge of the blind, snow was creeping up the windowpanes and the underside of the snow-filled clouds could be seen lit up by the searchlight. In the powerful beam, we could clearly see the black crosses on the wings of a low-flying Dornier, but it flew off and the night passed quietly. For some reason the siren had not been sounded and we were not being woken by it quite as often now. Throughout January there was snow and cloud so there was not so much flying. However, there were sporadic attacks on the area.
On those crisp, wintry days we sat shivering in our classroom with the old, wrought-iron radiators working overtime in an attempt to combat the bitter cold, but the warmth did not reach far into the large, high-ceilinged rooms. One playtime, I went to talk to Jimmy and found him very upset and I could see that he had been crying. ‘What’s the matter, Jim?’ I enquired. ‘Well, there was this sixpenny National Savings stamp on t’corner of a desk. It was just laid there doin’ nothin’, so I picked it up, and before I ’ad time to ’and it in I was accused of nicking it. The locals always blame us if anything goes wrong and Miss Curry grabbed ’old of me ear and marched me off to be caned by t’headmaster. I told ’er I’d found it but she didn’t believe me. Luckily, Miss Rutter came along and spoke up for me, saying I was an honest lad and she knew I wouldn’t do such a thing. Luckily, Mr Fox believed ’er and she got me off.’
There was a school Savings Club and most of the kids usually bought a sixpenny stamp every Monday, which they stuck on a card until they had filled it and then they exchanged it for a fifteen-shilling certificate. We could not afford sixpence a week but we were given one occasionally as a reward for good attendance. The register was marked in the morning and afternoon, which counted as two attendances.
Just three weeks into the year we had just gone to bed when the siren sounded, and Mr Harris dashed into our room shouting, ‘Come on lads, tek cover, quick as yer can!’ We dashed downstairs with our blankets and scrambled under the front-room table, while the girls got into the gas cupboard. We heard the sound of a low-flying Jerry plane screaming by directly over the house and there was heavy fire from the local antiaircraft gun. The noise was tremendous and we were terrified when a second or so later there were two loud explosions nearby that made the floor jump. We learned later that a Dornier had jettisoned two bombs. We clung on to Mr Harris as the glass in the front window caved in, but the blast tape held most of it together. My ears hurt a bit and the front door frame was loosened by the blast making it difficult to close thereafter. On York Road the windows of Harry’s billet were cracked.
The next day – being a Saturday – we went up Towthorpe Road to see what damage had been done. Nearly the whole village and lots of people from Strensall were there. We had not been up that way since we had tried to run away. One bomb had just missed the railway line, making a huge crater in the railway embankment near the Golland Dyke, and the other had exploded in front of Manor Farm. Derek Robinson was there of course and he told us, ‘The bomb blast killed a cow outright and t’flying, razor-edged shrapnel injured an ’osses tail so badly that it ’ad to be cut off by t’vet.’ The regular soldiers and Home Guard men were keeping people away but we still managed to get some bits of shrapnel for our collections.
At school during morning assembly Miss Curry regularly kept us informed on the progress of the war and she told us that the German army at Stalingrad had surrendered. The German offensive, that had started so brilliantly, had come unstuck in the terrible Russian winter and this defeat, on top of the victory at El Alamein, gave lie to the myth of Germany’s invincibility. She said that the British were pushing back the Japs in Burma and that we should all be very proud of our brave fighting men. ‘It looks like the tide might be turning at last.’ We didn’t know what a myth was and we didn’t think much of them telling lies about being invisible. What the tide had to do with it we weren’t too sure, but we thought it must be good news.
So the long winter dragged on and, as Thelma held George’s hand and took him to the infant school, she had trouble in keeping his shoes dry as he tried to jump in every puddle with both feet. When we had the money, Jimmy and I called at Bryant’s shop before school to buy a ha’penny Oxo cube or a small packet of powdered soup to suck on. We wished we had plenty of money like those at Harry’s end of the village and the posh people who lived on The Avenue. We wondered whether the toffs really deserved all the privileges they had, and I remember saying to Jimmy, ‘When I grow up I’m going to have a house full of monkeys and loads of red double-decker buses to play with.’
‘I’m going to be either a tramp walking all over the countryside or else a train driver,’ he replied.
Some days flew and others seemed to crawl by and it made a nice change when Renee came and took Jimmy and me into York on the bus. George, being too young to go to the pictures, stayed in the house with Thelma who loved looking after him. It was February and, as Renee took us round by the Minster with its graceful gothic arches, the snow and frost had relented a little. Words fail to do justice to its awesome splendour and Renee pointed out the ugly stone gargoyles that had melting snow dripping from their twisted, slavering mouths which frightened me. She bought us a lovely red-green toffee apple on a stick that had a nice crunchy flat bit on top where it had been stood upside down to dry.
There was an afternoon matinee with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire starring in the film Holiday Inn, in which the hit song was White Christmas and we loved every minute of it. Renee bought us a packet of Smith’s crisps and warned us, ‘Don’t rattle the packets when the film’s on and don’t eat the blue one because it’s a small packet of salt.’ We were warm and comfortable in the picture house but I was a bit worried in case a bomb dropped on it when we were inside. Renee said, ‘Don’t worry. If the siren goes they’ll put a message up on the screen to tell us to go to the nearest air-raid shelter.’
The bus was crowded on the journey back to Haxby but Renee let us have the only seat while she stood hanging on one of the straphangers. We had to walk back to Usher Lane on our own, as she had to stay on the bus in order to be at York station in time to catch her train home.
In March the weather turned treacherously cold again and more snow fell and settled, but it turned to sleet and rain later in the month. Some days it teemed down all day and we came in from school sodden. Because of the wet weather we had to stay in at the weekend and make our own entertainment. We played cards, ludo, tiddly-winks and draughts up in our bedroom but the fire up there was never lit and the house was always cold. On other days we had thick white blankets of dripping, clinging mist or fog and our skin became chapped and sore. After dark, when the fog made landing the planes difficult, the searchlights in the area were switched on for a time and their beams would cross directly above the East Moor runway. We could see them clearly from our bedroom window. As the Wellington bombers with their Canadian crews returned from bombing or mine-laying sorties, the lights guided them in.
Just before Jimmy’s ninth birthday Mr Winterburn the postman, who did a bit of boot and shoe repairing part time, brought him birthday cards, but again there was nothing from his dad. Mr Winterburn had a wooden right leg which he swung round as he walked and his bike had been specially adapted for him. It had a fixed wheel and he used his left foot to turn the pedal while the other pedal remained still. Aunt Hilda came to see Jimmy on his birthday wearing her ATS uniform and she looked slim, petite and attractive in it. One of his presents was a brand new leather belt with a metal buckle. Jimmy really treasured it as very few boys had belts in those days; most wore braces to keep their trousers up. Aunt Hilda told him that she was now a nursing auxiliary at Fenham Barracks in Newcastle and was on leave. She t
ook him into York on the bus so that they could spend some time together. After giving the three of us a kiss before she left, she seemed more upset and tearful than usual.
A few days later, Jimmy was with Dot in the kitchen when she asked in her slow dilatory manner, ‘Can I have a look at your new belt?’ He passed it over but the next thing he knew she had the belt in one hand and the buckle in the other. Jimmy flew into a rage, grabbed the buckle and threw it at her as he burst into tears shouting, ‘Now look what you’ve done you dozy article!’ On catching sight of the white-enamelled pail next to the wash tub in the corner, he grabbed hold of it and ‘hoyed’ (threw) it at her causing a small cut on her hand as she raised it to protect herself.
On hearing the commotion, Mrs Harris rushed in and wrapped her arms tightly round him to prevent him causing any more damage. ‘Get up them stairs and stay there!’ she shouted at Dot, before taking Jimmy up to his bedroom to calm him down. She fixed the detachable buckle back on to his belt and he was happy again, but he was also very surprised, as he had expected a good hiding at the very least. Instead she had taken his side and had given him a glass of milk and a biscuit.
Finally spring, with its promise of warm days, arrived. The snowdrops and crocuses went over and primroses, daffodils, cowslips and forget-me-nots appeared in their due time. Masses of white blackthorn blossom adorned the hedgerows and flowering bluebells carpeted the ground under the fresh green foliage of the trees in the woods. My eighth and George’s sixth birthday arrived but only Gran and Renee came to pamper us and take us out for special treats. Gran said, ‘I know you miss your Mam and Dad but they send their love and they asked me to give you your present and a big kiss from them. They couldn’t come themselves because of their war commitments.’ At that she gave us big wet kisses on the cheek which I immediately rubbed off with my jumper sleeve. I whispered to Jimmy, ‘I hate all that sloppy stuff. It’s alright on the pictures but that’s not for real.’