Child from Home (27 page)

The newspapers reported that things were not going well for the Allied forces in North Africa and ‘the Med'. It was nice to have a new friend at school and John Wade told me that in the autumn of 1940 he had contracted impetigo and had been put in an isolation unit in a bungalow near the Hilbra railway crossing. ‘It all started when I got blisters round me mouth and behind me ears,' he said. ‘They 'ad 'orri-ble, yeller scabs on 'em. I 'ad ter 'ave loads of 'ot baths and they put green and violet stuff on me. They dabbed me blisters with mercury ointment until t'ard crusts went. When I got better I went ter live with Mrs Longhurst in North Lane.' Her bungalow was behind the Haxby Co-op, which had a wooden post high up on its rear wall from which a rope and pulley system hung. It was used to lift the traditional ten-stone sacks of flour and sugar up to a door on the upper floor. John said, ‘I were well treated but I weren't there long. I were taken in by t'Smith family who 'ad come 'ere from Middlesbrough.'

Next door to the Smiths was another brick building called Prospect House that belonged to a quiet and very private middle-aged couple called Wilson. Behind it there were barns, outbuildings and extensive fields, and John told me that Mr Fred Wilson, the owner, had befriended him. He often took him into York on the high front seat of his old horse-drawn stagecoach, which made him the envy of every child in Haxby. We often saw him perched on the driver's bench and my imaginations ran riot as I pictured it being chased across the Nevada Desert by Red Indians led by Cochise, the chief of the tribe, who wore a magnificent, feathered head-dress and rode bareback as he fired arrows into it. The coach had curtains at the windows, gracefully curving shafts and wooden-spoked wheels, with the front ones smaller than the back. Sometimes we played at being masked and caped highwaymen with pistols like Dick Turpin, who Miss Francis said had been kept in a cell at York Prison while waiting to be hanged. Mr Wilson, a man of very few words, used the coach to deliver goods to York and to collect tubs of pigswill on the way back.

It may well have been the coach once driven by Tom Holtby, an enterprising and colourful character of old Haxby, whose house still stood. He had been a driver on the York to Doncaster leg of the London to Edinburgh stagecoach until the coming of the railways put the coaches out of business and he became a horse-breaker in York. John said, ‘In the autumn I 'elped Mr Wilson to pick and bag spuds. 'E'd turn out a few rows with 'is fork on t'land at back of 'is 'ouse or in t'field 'e owned at back o' t'owld chapel. He gave me a thrupenny bit or a silver tanner each time.' It seems Mr Wilson had taken a liking to him and John enjoyed doing jobs like helping to pick and store his apples and pears on sacking in the loft of his barn. By a strange coincidence, Nancy and Sylvia Robson, two of the little girls who had been at The Settlement, Sutherland Lodge and Grove House with George and me, were also billeted with the Smiths.

I loved to hear Vera Lynn singing and when her programme, ‘Sincerely Yours', was on the BBC Forces Service we were allowed to listen as long as we stayed quiet. Between her poignant songs she read out messages of love and affection from the wives, husbands, sweethearts and boyfriends of people in the forces. When war broke out she had been a vocalist with the Ambrose Orchestra and her lovely voice and sincerity of delivery helped to link those far away with their loved ones at home. Her moving rendition of
Yours
was the signature tune of the show that had first come on the air in November 1941 and it became an instant hit. She was affectionately known as ‘The Forces Sweetheart'. Entertaining the troops with ENSA counted as war service, but with so many to entertain the talent was stretched pretty thin. Some wags said ENSA stood for ‘Every Night Something Awful'.

Jimmy and I were quite pleased to hear that the government was urging people to bathe less often. People were not to use more than five inches of warm water and to share. This suited us; like most kids, we would not get washed if we could get away with it. It annoyed us when Mrs Harris roughly rubbed our faces and knees with a wet flannel before we went to bed, calling our efforts cat-licks. She used to line us up and say, ‘Hold your hands out', before inspecting the backs and the palms. We never had toothpaste, we used powdered stuff that came in a small round tin, but most of the time we just rubbed salt or soot on our teeth and gums with our fingers.

Every Saturday after tea we were put in the bath in pairs for a soap-all-over job, using a block of green carbolic soap and the same water as the two before us, thus ensuring that we were clean for church the next day. As I stripped off, Jimmy often got me mad by calling me ‘tin ribs' or ‘skinny-banana-legs'. More hot water was added when the next pair climbed in and the water became blacker and blacker. Soap was now rationed to a three-ounce bar a month and soap powder was in short supply. Before bed on school days we were given a rub – including our legs – and in the morning a wash, excluding legs. More often than not, during the daytime, we were given a quick rub here and there with a bit of spit on the corner of Mrs Harris's faded pinny, the pattern of which had almost disappeared due to the number of times it had been washed. Quite often we deliberately avoided a wash by getting sent to bed early for squabbling or being cheeky.

The news of the Allies' efforts in the war continued to be disappointing and people were tired of hearing reports of defeats and failures. At the half-term break I was over the moon when Mam visited me again, and I was so excited when she came towards me along the ice-covered garden path. Picking her way carefully past the dead, blackened stalks and the frosted seed heads of last summer's flowers, her shy smile on seeing me warmed me through, reaffirming that special bond that exists between a mother and son. Whenever I set eyes on her my heart sang and my unhappiness was forgotten for a while. Mam was reserved and shy in nature and inclined to blush easily, and it appears that she had no suspicions concerning Mrs Harris's sly and nasty ways. She was so trusting of people and, believing in the nobility of the human spirit, was convinced that there was goodness in everyone. She said, ‘We must learn to take the rough with the smooth. Life is full of ups and downs and you must know the bitter to appreciate the sweet.' We had been told never to say that anything was wrong and we were too frightened to tell the truth as Mrs Harris always seemed to be hovering close by when relatives visited. I didn't get the chance to tell Mam about the beltings or about the way she treated us. I wanted to tell her of how we often lay in bed covering our ears to shut out her angry raised voice as she shouted at and belittled her long-suffering husband.

By mid-March, when a thaw set in, the snow turned to slush and the tyres of Harry, Brian and Peter's bikes swish-swished through the puddles on their way to school. There were very few motor cars for them to worry about as most people went about on bikes at that time. Cycling to and from school the boys often saw Italian prisoners-of-war at work in the now piebald fields.

On a chilly, blustery Saturday afternoon, Harry met up with his young pal Peter, and with him was his lively eleven-year-old friend Derek Robinson, who lived only three doors from him. They cycled the eight miles to the large airfield at Linton-on-Ouse. They had come in the hope of seeing one of the mighty new Halifax bombers at close range. They caught a whiff of high-octane aviation fuel as a petrol bowser chugged past on the concrete of the perimeter track heading towards one of the Whitley bombers that had served so valiantly since the start of the war.

As slate-grey clouds scurried by above the control tower and the five large hangars, the station windsock was fully extended. Nearby were flat-roofed, brick buildings and the boys got quite excited on seeing a cigar-shaped bomb on a long trolley being pulled along by a tractor. It was heading towards a huge Halifax bomber that stood on its dispersal pad not far from where they peered through the wire of the perimeter fence. An RAF truck pulled up with a squeal of brakes and a sergeant pilot and his crew of six climbed down.

The airmen clambered up a metal ladder into the fuselage of the waiting bomber and, from the cockpit, the pilot gave a ‘thumbs-up' signal to the aircraft electricians who plugged in a starter trolley just as heavy drops of rain began to plop onto the ground. The engines seemed to hesitate before spluttering, then bursting into life one after the other. The spinning airscrews looked like shimmering, silver discs as the deep-throated roar was torn away on the slipstream. Great puffs of smoke and blue flashes of flame from the exhaust cowlings showed up clear and bright in the gathering gloom. As the pilot opened the throttle a little the great aircraft seemed to tremble. Rainwater streamed from the trailing edge of the wings and the expanse of deep lush grass behind it was blown flat. The ground crew then dragged away the wooden wheel chocks by heaving on the long ropes attached to them.

The Bristol Hercules engines settled and ran more smoothly as they warmed up and the great bomber moved out onto the shiny, rain-wet perimeter track. An RAF fire tender stood by with its headlights hooded as the plane taxied to the end of the runway that disappeared into the mist. As the pilot opened the throttle the engines juddered and gave out loud throaty growls as the power burst forth in a series of great surges. They waited for the green flash of light from the chequered caravan, which showed up brightly in the fading light. The ground trembled and the air reverberated as the harnessed energy was released and the mighty Halifax rumbled along the wet, rubber-streaked tarmac sending spray up from its tyres as it picked up speed. The three boys stood open-mouthed in awe as the thundering plane lifted off and slowly banked to port. The undercarriage was raised just before the black and sinister-looking clouds swallowed her up.

On their return journey the boys were glad to have the strong cold wind behind them as the rain lashed down on their inadequately clad bodies. The snow that had only recently melted had saturated the fields, and the lads pushed on through a dank, misty, rain-sodden landscape. The sky was alive with movement as low, slate-grey clouds chased each other across it. They were glad to get home out of the rain that came down in stair rods and Harry's flaxen hair, now darkened and soaking wet, lay flat to his scalp as the excess rainwater dribbled down his neck. They were chilled to the bone, utterly miserable and looked like drowned rats, but – eventually – they agreed that the trip had been well worthwhile and they talked excitedly about what they had seen for weeks.

Most of the women (out of necessity) now went about bare-legged but some used gravy browning in place of the hard-to-get stockings. Mrs Fisher got a friend to pencil in the seams, which was fine until it rained. They used the still readily obtainable Ladder Stop as nail varnish, as by that time the real thing had disappeared from the shops. Increasing shortages of cosmetics led them to use beetroot juice in place of lipstick and rouge and soot was used as eye make-up. There were more unshaven and bearded men around as razor blades were in very short supply and Mr Harris resharpened his old blades by rubbing them round the inside of a glass tumbler. Some of the older men resorted to the old cutthroat razors still around from their parents' time, sharpening them on a leather strop. Rose-hip syrup went on sale nationwide – under fives were to get it free – and two million more children became eligible for free cod liver oil.

Mr Harris read in his
Daily Express
that his namesake, Air Marshal Arthur Harris, had been appointed by Winston Churchill as the new Chief of Bomber Command. Brusque and bluff, Harris was of a similar nature to Churchill; the man whose determination and doggedness had united and galvanised the nation. Vigorous and decisive, the new AOC (Air Officer Commanding) aimed to carry the war, by day and night, deep into the heart of Germany. They had been relatively untroubled up to that point, but things were about to change as he planned to send large numbers of bombers into The Fatherland and the occupied territories. Many, including Churchill, believed that this appointment could herald a turning point in the war.

For two and a half years we had battled alone against the might and aggression of Nazi Germany and the morale of the nation was low. Far better armed, the enemy was now in control of the entire western coastline of Europe and, with Britain's fortunes looking dismal, the only real hope of survival lay in a successful switch from defence to offence. By March the news bulletins stated that RAF Bomber Command had begun to mount mass, round-the-clock bombing raids. The RAF had learned from the eleven-hour-long immolation of Coventry, but the new policy of saturation ‘area' bombing was to cause some controversy. It led to the AOC being given the sobriquets ‘Bomber' or ‘Butcher' Harris but, to our delight, Germany was now getting back some of the treatment that it had dished out.

The sight of the great bombers going out was awe-inspiring and it raised the morale of the people of Haxby no end, giving them fresh hope. The loud drone of the planes disturbed the ragged-trousered rooks in the smooth-barked beech trees making them take to the air just as they were starting to roost for the night. The raucous cawing of the large black scavengers assaulted our ears, and Mr Harris said, ‘It's worse than t'Women's Institute in their tea break; and that's saying summat!' The cruciform shapes could be seen as black silhouettes against the fading light of the evening sky. The bomb-laden aircraft went out at dusk night after night, juddering our sash windows in their wooden frames and, sadly, some never returned.

In the madness of war food and clothes were in short supply but tears were always plentiful. The pubs echoed to the sounds of drunken airmen and locals singing songs like
Whispering Grass
and
Java, Java,
made popular by ‘The Ink Spots', round the upright piano. Incidentally, the only black man we ever saw was an American Air Force sergeant who was billeted nearby. Even though the beer was watered down to make the limited supplies last out, the publicans often topped up the airmen's glasses on the house. They usually got on well with the locals but occasionally arguments would spill over into fistfights. Drinking hours were from eleven in the morning till two in the afternoon, and from six to ten o'clock at night, but the aircrews were sometimes treated to free beer after hours. We hero-worshipped the aircrew and, when they attended the dances at the Wiggie Rec, they were also exceedingly popular with the young ladies of the two villages.