Child from Home (23 page)

The deep, bass voices of the farmers and the farmhands, with their weather-beaten faces and big red hands, rang out as they sang unin-hibitedly, with great joy and thanks to the Lord, as their ancestors had always done. Their intense masculinity and simple primitive faith was plain for all to see as they enthusiastically belted out: ‘Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.'

The brass cross on the altar shone with the effulgence of burning gold, and the brilliant white of the altar cloth matched the pure white of the vicar's chasuble. He had worn a purple one in Lent. There were arrangements of beautiful spring flowers decking the choir stalls and the ends of the pews, and the freshly picked primroses and daffodils stood out in the dim light, brightening the more sombre and shadowy areas of the old church. Several of the pews emptied as the vicar began the ritual of Holy Communion and the villagers returned to their places one by one having knelt at the altar rail to take the sacrament. Some still had the consecrated wafer melting in their mouths and a few had a look of smug satisfaction feeling that they might just have opened the door to heaven a chink wider. Our tall, bald-headed headmaster, Mr Fox, sat there playing the organ, pulling out the stops and pumping the pedals enthusiastically as the music boomed out from the organ pipes and echoed back from the high roof space. The organ was tucked away to the left of the altar and behind it a young lad sat fervently pumping the bellows.

The vicar then read the sermon from the wooden lectern above the intricate stone carvings of the old pulpit. In honour of Easter he was wearing a more splendid alb, amice and chasuble than usual, with his chasuble symbolic of Christ's seamless coat. During his sermons hell-fire often seemed to crop up as, in his clear, deep-timbred voice, he proclaimed the Easter message and read the collects appropriate to the day; but the words were almost meaningless to us and most of them –figuratively and literally – passed over our young heads.

Before long we grew bored and started to fidget, gazing up at the pine hammer beams and the Douglas fir roof panels that were difficult to make out in the deep shadows. Below the hammer beams, long chains supported the large, wrought-iron hoops of the chandeliers, and Mr Harris whispered to us, ‘They once 'ad candles in 'em thar knows.' They looked like wagon wheel rims to me and I moved sideways so as not to be directly under one in case it came crashing down on my head. We started whispering to each other until we were shushed by the cantankerous Mrs Harris. She had given each of us a shiny penny coin to place on the collection plate that was being passed round. In our boredom we squinted at the words ‘D: G: OMN: REX F: D: IND: IMP' that were embossed round the head of King George VI without understanding what any of it meant.

Our foster parents were not especially religious although they believed that we had been put on this earth for a purpose, and if there was a purpose in life this presupposed that there must be a God. They believed that Jesus Christ's lessons taught us how we should behave towards each other, although Mrs Harris did not seem to adhere to them herself. She had the good book in her hand but apparently not in her head and could be, as we were to learn, nasty and mean spirited. She seemed to think that going to church was a kind of insurance, just in case there was an afterlife. She might have been better occupied pondering on the wrath of God rather than on His loving and caring aspects alone.

We were unthinking believers in religion but Mam believed in the Bible in a more profound way and really felt the horror of Christ's crucifixion. She used to say, ‘If God is with you nothing on earth can harm you.' And she thought that Christ's love gave us the strength and patience to tolerate the bad things in life. Religious life had long been all-pervasive to her and she suffered the sadness, the joy and the ecstasy of the various Holy days. At Easter sorrow and joy were closely intermingled, just as they were in her, but there was also a feeling of hope abroad in the spring air. Of a gentle nature, she was a pacifist at heart, but she truly believed that without religion mankind could quickly degenerate into savagery; and she believed that that is what had happened in Germany. Her God was a merciful God and she just
knew
that there was a life after death. To her life was only a temporary state, after which all would be reunited with their departed loved ones. She was pleased that we were gong to church services and the Sunday school classes in St Mary's hall where Miss Curry conducted the singing.

The following Tuesday night we went to bed at the usual time only to be woken in the early hours by the plaintive wailing of the airraid siren. Scurrying downstairs we heard the unsynchronised drone of German aircraft engines and then there were two muffled booms from across the fields to the north-west. Soon afterwards the continuous tone of the all-clear sounded and we went back to our bedroom, but on peeping round the curtain we could see the flames of several fires burning in the distance. There was a red glow in the sky over towards the Plainville area and the next day we learned that a Heinkel III had developed engine trouble. The starboard engine had burst into flames, and some said it had been shot down by one of the Bofors guns defending Linton-on-Ouse airfield. The pilot had jettisoned his 1,000kg bomb and the five-man crew managed to bale out, with eyewitnesses stating that, ‘The great plane somersaulted and looped through the night sky like a giant Catherine wheel with its engines revving out of control.' It crashed in a field about two miles from Haxby.

Several kids failed to turn up at school when we started at ten o'clock the following morning and one of these was the mischievous ten-year-old Derek Robinson, who had gone to the crash site to collect shrapnel. Shrapnel was greatly treasured and highly swoppable in school. ‘A right cheeky little devil,' Mrs Harris called him. Unfortunately for him, our village policeman, PC Bill Manging, who lived with his wife in the bungalow next door but one to Harry, also arrived at the crash site that morning. With his black cape flapping in the wind he chased Derek across the fields holding on to his steel helmet, but the fleet-of-foot little lad was too fast for him this time. However, PC Manging knew where he lived, and, on catching up with him later, tore a strip off him. By that time Derek's precious ‘treasures' were safely stashed away to be proudly displayed to the kids in the schoolyard later.

The engine left a deep crater in the soft earth and the wreckage was scattered over a wide area. Soldiers had rounded up the crew and put the men under arrest. It was definitely the highlight of the week and it was amazing how quickly the news had spread. Later that day, Harry said, ‘We rushed to the main gate and sat on the low wall, getting there just in time to see a party of soldiers and the local Home Guard escorting a German airman past the school. They had their bayoneted rifles cocked and looked ready to use them. The German had on a wool-lined, one-piece flying overall with zips on the pockets and wore a leather belt with brass buckles, a close-fitting leather helmet and fur-lined flying boots.' I was green with envy at missing out on such a major event and Jimmy and I drew and painted pictures of Luftwaffe pilots for weeks to come.

Soon afterwards, under the strictest of security, the crumpled, oil-streaked wreckage was taken away on a ‘Queen Mary' trailer covered with a tarpaulin. It was taken to 60 MU at Shipton and we often saw the long, low vehicle parked opposite the school or by the level crossing gates. Many years later the crash site was excavated and bits of the engine, propellers and other parts were found, and a five-foot-long propeller blade was kept in a barn for many years.

On 4 May the clocks were put forward one hour giving us two hours of extra evening daylight, known as double summertime, as the clocks had not been put back the previous autumn. It meant that it was light well after bedtime and light again before we got up in the morning, and we took full advantage of this, playing in Widd's field until long after tea. The farmers and the farmhands, a robust, cheerful lot with shining red faces and large, rough hands, worked late in the fragrant summer fields behind the snorting, stamping horses, and there were no jarring mechanical noises.

We were always made to say Grace before meals, but it wasn't the swift hand of God that we feared. If any of us ate anything before Grace was said we got a clout from Mrs Harris. Breakfast usually consisted of porridge made from Quaker Oats mixed with milk and water. I tried hard to be good and polite at breakfast, as Mam had told us that, ‘God is a silent listener and a guest at every meal.' But it was difficult to be good all day; especially when Jimmy kept pulling faces at me and trying to get me annoyed. It had been light for a good two hours as our little group walked to school on those early summer mornings.

The east coast was now easily accessible to the Luftwaffe and the evacuees from Hull were anxious about their parents' safety and couldn't wait for them to visit again. The evacuees from there told us that the town had suffered repeated bombing between March and May, with hundreds killed and thousands of houses damaged. At night the raging fires lit up the night sky and the orange glow could be seen from Haxby. When Mam visited us she told us that six bombs had been dropped on the Newport area and one had landed inside the steel casing of one of the gasholders not far from our house, setting it on fire and providing a spectacularly frightening display.

The Wigginton and Haxby Women's Institute (WI) were doing their bit for the war effort. Their needles busily clicked away as they knitted scarves, jerseys, woollen hats, balaclava helmets and socks, which were parcelled up and sent to local men serving in the forces. They also made garments for the local children and the RAF men billeted in the two villages. They made lots of jam and the local housewives snapped the jars up eagerly, with Mrs Harris making sure that she got her fair share, but we were still denied jam and margarine on our bread at the same time.

To help the worsening food situation, Mr Harris went out and caught rabbits using hand-whittled wooden pegs to which he attached wire snares (locally called ‘sniggles'). His big square hands were callused and ingrained with soil and were those of a man accustomed to hard manual work. He knew all the rabbit runs near his allotment and in the local fields and he set snares in the deep grass under the hedgerows in the evenings. He would then go out early in the morning when the dew was still on the grass, picking a few mushrooms on the way. Once the rabbits were removed from the sniggles he spliced the skin of their hind legs and brought them home slung on a long stick taken from the hedgerow that he rested on his shoulder. The open fields, with their covering of fresh, lush grass, were alive with rabbits and field mice, and Mr Harris told us that he often heard the forlorn cry of a rabbit as he approached. Death was always waiting in the wings in the form of slinky stoats with black-tipped tails. Brown on top and white underneath, their kittens would eat anything, including insects.

We were often given rabbit stews and I came to like the taste of the white meat that was a bit stronger than chicken. We had also started to have bland-tasting, mass-produced vegetable rissoles that had only recently been introduced and could be bought at the Co-op store for eight pence (3p) per pound.

The Wiggy Rec, a wooden building on the main street at Wigginton, was shared with the RAF. Several lorries painted in dull blue were usually to be found parked in its grounds and Sergeant Ellery made it abundantly clear that he was the man in charge there. He was responsible for getting the large numbers of airmen billeted in the area – most of whom worked at the aircraft maintenance unit at Shipton – to and from their places of work every day. The large hut was also used by the RAF every Wednesday to show films. The latest,
Turned out Nice Again,
starred George Formby as a half-soaked but loveable, ukulele-playing, working-class chap who was always being put upon, and its title became one of Mr Harris's favourite sayings. Maybe Mr Harris identified with him. The musical ‘Broadway Melody', featuring the suave Hollywood song and dance star Fred Astaire, was also shown around that time but I don't recall ever being taken there.

Regular Saturday night dances were held there as the RAF lads had formed a good dance band and many of the local ladies were to have fond memories of these dances in the years to come. Many of the RAF lads used to call in at Walker's fish and chip shop on Front Street, Haxby, for their suppers.

RAF Sergeant Ellery received regular news bulletins on the wireless that the RAF had installed and he passed these on to Miss Curry, who then informed us. The latest news concerned Rudolph Hess, Hitler's former deputy, who had flown across the North Sea and parachuted on to a farm near Glasgow. He was said to be mentally ill. By this time Greece was in German hands following a huge airborne invasion with heavy losses on both sides. Many Allied troops had been taken prisoner and the remainder were evacuated to Crete, which fell to yet another massive German airborne attack near the end of May. Another defeat was a bitter disappointment to the British public.

At that time Germany was at the height of its military power and was sweeping all before it. The prospects of victory for the Allies seemed remote. The continent of Europe was under Nazi oppression and they now occupied or controlled most of North Africa. We learned that German troops were massing on their eastern borders and on the 22nd Hitler, blinded by his own conceit, hurled his mechanised divisions at the vast Soviet Union, and his former allies were in retreat. This meant that he now had war on two fronts and the threat of an invasion on Britain all but disappeared. It was to be Hitler's greatest mistake.

Mrs Harris was in an even viler frame of mind than usual around that time, as a stray bomb had landed on the gas works in York which caused the gas pressure in the village to be low for a week, making it difficult for her to provide hot meals. Times became even harder when it was announced that clothes were to be rationed from 1 June. No special ration books for clothing were issued and the locals were obliged to use spare coupons from their food books for some considerable time. The ribs of Mrs Harris's corsets where made of whalebone, which was now hard to come by, but she only wore them when she went somewhere special and most of the time she looked like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle.