I can just remember at five years old when a kind man placed a gas mask in a box around my neck, then put me on the train from Liverpool Street Station in London to Cambridge. Then I got into a tiny car and went to a Manor House near the village of Wilburton it was called Wilburton Manor. I remember being driven up a long drive and stopping outside a small white iron gate, the side entrance to the Manor House lawns and gardens. A small thin grey haired lady met me and took me through the gate into what I thought was a park. I now know she was dressed in a W.V.S. uniform. I noticed her face was tanned and wrinkled and there was a wart growing from it on the side of her face just below her right ear.I thought it was peculiar at the time but she became a friend to me over the 4.5years that I stayed there and I grew to love her very much. She eventually escorted me up some very large steps into the Manor where I heard the hoots and howls of other children at play.
The very large entrance hall had a huge winding grand staircase leading up to the landings with the bedrooms leading off. I was taken into one of these with 10beds in it with my name already written on it. I mean, my name was on an envelope that was pinned to the bedrail.
I was then taken to one of the bathrooms and washed and scrubbed and my hair wire combed because they must have thought that I had fleas.
Up to that age I only vaguely remembered my mother and father so I was able to settle down very quickly to the discipline. I got on alright with the other kids because I was young and because it was the responsibility of the older ones to take care of the younger so for the first two years I didn’t get into the scraps and fights that all kids get up to. By that time I was encouraged to do all my own washing including my own sheets if I wet my bed. Much to the jeers of others who didn’t do this at that particular time, that night. We had three sandpits in the grounds where we played, the home guards sometimes set up machine gun posts in them for training purposes.
I suppose looking back we were treated reasonably well by the grown-ups but we were punished if we misbehaved. My greatest treasure was my toad Freddie honestly he was as big as my son’s hands put together. I kept him in a secret place under one of the big stone steps of the Manor.
As well as our bedroom we had a large games room and also the dining hall where we sat at long tables, food was in very short supply so we were always hungry. I know now that we had food ration books that were held by the people in charge and they used the books to get our food. There was also a large vegetable garden closely guarded by the gardener because it was out of bounds to us kids. If we got caught we would be caned on our behind but Miss Fisher usually but not always saved me from these punishments. The school in the village was very hard, but put me in good stead later on in life. Our teachers used to walk behind us at our desks and tap our knuckles with a ruler if we we rewriting down something wrong and then we were made to do it again.On Sunday mornings we always had a church parade where we were marched to the village church in line, to the cat-calling and jeering of the locals. In the afternoons we attended Sunday School classes given to us I suppose by local village volunteers, they were held in our games room.All the time I was at the Manor House I think I can only remember three U2rockets (unmanned planes) come over us and exploding somewhere in the distance. I could also see two Barrage Balloons not very far from us, I suppose to protect Cambridge.
My two best friends were Frank and Denis, they were brothers and about three years older than me and they looked after me. Sadly they lost their mother, she died when it was all over. They informed me of all the things they could understand that was going on around us.
We always had Spitfires flying over and occasionally they did the loop the loop for loved ones who were billeted in the village. We always had soldiers marching along the bottom country lane and I think there must have been a camp somewhere else but I didn’t know where.
When the war ended, grown-ups were coming to pick up their children to take them home, but sadly some children’s parents never showed up because they were killed. I will always remember the heartache and anguish of the children while they waited, because they could remember their mothers and fathers and they didn’t know if they would show up.
When my father came to pick me up he was a stranger to me and I didn’t want to leave behind my friends especially the ones who had no-one because their parents were killed.
When I arrived in London with my father it was awful, it was dirty, grey and also whole streets of houses were bombed to the ground. My father later told me that he had the pick of houses that were left because the people who had lived in them before were now dead. I wanted to go back to the country because that was my home. I was now 9 years old and I would have to start all over again making new friends and attending a new school in the East End. Talking posh didn’t help either, anyway that’s a different story.