Memories
of Margaret White,
(nee Pritchard)
When the war started in September 1939 we were living at 8 Jubilee Avenue Eighton Banks. Marion and I were playing in the garden and I can remember the lovely aroma of lamb roasting in the oven
and mint being chopped up for the sauce.
Our parents called us into the house to hear Mr. Chamberlain saying on
the radio that War had been declared. Of course we had no idea what
it would mean for us all, but that it was an important moment, I as a six year
old was in no doubt. I presume that as the village was in no immediate danger
there was no talk of evacuation and we carried on our normal quiet
lives, walking as a group of unaccompanied children two miles every day to school and collecting blackberries on the way back. In early 1940 we moved to Gateshead
and then we were brought up to the stark reality of war. Most of the local children
had already been evacuated because the Germans had shown interest in the nearby
docks. One day we were returning
from school when a damaged German plane flew low over the streets, terrified we ran for home. Marion and I were together but I looked
behind for Trevor, who was having difficulty keeping up, I could not see
him and I thought he was gone forever but a kindly shop keeper had
taken him inside for safety. The school
was not really a school because there were so few children left in the area and the lessons were taught in the upstairs
room of what I must presume to be the one remaining teacher's house. In that small room there were a number of children whose ages ranged from four to
twelve. An impossible task for anyone and it soon became clear that we too would
have to be evacuated.
I remember Marion and I travelling by train with
a small suitcase and the ever present gasmasks carried in a Babies Dried Milk Tin, adapted for the purpose by two holes being
punched through the sides and string long enough to be strung over our shoulders attached. We arrived quite late at night
and we were taken to a small cottage and met the lady of the house who was a
young woman married to a R.A.F. officer.
She was very welcoming and kind.
We were so tired and just wanted to go to bed so she made us a drink of
warm milk and an individual egg custard. I did not remember having had them
before and I thought they were absolutely delicious. Feeling welcomed and special
we went to bed in a little bedroom under the eaves. I do not remember being at all homesick, just perfectly accepting that this was how things had to be. I think I felt safe as long as Marion was near me.
We had arrived in Asenby
a small farming village in the North Riding of Yorkshire. We
went to school in nearby Topcliffe which had an R.A.F. station . We had some lessons in the church because the village school
was not large enough for all the evacuees. The little school building had a bell
on the roof and the best behaved child for the week was allowed to ring it on Friday afternoon. When we revisited
in 1990 Marion remembered when she rang the bell. I wonder why I do not!! I do remember going to church for services and
on one occasion the evacuees singing All Things Bright
And Beautiful and the Vicar's wife telling me afterwards how well I had sung.
We spent a lot of our spare time playing out of doors near the cottage and the days
passed quite happily. I only have one clear memory of those days and that is of a long hot afternoon
and some horrible little boys taking the wings off flies and watching them walk along the windowsill perfectly well without
them. It made me feel quite ill. There was a little girl in the family and
we were settling in well together when the husband was posted to another station and his wife explained to us that she wanted
to move to be near him. Finding another billet for us at that stage was nearly
impossible as everyone already had evacuees.
The large farmhouse in the village had room but Mr. and Mrs. North did not want young children. They already had a number of teenage evacuees who were able to help out around the farm but it was felt
that we would simply be a nuisance! Nevertheless they had to take us but
right from the start we knew
we were unwanted. The food was plentiful but unappetising. From the ceiling of
the huge farmhouse kitchen hung massive sides of bacon. This was served for breakfast
cut with a knife in thick slabs with large amounts of fat still attached. This
along with hearing the pigs squealing as they waited for slaughter
made breakfast hard work. Great amounts of slimy thickly sliced onions accompanied every dinner and Marion particularly hated those. Mrs. North said that if we
did not eat up at one meal it would be served at the next. And
it was!! She seemed to us to be a very cold woman although her husband and son
Joe were much kinder. The older evacuees appeared to our eyes to be very sophisticated and there was much singing
of popular songs, giggling and experimenting with lipstick. One day coming home from school we saw an airman and a girl behaving, to our young eyes, strangely in a
field. Again the older girls whispered and giggled and I failed to understand
what was so dramatic and exciting about it.
During this time our parents came to
visit us with Trevor and Sadie. They brought us some matching gloves and scarves which Grandmother had knitted for us and
new boots for us to wear in the coming winter. Mrs North put them on us after they had left saying "I'm not letting
you wear these because you look nice but because they will keep you warm." The winter was long and cold, huge snowdrifts sometimes prevented us from going to school at all but when we
did we were glad of our new clothes. I became a bed wetter and Mrs. North
threatened to put me in the cellar with the rats which made me have nightmares and matters became much worse. I became almost
too frightened to sleep but when I did I would wake to wet sheets. I tried on one occasion hanging them
out of the window but they just froze. Exasperated, Mrs. North said I would have
to wash them myself to learn what a lot of work I was causing her. I carried the sheets outside to the trough at the back door. A pump fed this trough It was very high and heavy for me and I found it impossible to pump any water. I was crying and Joe , who
was about twelve years old, came to help me. I always thought Joe helped me because he liked Marion and I was always grateful
to him.
When the long winter ended we were able again to escape the dark gloomy kitchen
and play outside. At the back of the farm there was a long grass slope leading
down to the river and we would have lots of fun doing Roly-Polies with the
added excitement that if we didn't manage to stop we would roll right into the river. One day doing this with Joe and the
others I fell into a huge hole and dislocated my shoulder. Mrs. North did nothing
about this until the teacher at school noticed and asked if I was having
any treatment. Mrs. North said she could not afford to take me to the hospital
in Ripon so somehow the money was found and we made the long journey
by bus and I was strapped up. I made a good recovery. Marion was friendly with the vicar's little girl and we talked to her about how unhappy we were but significantly
we never complained to other adults.
Our generation always thought adults were in the right and would stick together!
Our letters were censored by Mrs. North so we were careful what we said when we wrote home. Eventually though we wrote a true letter and the
vicar's daughter posted it for us.
Our family were now living in Ashton-U-Lyne
and my father came for us. We travelled from Northallerton on a train packed
with soldiers. It was late a night and my father lifted me up and I slept on
the roof rack which was strung with string like a hammock. The train was slow and seemed to stop a lot but
eventually we arrived at Stalybridge. It was pitch dark. There were no street lights because of the blackout and we had about three miles to walk home. In those days there were trolley buses but they didn't operate
all night so we would peer up at the wires to track our way home. My father must
have carried our luggage and we managed our gasmasks and eventually we arrived safely and were lovingly
welcomed by all our family.
Margaret White
Catworth, Huntingdon.
May 2001
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Last modified
Wednesday 29th June 2011
