By the Autumn of 1938, preparations for War were afoot. Observing the Germans' strategy, modelled upon that of the Spanish and Italian Fascists at Guernica and in Ethiopia (in which units of the Luftwaffe unofficially took part) of terror-bombing of cities, or of more legitimate targets with no regard to civilian casualties, the British Government prepared plans for sending children away from cities and towns if war should be declared. Several official leaflets on this subject are to be found in my archives.+ One can imagine the feelings of my parents as they contemplated sending me away whilst they remained in the danger-zone. Plans for the removal of children from London were already in hand in September 1938, and Ralph's Kit noted at that time listed Raincoat, Blanket, Wellingtons, Shoes, Gym shoes and togs, Shirt, Vest, Pants, Stockings, Hankies, Towel, Pyjamas, Hair Brush, Tooth Brush, Toothpaste, Money, 6 Postcards, Prayer Book, Diary, Autograph Book, Playing-cards, Mouth-organ, String, Torch. On a memorable day, Tuesday September 27th 1938, I went with my father up to Devonshire Hill School to be fitted with gas-masks. There was a strong smell of new rubber, and there were trestle-tables piled with cardboard boxes, and folk taking names and giving us the correct sizes. The ordinary civilian gas-mask had a single window in front, and straps which went over the head. One breathed in through the metal filter in front, and when breathing out the valve shut and the air escaped under the edges of the rubber where it made a seal with one's cheek. Warnings were issued that the masks should not be tested by putting one's head inside a gas-oven, as they were not designed to deal with coal-gas, but some folk, unaware or forgetful of the warning, did so with fatal consequences. The gas alert was to be signalled by the sound of large wooden rattles, as used by football-supporters, carried by the Air Raid Wardens. The handle held a spindle armed with cog-wheels, about which, as it was swung around, a frame holding sprung flat wooden strips rotated. As the ends of the strips were raised and released by the teeth of the cog-wheels, they produced a loud clacking. Pamphlets describing the various characteristic smells of the gases which might be used against us, and warnings about contamination by mustard-gas, were also issued. It was said that one spot of mustard-gas, falling on the toe of one's boot, could rapidly penetrate to the foot and prove sufficient to cause death. The civil-defence masks, for Air Raid Wardens, Police & Firemen, were of much thicker, moulded rubber, and the exhaled air escaped via a valve which protruded like a little black tongue just between and below the two goggle eye-pieces, blowing an effective raspberry, whilst the serviceman's mask was of tougher construction, a sort of moulded rubberized canvas, and had a tube leading down to a flat filter-canister worn in a satchel on the chest. Once during the War, we all had to return to such a centre to have a special extra filter attached to our masks, equal in size to a large shoe-polish tin, designed to deal with toxic smokes. At the outbreak of War, we were advised to carry our gas-masks at all times, and at first we carried them in their cardboard boxes as issued, about 7"x 5"x 4" deep, with a string over the shoulder, but folk soon began buying or making thin canvas covers for the boxes, with a canvas shoulder-strap. Perhaps the official thinking was that the population must be protected against the use of poison gas, and that if the enemy knew we were prepared he would be deterred from deploying it. In fact, it was never used in that War, either against troops in the field or against civilian populations, so the only casualties were those who were foolish enough to test them with coal-gas. Planning for the Evacuation of children from London and other cities was already in hand. On Monday 26th September that year my mother attended a parents' meeting at my school, and received a form to be signed and details of clothing and other articles I must take if the call came. The Evacuation Number of Tottenham Grammar School was 6339, and the Master-in-Charge was our Art-Master, Mr. Wright. I listened with my father to a speech by Neville Chamberlain at 8 p.m. on the 27th, the news being that Hitler announced his desire to annexe all those parts of Czechoslovakia which had populations of which over 50% were Germans, and on the following day I went to school with my gas-mask and my case packed in readiness, but whilst he was speaking at the Opening of Parliament, Chamberlain received an invitation to go to Munich for a four-power conference, and on the 29th he came home with a Peace Declaration signed by himself and Hitler. Two days later, October 1st, at 2 p.m., German troops entered Czechoslovakia. On December 8th the Air-Raid Sirens were tested. At that time the sound was merely of novel interest. In my chapter entitled The Blitz is a more detailed description of the sirens and the effect they came to have upon us, and they can be heard on the recording mentioned on Page 35 in my chapter on Radio. On April 16th 1939 deliveries of Anderson Air-Raid-Shelters began. They were about eight feet long by six wide, of corrugated steel, delivered in sections. The recipients were instructed to dig a hole in the garden about four feet deep, and pile the excavated earth on the top. The door-aperture, in the middle of one end, usually faced the house or a substantial wall which might afford some protection from blast, and was also protected by an upright sheet of the corrugated steel backed by a mound of earth. The Andersons were of course vulnerable to a direct hit, even of a small (100lb) bomb. It was surprising how many people grew marrows on top of their garden shelters that year. We were not eligible to receive an Anderson, I think because my father was paid monthly (salary) rather than weekly (wages), although he received less than many wage-earners. In 1954 I used some of the tall shelter-sections with half-circular-curved tops to make a narrow lean-to shed down the side of my Batley concrete garage at 34 Felstead Road. On Saturday 26th August we returned home from our fortnight's holiday at Pagham, and discovered that schoolchildren had all been to their schools on that day for evacuation preparations. I went to school on my birthday, the 28th. We heard that Hitler was demanding the occupation of Danzig, and we were at school again the next day. I wrote, School again. Had film show, half-an-hour's break, and mucked about. Afternoon, ditto. We just sat in our desks, minded by a prefect, and amused ourselves as best we might. I suppose the staff were all engaged in the details of our evacuation. It was the towns which were to be evacuated, (emptied), but at that time, with violence to the language, it became common to say that the children were evacuated, a nonsense which spread quickly into the common parlance and has sadly so remained. On September 1st Germany invaded Poland. I was sent as an evacuee to Danbury, near Chelmsford, my mother went to the friends at Twyford, and my father's office was moved to Valence (Ph2,29), the country house of boss Ronald Vestey (A1,58; A2,22) near Westerham in Kent. On Sunday September 3rd, War was declared.   EVACUEE - CHELMSFORD & GREAT BADDOW It was a difficult time for the Headmaster and Governors of the School.  They had the task of making arrangements for our education to continue and for large stocks of books to be conveyed to Chelmsford, with the complication that some pupils remained in Tottenham and as the months passed others gradually trickled back there.  Amongst my archives are thirteen letters from the Headmaster informing and advising parents in these matters.  Many of these express his great pride and pleasure that the Boys were being complimented on their behaviour and loyalty. The pleasant time in Danbury came to an end when arrangements were completed for the pupils of the King Edward's Grammar School in Chelmsford to attend school from early morning until midday, and we Tottenham Grammar-School pupils to use their building from midday until five.  It was then not feasible for us to remain at Danbury, so we were given new billets in or nearer to Chelmsford. Thus I moved on Friday 29th September to my second billet, with Mr.& Mrs. Wyatt, St.Helens, Hillside Grove, Chelmsford.  They had a daughter, Eveline, about ten, and a piano, which I was allowed to play, and for which purpose I bought a copy of the hit of the day, South of the Border, for 6d.  Harold was billeted across the road.  Mr. Wyatt's hobby was the construction of model aeroplanes.  Mrs. Wyatt seemed a little neurotic.  I used to hear her muttering to herself about me, He's got a German gun, and I suppose she might even have been anxious about her daughter. Harold had his bicycle sent from home by Carter-Patterson lorry, and I asked for mine to be sent, so that I could cycle the 2½ miles to school.  However, I went home for a week-end on October 6th, and took my bicycle back to Chelmsford on the train.  I bought a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed gear for it, and a dynamo-lighting system, and made a blackout hood for the headlamp from a cocoa-tin, making three or four [ - shaped (but horizontal) cuts in the circular end and bending the lower edges up.  I also bought a cyclometer, and a German-made padlock-and-chain from Woolworths. At the school there was a tuck-shop open at morning-break, and I used to like coconut squares, which were in fact cubes, and chocolate-covered.  Woodwork was no longer on my timetable, but available on Saturday mornings as an option.  It was taken by Mr. Sayer, a young master whom I had formerly found very helpful in geometry-lessons.  I attended, and made a small beside-lamp from satin walnut with a rosewood collar and an inset switch, french-polished.  Mr. Sayer had a motor-cruiser moored at Benfleet, and one Saturday I cycled there with him and two other lads.  We went aboard his cruiser, lying partly in mud, and saw a canoe he had made, with members of a boy's club I believe, named the Prapshewill.  When I bought a wooden canoe from a colleague in Bexhill for £5, I used the name.  Mr. Sayers later became Sub-Lieutenant Sayers R.N.V.R. At the end of October Mrs. Wyatt told the billeting-officer that she was not in good health, and had a girl of her own, and could not keep me, so on Friday 27th I went to my third billet, with Mrs. Gill, at 9 New Road, Great Baddow.  It was a large council-house.  There were two other boys from my school there, one small evacuee aged about six, a lodger, and Mrs. Gill's son Jack, who was about 17 and studying wireless in order to join the Merchant Navy.  He had rigged up a receiver with headphones to practice receiving broadcast morse-messages.  He was trying to sell his Meccano-Set, so I gave him five shillings for it, and still have it. I cycled with him one evening to the cinema near the bus-station, where we left our bicycles with a great heap of others in a rear car-park and saw a film starring Conrad Veidt as a Danish Sea-Captain.  I saw it again on T.V. in 1992.  It was a strange experience to notice which parts, and which actual dialogue, I still vividly remembered after 53 years. Jack went to sea whilst I was there, so I used sometimes to ride to school on his bicycle, with drop-handlebars, in preference to my own.  The latter was a sturdy heavy roadster.  One day, in a crowd cycling home from school, a large athletic and prominent fifth-former named Harris, riding a racing-type bicycle, ran his front wheel into the back forks of my machine.  I felt a jolt, but continued unscathed, whilst he and his machine fell in a heap in the road.  He looked very surprised and cross, and I was apprehensive of retribution, but he could hardly blame me. Mrs. Gill had a metal teapot with a very narrow spout from which tea might only issue slowly.  Every time she poured from it, she would say, One of these days I'll throw this teapot the length of the garden. She never did so, and was always doubtful whether that would have effected a cure. It was at her house also that I first tried my hand at teaching the young.  The little boy could not pronounce pl.  It always can out as cl, so he would say, Yes clease . I tried to teach him by making him say perly - perly -perly, which he could manage easily, then perlies - perlies, in order to progress to please.  I don't think I was able to continue long enough to be successful, but I think perhaps my technique was sound. We found that Primrose Coaches, a small firm, ran coaches from Broad Lane Tottenham to Chelmsford.  The journey took about an hour and a half and the child's fare was 1/11d single, 3/6d return.  I had a day at home on Sunday November 5th.  On Saturday 18th I went by train to Westerham for the week-end, changing at Dunton Green.  That evening I went to the cinema with the Edges' son Leslie, and afterwards slept in his room.  I returned to Chelmsford by the 0746 train on the Monday. I had one of my grandfather's fishing-rods with me, and one day I cycled to Little Baddow and found a small stream to try.  I had just caught a small fish barely three inches in length when I heard a strange droning.  I looked up and saw in the sky a long straggly line of about forty German bombers roughly in three columns.  I quickly packed my gear onto the bicycle and cycled back to Mrs. Gill's with the fish, which survived for a day or two in a bath in the garden.  On another occasion I cycled to Maldon. I suppose I continued to travel home to Tottenham by coach during the Winter, though I remember cycling all the way home and back several times, presumably in the Spring and Summer. Although we attended school only in the afternoons, we were required to go every morning to a church-hall, called officially The Vicarage Room, and unofficially the tin tabernacle, or the Baddow Hut.  A master sat at a table at the end, and we were supposed to do our homework.  In fact we spent much time playing various games, and that is where I first learned to play chess. I went home for a weekend to Tottenham on December 2nd, arriving home at 0900 and returning on the Sunday at 1840. There was no official Christmas Leave of course, but most of us went home for a while.  It appeared that Mrs Gill wanted the room which two of us had shared with Jack, presumably to take another lodger, so I went home from December 18th until January 8th, and returned to find myself in my fourth and grandest billet.   It was a mansion called Pontlands at Great Baddow, where lived a Mrs. Foster, a widow, with a cook, a plumpish housemaid about my age called Libby, (Elizabeth Mary Harrington), (A), a chambermaid scarcely older called Ina, a chauffeur and gardeners, and I was billeted there with Sidney Smith, a lad not in my form, and slightly older.  The drive was one-fifth of a mile long, running between iron railings and passing a small lake on the left, - one of several.  Sidney & I had a room on the servants' side of the house, and ate with them at the huge scrubbed table in the kitchen, and saw Mrs. Foster only twice.  One day Sidney & I and Libby & Ina cleared snow from the smaller lake to make a slide. My father gave me a crystal-set to use at Pontlands. This was the time of the phoney war, when nothing very warlike had happened, and folk had believed it would be all over by Christmas or soon afterwards.  On Wednesday January 24th my mother went home from Valence, perhaps out of the desire to keep Jolly Old Ten occupied, or to be near her mother, and I went home for a week-end on Saturday February 10th. At some time near the turn of the years 1939/40, the Horlocks bought a house at 7 Dorrell Close, Rutland Road, Southall. One day when we were at tea in the kitchen at Pontlands, and the five of us were laughing somewhat immoderately over our innocent banter, and Libby was actually sitting on my lap, Mrs. Foster suddenly looked in at the door, and made some remark like, So this is what goes on!  I think she required the billeting-officer to find Sidney and me new billets and to find her a couple of younger evacuees, and so on Tuesday February 13th I found myself trudging along with him in the snow, pushing my bicycle, to my fifth billet, with Leonard and Phyllis Rippon, Little Paddocks, Chelmerton Avenue, Great Baddow. Contrary to what my post-1999 readers might readily imagine, none of these journeys between billets was accomplished by car.  In this case it was a walk of over a mile through the snow, in the black-out, carrying all I possessed, taken as a matter of course. Little Paddocks was a large modern house with a grand central staircase, and I had a small bedroom which had been in use as Leonard's dressing-room.  There was a games-room with a full-sized billiard-table and a dart-board, a lounge and dining-room, a very long garden at the back, and a garden-shed where I could store my bicycle.  There was a small office on the left of the front door, which they gas-proofed by applying thick felt to all possible window and door crevices and installing a door-curtain.  Later they had an underground concrete shelter built outside the back door, for although Chelmsford had been designated a reception area, there were vital factories nearby, - Hoffman's, which made ball-bearings, and Marconi's, which made radio and radar apparatus.  A German warplane was shot down whilst I was there, and I acquired a metal warning-label from its cockpit.  As far as I remember, it read, Achtung nür maschine frei. During the time when the workmen were constructing the shelter Phyllis Rippon felt obliged to furnish them with tea, but since this was a rationed commodity she used to pour an extra pint or so of boiling water into the tea-pot after breakfast, and pour off the workmen's tea when brewed into flasks.  Later they had a loggia, a lean-to sun-lounge, added to the house, and workmen's tea was again produced. Leonard J. Rippon was a tobacco-importer who had a shop in Chelmsford.  His hobby was radio, and he drove a black Jowett saloon-car.  About the lounge there were always pink boxes of cigarettes, of 2" square section by 9" in length, printed with the name Rippon Virginia, and their wedding-gift to us in 1951 was an elegant black spherical cigarette-lighter, which we never used. Phyllis Rippon spent her time playing golf, badminton and tennis, and hosting or attending bridge-parties, driving a Morris 8, whilst Ruby, the maid, attended to the chores.  I saw Ruby once, preparing for a bridge-party, cut a large white loaf horizontally into huge slices, applying butter, and cucumber cut very thin, and then cutting them into tiny crustless sandwiches about two inches square.  I finished up the crusts.  I realized years afterwards that the Rippons were then probably comparatively newly-wed. My bicycle skidded on some gravel one day, and I deeply grazed the palm of my right hand.  Ruby did not produce the familiar iodine-torture, and so I made my first acquaintance with Witch Hazel. I could walk across fields from Chelmerton Avenue to the tin tabernacle, and on my way I used to cut a 'javelin' from the elders and throw it ahead as I walked, and conceal it in the hedge against my return.  One morning Phyllis asked for me to be excused from attendance there and drove me to the golf-course to act as her caddie.  She let me try my hand once or twice, but I have never had any wish to take up the game. They had a cat, and a small dog called Sunday.  He was a smallish terrier with a curly white coat, and the first and only dog I ever took regularly for walks.  We went either around the nearby lanes or, at week-ends, over the Meads alongside the River Chelmer.  He had the habit, when reclining in the lounge, of fetching a long-drawn heart-rending, snuffling sigh, which greatly amused me. They were very nice to me.  I sometimes played chess with Leonard.  The latest score I recorded gave four games to me and two to him.  I was most impressed by a large electric clock in the lounge, which he had made, and remembered him when about 1984 I made one myself.  At the time, Phyllis Rippon was appalled at the amount of food I seemed to need, but later, after I had left, when she had a son of her own called Clive, she realized that I was merely normal.  I was surprised by their habit of taking a quantity of butter and of marmalade onto their side-plate, transferring from there to the toast, and probably leaving some unused on the plate.  I suppose it seemed to me both messy and wasteful, but no doubt they regarded my more direct method as uncouth.  I know they were irritated by my habit of whacking my boiled egg all over with the teaspoon before peeling off the pieces, whereas they cut the top off, as I do now. Whilst there I bought a season-ticket for the open-air swimming-pool in Waterloo Lane.  I used to leave the house about seven a.m. and cycle there, often being the first to break the surface of the very cold water. I wrote to them whilst at sea, and we exchanged letters annually after the War. Leonard died, and I visited her once in a little house she had built in a plot next to Little Paddocks.  She was very pleased to see Daphne and me, and said to a friend who telephoned whilst we were there, Whom do you think I have here today?  My evacuee! She liked to attend a big annual bridge-occasion in Eastbourne, and one day called at 63 Terminus Avenue to see us, but I believe only David and a few of his Scouting friends were at home.  When Clive married, they presented him with a £10,000 house.  He wrote to inform me of her death in the 1980's. On Sunday March 3rd my parents visited Chelmsford together, and had tea with the Rippons.  Travel was restricted, and they had to have a letter, still in my possession, signed by a J.P. vouching for the fact that their journey was necessary.  Their return coach-fare was 7/- each.  The reception-committee ran a place for visiting parents to obtain snacks or to eat their own food, open from 1100 to 1700. On the 5th my father, having been put in charge of first-aid at Valence, and taking a turn also as a fire-spotter on the roof at night, was issued with a Civil-Duty gasmask and a steel helmet. On Monday March 8th we were filmed by the Bruce Grove Cinema camera-man, and this footage must have been shewn in Tottenham because I later complained that they had not let us evacuees see our film, or waited until we got home for the Easter Holidays. Some of my letters at this time mentioned supplies of sulphur-tablets which I used to take in the hope that they might reduce my adolescent acne, though I did not suffer as badly as some poor lads.  However, my self-consciousness on this score led me into the habit of looking down rather than facing up to people who spoke to me, and this habit unfortunately stayed with me for very many years, perhaps into middle life, and perhaps contributed to my difficulty in remembering peoples’ faces. On Thursday March 25th I went home for Easter, and on Easter Monday we visited the Horlocks in their new abode.   The Rippons took a fortnight's holiday in Eastbourne in March/April, and I lived temporarily with Mr. Charles A. & Mrs.A. Barker (A2,24 & 52) in a rather less grand house called Barry on the other side of the road – my 6th but temporary billet.  They had a little car laid-up, as had many others, in their garage, but one day when they had saved up enough petrol to make a journey they took me with them to visit friends in the country.  Mrs. Barker knew shorthand, and a young girl called Muriel G. Whiting came to her for lessons.  I was very shy of girls, but Mrs. Barker used to tease me about being attracted to Muriel, and so she was the first girl I ever went out with.  She lived in a very small cottage in a terrace adjoining The Beehive public house in Beehive lane.  We went once or twice to the pictures, the first time on April 26th, and although we spent a great deal of time over saying goodbye at her front gate, I never summoned the courage to offer to kiss her.  I was out walking with her once when I encountered our art-master.  I was too embarrassed to greet him, and he later regaled the class with the tale of how I had turned a delicate plum-colour. It was this same master who, when I returned to the school after I had left, said, I didn't keep any of your work, Hill, though I did think of offering it to the School for the Blind. I was invited to tea on Muriel's birthday, on Wednesday May 1st, and somebody had iced on the cake a rhyme about us sitting in the one-and-nines, to which we shyly repaired after tea. On Friday May 10th the Germans invaded Holland & Belgium.  I can remember the serious faces of the Rippons on the day when France fell, and from then on we daily expected to see German troops in England. My grandma Adeline Julia Hill died on Friday June 7th, and I went home on the 12th for the funeral.  On June 21st I wrote, I went and saw the remains of the Nazi Bomber that was shot down in Chelmsford.  The trees all round were scorched.  It came down in someone's back-garden, just between two houses and right across a road.  If it had come down about 30 seconds earlier, it might have hit this house.  It flew right round over Great Baddow.  Mr.Rippon saw it shot down.  It had no bombs on board.  They were thrown out in Cambridgeshire. On Thursday July 18th I went home by coach, and whilst there I visited Uncle Lance at his workplace.  He was an attendant at the old Essex Road Baths. From July 26th - 31st I spent a week at Westerham with my mother.  I remember two very different swimming excursions.  One was to the indoor baths in Sevenoaks.  The other was to a small outdoor pool near or in Westerham.  The latter was unheated, and fed by a spring, and was one of the coldest swims I can recall.   Strangely, I cannot recall why I left the Rippons.  Perhaps Phyllis was expecting.  However, on Monday August 12th I found myself at my seventh and last billet, with Mrs. Lockwood, The Chestnuts, New Road, Great Baddow.  She was rather tall, with dark hair in ringlets.  My letter+ home is full of complaints - tiny room, uncomfortable bed, no stowage, neither electric nor gas nor oil lighting in my room, no place for my bicycle, a piano that wouldn't play, no bath, and the house cluttered and untidy.  My sojourn there lasted only eleven days.  On Thursday August 15th my mother had an interview with the Headmaster in Chelmsford about this billet, and according to my father's diary, he rather encouraged her to bring him home soon, and on the 23rd I ended my time as an evacuee and went home, there being only forty Tottenham boys left in Chelmsford.  All these billets are shewn in Ph5,22-26 On Friday 20th August 1993 I made a tour of Great Baddow and Chelmsford. I heard that the old Regent Cinema was now devoted to Bingo.  I could find no house named St.Helen's in Hillside Grove.  However, I spoke to an elderly lady in her garden, who remembered the Wyatts, and all the details I have mentioned.  She pointed out the house to me and I took a photograph.  Mr.Wyatt had been killed in an accident on the bypass, and his wife had died.  She had been nervous and a little peculiar, as I had noted, and had got worse. In New Road I discovered by the aid of locals that Mrs. Gill's house, number 9, and its semi-detached neighbour number 11, had been demolished to make room for road-access to new houses behind, so I photographed number 7, which was identical.  I met the oldest inhabitant, and he checked all my details as correct.  Jack Gill had been posted as missing believed lost at sea, but had survived, and had recently revisited New Road to find his old home gone. I found that Pontlands was now Pontlands Park, a four-star hotel with many additions, a restaurant and a health-farm-centre.  We had a very good turkey salad there in the Victoria Bar, - a large room to the right of the entrance-hall, fitted out as a bar and lounge.  A stained-glass window near the entrance bore the monogram JTF, a relic of the Thomasin-Fosters, and the date of their building, 1879.  I took two photographs in front, and was given a very glossy brochure with more.  The iron railings which had lined the drive were gone, replaced by wooden fencing. In Chelmerton Avenue I photographed number 45, the Rippon's former home, and the small house next door which Phyllis Rippon had built there, having transferred the name Little Paddocks to it.  I had not then found nor remembered the name of the Barker's house, so could only conjecture about it. The old gentleman in New Road also told me which house had been called The Chestnuts, now 54, and remembered Mrs. Lockwood. © Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author.