During April and May of 1944, the Germans started to send over the V1 pilotless bomb which flew on a pre-determined course in the general direction of the London area and the Home Counties. I remember the very first night they came, we were in our air raid shelter and my dad was keeping watch outside. He called us to see an 'enemy aircraft' on fire, supposing we had hit it with ack ack fire. What we were witnessing was a V1 with it's tail engine flaming exhaust, and it was not until the engine cut out that the real danger began. That was when the bomb began to fall to earth and would explode haphazardly whereever it landed.
Later on we were to be attacked by the V 2 which was a much more advanced rocket which travelled very much faster than the V1 and was so fast, in fact, that it was not visible until suddenly there would be a terrific explosion on impact.
My mother asked me and my brother Billy, if we would like to be evacuated away from this part of the country and be sent somewhere where we would be out of range of these new weapons of war. At our school, Blacksmith's Lane Primary, Rainham, a notice had been put up inviting anyone of the pupils to put their names forward for evacuation. So, that's exactly what we did.
Some time later, in May I think it was, the day duly arrived when a great deal of the pupils of the school were to be bussed up to Dagenham East station for the short underground train journey to Paddington Station in London. From here we were herded, labels and gasmasks etc, onto long steam trains which would be taking us westwards. Where to, nobody seemed to know. It was to secret destinations we were going- SECURITY AND ALL THAT.
The journey began, and it was all very exciting for most of us had never been anywhere much, except perhaps to Margate or Southend to the sea. I was 10 years old, my brother Billy was 7 and we had been attached to Bobby Wells and Tony Woodhouse also 7 I think. So there were now four of us. Eventually the train came to a halt and we looked out to see that we were at Wolverhampton Station. The train waited, but we were told not to get out as the train would be travelling further on. While there another train came in going in the opposite direction, this turned out to be a Troop carrying train full to its capacity with soldiers all going south where the army was being assembled to gather for the invasion. We didn't know then of course, but they would all be part of the D DAY June 6th invasion of Normandy. As soon as the soldiers realised we were children being evacuated, then they started throwing all kinds of goodies through the windows to us in our train, we had sweets and things like that from them. It was wonderful how the camaraderie of the troops was so infectious. To us children, most of us just babies really, were affected by this act of generosity. As I write now, I am 74 years old, I feel tears rising in my eyes at the memory of it all.
I cannot write more now, but I would like to continue the story at a later date and tell you about the continuing journey on that train to our evacuation destination.
Subsequently, the train continued its journey and we continued north west. We travelled through Shropshire passing Shrewsbury and then we went into Wales. Eventually the train came to a stop at Wrexham in Denbighshire. This is where we left the train and were transported in buses to a large school, which turned out to be a kind of sorting office, as it were, of all us evacuees from the London area. From here we were put on other buses which took us to the many surrounding villages around Wrexham. Ours took us upwards towards the mountains and we stopped at the village of Coedpoeth. This turned out to be a mining community. It had supplied men, and boys in the old days, for the various pits in the north Wales coalfields. Names like Gresford, Llay Main and Rhos would become very familiar to us in the next year or so.
It was when we were getting out of the bus to go into the Pennygelly Senior School, which was our sorting depot, that we discovered that Bobby Wells who should have been with us, was not! Where was he?
So, instead of 4, we were 3. Myself. the eldest at 10, Billy my brother 7 and Tony Woodhouse also 7. I as the oldest one made it clear that we were in fact 4 and I wanted to get Bobby transferred back to us as soon as possible. People came in giving us all the once over, saying they could take 1 or maybe 2. Some even offerred to take 3. But nobody it seems was prepared to house 4 evacuees from London, especially four boys. We were some of the last ones left, and nobody had offerred us a roof over our heads. I was getting worried, when a tall gaunt looking lady with iron grey hair came into the room. I immediately took a liking to this woman and went up to her and explained the problem we had. Her name was Mrs. Jones. Emma Jones, in fact, who was a miner's widow. She had lost her husband in a pit accident before the war had started. Mrs. Jones said that she would take us and promised that she would do all she could in order to get our mate Bobby Wells back with us from wherever he had been taken.
So, we walked down the road with our new foster mother Mrs. Emma Jones to her house at 6 Roberts Terrace from where it was just possible to have a good view of our mountain across Pantywyll. ( I probably haven't spelt it right, but we were to have great fun during our stay with her, when we went down into the little valley below our house). We went to bed that night feeling fine but the full enormity of where we were had suddenly dawned on me, if not the otheres, here we were in Wales, hundreds of miles from out homes and our Mums and Dads. We did not know whether we would ever see our homes or even our Mums and Dads ever again!
Mrs. Jones, next day, gave us a few suggestions as to how she thought we should live with her at number 6 Roberts Terrace. The first thing she did was get us to write home to our parents to tell them about our new home in North Wales. She added that she did not think it a good idea for us to ask them for extra pocket money, she had better ideas of how to get that. We were going to find out what this great old lady was like. She believed in hard work. She also made sure we were going to school and we all joined the Pennygelly Junior School in Coedpoeth. Then she introduced us to the Congregational Chapel where the minister, I seem to remember, was a Rev. Whittingham I think. (or some similar name).
The evacuation office was contacted by Mrs Jones to find out where our mate Bobby Wells had been misdirected to, so that we could get him brought over to Coedpoeth and be with us. After some time, it was discovered that he had got on the wrong bus in Wrexham and been billeted the other side of the town. After a few weeks, he duly arrived in Roberts Terrace and was with us. We were all 4 together again!
We attended the Pennygelly primary school where the headmaster was a Mr. Williams. Our form mistress was Miss Jones. She was a lovely lady, had red hair and I liked her very much. It wasn't long before we knew we had to try to learn Welsh, especially in our hymn singing and daily prayers. We seemed to do this quite well and it wasn't long before we were picking it up.
We hadn't been at the school long before we encountered a big problem, we evacuees were being picked on and we had to do something about it. So, as I was one of the eldest in the evacuees, I decided to show the local children that we were not to be taken lightly. I put the word round one day that we were to meet in the playground and I told all the evacuees to get themselves up onto the great pile of coke that was stored in the playground. Everyone did as I asked, except one boy. He was a kid from our town who was named Dougie Lichfield. He decided to stay down, as it were, with the Welsh kids. I reckon he thought he was better than others. He took the side of the locals for some reason. I considered him a turn coat and a traiter. Anyway, it was quite a stirring moment for the evacuees. We had a battle with them which lasted for quite some time. We challenged them to get us off the Coke pile, and we were throwing coke at them as they tried to remove us. We made our point, even if we were only young kids from London. The result was that I was named the ring leader of this minor revolt and Mr.Williams gave me two whacks with his stick across my hands. His stick being a rather heavy pointer made from wood. And it hurt, but my pride was OK, and we had made our point. The evacuees were accepted from then on.
It wasn't long after the Coke Pile incident, that we had news from home. It was not good news. A VI had come down and exploded on Jersey Road in Rainham where all our homes were. We had a letter from our Mums and Dads to tell us they were OK, but they had been bombed out. Most of the houses in Jersey Road were uninhabitable, at least for the forseeable future. A couple of lads who lived at number 27 Jersey Road had been killed in the raid, apparently they had been sitting on top of their air raid shelter and saw the VI coming down, but before they had a chance to take cover they were killed in the blast of the explosion. What a tragic family the Smiths were. Old Mrs. Smith had an older son in the RAF who was a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber which had been shot down on a raid over Germany in early 1944, then she had to bear the loss of 2 more sons in the VI bomb. (After the war Mrs. Smith became a spiritualist). I remember her telling my Mum that she never could make contact with her son at the Spiritualists meetings who had been shot down on the raid, so she insisted that he was still alive and could not remember who he was, poor woman.
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