Here is the beginning of my father’s memoirs. He wrote down his memories in the mid 1990s, after he had retired from Canadair/Bombardier, where he worked in Experimental Engineering. This story of his early days gives an unusual child’s-eye-view of WWII. Dad was born in 1926, so he was 13 when war broke out in 1939. Characteristically for my dad, he greatly minimizes the impact of his mother’s death — she was struck and killed by a drunk driver a few dozen feet from the front of her house — my dad was only 9 years old. Elsewhere he wrote of her death in more detail and, if I find it, I will post it.
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1.1 AN ENGLISH SCHOOLBOY’S EXPERIENCES IN WORLD WAR II
1.1.1 September 1939 to May/June 1940
My name is Ronald A.J. Regan and I was born in August 1926 in Gillingham, Kent, England, where I was brought up and lived until 1947 (my 21st year). I was born on the 8th day of the 8th month and I was my mother’s 8th child. She had three girls and five boys, in that order. I was the youngest.
My father was a teacher in Gillingham at an elementary school called “Arden Street School.” The school supplied many apprentice boys to the famous Chatham Royal Naval Dockyard, some indeed of a very high standard including some who went on to become Whitworth Scholars! Many years after his death, a memorial article by some former students of his was published in a local newspaper of which I have a copy.
We lived in a semi-detached house owned by my father at 74 First Avenue in a nice area of Gillingham, backing onto the local golf course. He also owned the allotment next door with a wooden shed on it. With such a large family, my father kept chickens and grew all the vegetables for us — we all worked in the garden and, of course, in Kent, The Garden of England, we had abundant supplies of fruit.
My mother and father were accidentally struck by a car while walking across Watling Street , known locally as the top road (the main Dover Road through Gillingham) in July 1936, when I was 9 years old. My father was relatively unscathed but my mother died that night.
One year later (1937), I completed and passed the 11-Plus school leaving exam at “Barnsole Road Elementary School” and my father decided to send me to “Gillingham County School for Boys,” a secondary school close to our home which my next oldest brother (Dick) had already attended for three years.
I was a happy pupil, interested in all the subjects, particularly English Composition and Literature, Choir, and Games (rugby and cricket) and, although I was shy by nature and very timid in the outside world of strangers, I enjoyed the companionship of my fellow pupils. I also developed in these years model-making hobby interests.
As the war years loomed and I look back, I see another set of circumstances which stood me in good stead for the evacuation experience to come.
My school went every summer to somewhere for a school camp and my Pop decided that I would go to my first one in the summer of 1938. I was 12 years old. It was very primitive by today’s standards: under canvas, sleeping on the ground, no toilet or washing facilities except a tap in a farmer’s field. That year we went to Port Madoc in North Wales for two weeks and climbed Snowdon mountain and hiked to Harlech Castle, learned to pronounce the longest town name in the U.K., got very wet, and had good sing-songs around the camp fire.
The following year, 1939, I went again with the school camping trip, this time to the red earth of Devonshire, Exmouth actually—again it was school chums and teachers that formed our world and made the hard camping life enjoyable.
As 1939 wore on, we were more and more affected by the war-like preparations in Southern England and gradually all my brothers and sisters were mobilized or left home on their own accord. At school my brother Dick and myself were caught up in it — we were given gas masks in cardboard boxes and shown how to put them on. They hung on a string around our necks. The class teacher gave us instructions on evacuation if war came but we were never told where we would be sent. They were strange and, to me, exciting times — a 13 year old county school boy.
My father, of course, was making arrangements to be evacuated with his own school and it was taken for granted in our household that we would all do what was expected of us with the usual stiff upper lip and no tears!!
September 3rd, 1939 was, if memory serves, a Sunday and marked, as many would later observe, by a blood red sunset unusual in Kent. An omen, many have thought — anyway we all heard the Declaration of War and the following week in school we were instructed by our teachers to prepare for evacuation by bringing our gas masks, a case with clothes, and a raincoat to Gillingham train station. This was the start of the so-called “Phoney War” and I don’t think my Pop’s school was evacuated as early as us in Gillingham County School. He said goodbye to us and sent us off as instructed —we all gathered on the platform at Gillingham station, which was already crowded, I remember, with soldiers and sailors. A daily newspaper later was to carry a picture of us county school boys all herded and huddled on the platform complete with gas masks — bound for God knows where!!
We eventually got on a train headed for the Kent Coast, which perplexed smart-alec county school boys like us because, of course, they were taking us closer to the Germans, not the other way. Anyway, our destination turned out to be Sandwich on the Kent coast in the same area as Ramsgate and Margate: one of the so-called Cinque Ports steeped in English history, where our school was accommodated until the Phoney War ended (from September 1939 to May/June 1940, when the Battle of Britain would erupt savagely in the skies overhead, paving the way for the mighty Blitz of London and Southern England to follow later).
My brother Dick was with me and after the train ride we were taken by bus to the foster homes designated. He and I were kept together and dropped at a council house in a typical English small town district. It was the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Tookey, who welcomed us and made us feel at home — they were young and jolly with a small baby. He was working class but I forget what his job was. They gave us a room with a bed and we were to be comfortable enough there, they fed us as we were used to and we soon settled down. My brother actually looked after me, comforting my homesickness, grief for our bereavement and generally protecting his little brother — Fatso, he called me.
Our school had secured premises to accommodate all the classes required — it was, I think, in the town of Sandwich located in a building which I think had been a Wesleyan Meeting Hall previously. Anyway, we resumed lessons as normal, although us younger ones were intrigued by the slaughterhouse next door. At playtime, etcetera, I remember us climbing a brick wall to watch the cows in the yard being got ready to be slaughtered and watching the meat being loaded onto a lorry.
One other thing happened soon after we arrived. My Pop had bought me a new raincoat — a schoolboy dark English Burberry — and, by accident, I burned a large hole in it by standing too close to an electric fire in the building where we had classes. I did not see it! Anyway, I hid it as best I could and it stayed with me throughout all my evacuation journeys and it never did get fixed until I discarded the coat many years later!!
My other memories of Sandwich include walking all around the countryside, to the beach which had receded over the centuries, leaving Sandwich high and dry and no good as a port — although the land itself was very low lying and my brother was always trying to dry me out when I came back with my Wellington boots full of water. Also the Rope Walk was a favorite place for me and my school chums — I remember discussions there when as 13-year-old schoolboys, one of my classmates shocked us by saying that it was life that was Hell and we would be released to happier times by being killed and going to Heaven — I am still trying to resolve that philosophical point first postulated to me as an evacuee on the Rope Walk at Sandwich 57 years ago!!
During this period, and all the time I was an evacuee, my Pop sent a letter about once a month with 2/6 (Usually) postal order for stamps, bus fares, and pocket money, which went mostly on “tuppenny bloods” beloved of English school boys — “Hotspur,” “Adventure” and “Modern Boys” magazines were my most popular ones. He also sent our fares to come back home during the Christmas holidays 1939 which our teachers allowed. The family reunion at 74 First Avenue was poignant and the last time we were to see my Pop and brothers and sisters for a long time.
I have no memory of any integration with local schools, except our games periods were played on beautiful playing fields with trees in the English manner which I think we were told belonged to the local grammar school.
As 1940 wore on from winter into spring, the Phoney War was coming to an end and one day in early summer my teacher told us that Gillingham County School evacuee boys were to be moved to another safer place, and that we must pack our bag, say goodbye to the people we lived with, and be at the train station early to go to London the next day. My brother Dick told me that day that his teacher had told them that his class would not be going with the rest of us — he was nearly 16 years old and preparing for the matric and London University Leaving School Certificate (LUGS we called it) to finish school and arrangements had been made for them to go back home to Gillingham County School for the exam. He would be leaving the train at Gillingham.
The Sandwich evacuation had started for me, just 13 years old, with homesickness, self-pity, and grief. But I was now nearly 14 years old, the age of puberty, and growing up quickly. I had learned to keep myself clean (most of the time—after a fashion), stay out of trouble, and I was hardly perturbed that Dick was leaving me. Mr. and Mrs. Tookey were nice respectable people trying to help us evacuees and to do their part for the war effort. I have no bad feelings in my memory.
The next day’s long journey on my evacuation adventures was indeed to end by dumping me and my school chums far from home where we were strangers in a strange land. But that is another story…