Ryland Clendon - collected by Hope Valley u3a
A Story for my Grandchild
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I was nine years old when the 2nd World War broke out. I lived in Colchester which is a military town. There were several large barracks there where the soldiers lived, with big parade grounds. When they were off-duty they went to the town. So I was used to seeing soldiers around everywhere. I could also hear, from my bedroom, the bugle calls to wake up the soldiers every morning. |
Our house was quite near one of the Barracks which was called Hyderabad Barracks. The road next to ours, which led to the barracks, was called Military Road. Opposite the entrance to the barracks was the Camp Church. Every Sunday there was a church parade with a big brass band leading the troops, in their best Sunday Dress Uniforms, out of the parade ground and across Military Road into the Church. Sometimes I went to watch the parade, and sometimes my mother took me to church there on Sundays.
There were also areas of countryside in and around the town where soldiers used to do their training. One area was called Middlewick where they had a large shooting range for the soldiers to practise shooting their rifles at targets which were mounted on artificial hills some distance away. When shooting was taking place they put up red flags on tall flag poles, and you had to keep away. We used to go for afternoon walks at Middlewick when the soldiers were not shooting there.
Opposite our house was a large park called the Recreation Ground or ‘the Rec’ for short. I was allowed to go and play over there. When war broke out so many soldiers joined the army that there was not enough room for them in the barracks to practise marching and drilling. So some of the new ones came down Military Road and did their training in the Rec. One hot sunny day, when I was sitting under a tree watching them marching up and down, I noticed one of the soldiers couldn't march properly. He swung his arms the wrong way. Try as he could he couldn`t get it right. The sergeant in charge shouted instructions to him again and again. Then he shouted out: ‘You are completely useless! Look at that little boy under the tree there. He could be a much better soldier than you.’ I felt very pleased but wondered how the sergeant knew that I was so clever.
My mother, who was a doctor, was in charge of the Red Cross for the town and she had to set up a First Aid Post in a building on the other side of the Rec. The Germans had bombed a lot of towns in France, and we thought they would do the same in England. The First Aid Post was a place where people who had been injured by the bombing could be taken to for immediate first aid treatment, such as having their wounds cleaned, dressed, and bandaged up. It had a number of rooms with beds. Sometimes I went there when they were practising and they would paint wounds on my skin, and I would be asked to pretend I had broken my leg. The nurses would practise finding the injuries and bandaging them up. If someone had broken their leg, they would bandage it up with a wooden splint to stop it moving.
The First Aid Post was manned day and night by volunteer Red Cross nurses, and my mother used to sleep there every night (the bombing raids were usually at night). My father was also a doctor and he often had to go out at night to see to people who were ill or to give emergency anaesthetics at the hospital. So my brother and I were sent to a boarding school in the town, so that there would be someone to look after us at nights if there was any bombing. We didn't like this very much, but we came home on Sundays. Going back on Sunday evening was always a problem because my younger brother, David, would kick up a fuss and cry a lot. I tried to be brave and did not cry but it upset me. Actually, there were no bombing raids on Colchester at that time and so after a while, my mother no longer slept at the First Aid Post but would have had to go there immediately the air raid siren went.
Then, soon after my tenth birthday in June 1940, the British Army was defeated in France and retreated onto the beaches at a seaside place called Dunkirk. It became famous because a lot of ordinary people sailed their little boats and ships across the channel from England to help rescue the soldiers stranded on the beaches at Dunkirk. Some of the men did not get off the beach, unfortunately. The father of one of my best friends at school was killed on the beach at Dunkirk.
Because the German Army was now in France, only twenty miles from England, everyone thought we were going to be invaded soon. Colchester was near the sea and could easily have been involved in a battle if there had been a German invasion, so it was decided to evacuate my school to the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. One day two coaches arrived at the front door of the school and we all got in with our gas masks and identity cards (which you had to carry everywhere), and a packet of sandwiches to eat for lunch. I didn't eat mine because I was terribly sick all the way. I had a seat over the back wheel and it was very bumpy and lurchy. I have never liked going on long bus journeys ever since. The journey took nearly all day.
The house where we were evacuated to was called ‘The Lindens’ and it was in Upper Colwall. It had lovely grounds and we enjoyed playing in them. We had organised games of hide-and-seek and rounders, and later on, we used a farmer's field as a football and cricket pitch. At the end of term, most of the pupils went home for the holidays but my brother and I stayed there with a few other boys all through the summer holiday. We were allowed to have our bikes there. They were sent by train, and during the school holiday, we went on bike rides, and on lovely long walks on the Malvern Hills.
We stayed at the school until Christmas 1940 when we went home by train. On arrival, we had to go immediately to the Town Hall to register that we had arrived and where we were living. We also were given a notice to put in the front window of our house to indicate that there were two children living there. This was to let the local Air Raid Warden know we were there. If there had been an invasion we would have had to go in buses to the railway station. The buses were parked at the end of our road every night, waiting for us and there were several long trains in the railway sidings
beside the station, always ready to take us away.
Coming home was great fun but also rather worrying because if there had been an invasion we would have to go on these buses and trains a long way away and not to our school in the Malvern Hills. In some ways, I thought it would be nicer to be at school in safety but I soon got used to the situation and it was good to be home for Christmas. When we got inside the house we found that the ceiling of the kitchen had all been boarded up with strong wood and there were strong wooden pillars holding it up. This was to protect us if the house was bombed. When there was an air raid in the night we all went downstairs into the kitchen.
As it happened we never had bombs on our house, unlike granny who was bombed in her house in Bath. After that Christmas, we went back to school again at the start of the next term by train and stayed there right through to the end of term. We came home each holiday after that and I never really suffered much at all during the rest of the war.