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1940 was a year I can't forget for I was at the impressionable age of 12 and we were ar war, wrote Gordon Mills. Our troops were forced out of France in July into the English Channel,by the Germany Army. I saw the small ships leave Brighton to cross the channel in an attempt to rescue as many men as possible.
It was the kind of scene that remains etched in your mind forever. When the guns had gone quiet we all waited for the Germans to cross the channel and invade us.
And the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, came on the radio with a statement to the nation. We all huddled aroundthe radio in the kitchen at home without a word being spoken. Churchill's speech that moment was the one that went down into history.
"We will fight on the beaches" he said, "we will fight in the streets, we will fight in the villages and in the towns and in the cities, we will never surrender."
My hair stood on end as I listened, and after it was over I wanted to just go out on the street and get the enemy when they arrived. And then we waited for the invasion tocome.
As we lived right on the shoreline where the main brunt of the attack was expected to come, we feared for our lives. Perhaps it was that fear, and the chance perhaps we would all be killed, that prompted Dad to tell me he wanted to speak to me.
We went into the front room, sat down and then Dad said there is something you should know. He started slowly, looking down at the ground as he spoke. I have to tell you he said,that we are not your parents. I could hardly believe what I was hearing!
He went on to tell me that a few years earlier my real mother had me, and as she was on her own couldn't keep me.So to help matters out they had said they would take me over. Dad said it was time for me to know the truth.
Nothing else was said then or ever by anyone in the family, until I found the real truth when Dad died in March 1953. What does news like that do to you? Guess! Devastated. Today it would have been handled much different, but in those days who knew anything better?
I got very bitter about it; I thought I had been deserted.The truth is that had I been told the truth then, my life perhaps could have taken a turn for the better. When I knew the truth about it all, it was already too late for anything.
As the weeks went by the Germans didn't invade, but they did start to bomb us every day and night. In August the Battle of Britain began, and the fighter planes took to the air shooting down the German bombers all over the place.
It was thought that the heavy bombing was just a prelude to the invasion that would come before winter set in. King George VIth called for a national day of prayer. Orders were given that no church bells would be rung. The bells were to ring only when and if the invasion started.
Everyone not already in the forces was issued with a pickaxe handle or pitch fork as a weapon. The Home Guard was formed, and fire-watching teams were formed to watch for firebombs at night and put them out.
As you may guess all churches were packed for the National Day of Prayer. We all sang, "Guide me oh thou Great J ehovah" like no other time I can recall.
It was at this time that the authorities decided that all children between the ages of 5 and 14 should be evacuated from Brighton to the country, away from the air raids. I remember going up to Brighton Station carrying a bag with my clothes in to get on a train with hundreds of others.
Strangely enough no-one on the train, or where I ended up,came from my school or my neighbourhood! I ended up in Birmingham,a town in the Midlands. From there I went on a bus to a small town, about 15 miles out of the city, named Hallow.
That night I was with a family of a woman about 40 named Jessie, a girl about 9 named Gwen and another girl about 6 named Rita. The mother and the girls all slept in one bed, while I was on a small bed in a small room off the kitchen.
It wasn't a happy time. I suspect now that the woman was on her own with the two daughters, and the only reason they had me there was to earn the money from the authorities that was paid to house an evacuee.
The next day I went out and saw plums growing on trees for the first time. I ate so many I was ill! I went to the local school and learnt about gardening as a subject.
When school stopped all of us went hop picking.
I had never seen hops grow before but I knew they made beer from them. It was hard work, dirty and hot, with the gypsies running the show. I didn't earn very much money from this although some people made huge sums of money from it, but they were used to it.
When school restarted in September I knew I had to go back to Brighton whatever the situation was there. Where I was staying wasn't working out at all. Jessie was always on edge and was growing increasingly nasty towards me.
I wrote home and said I wanted to come home. It didn't take long for Mum to arrive to bring me back. I think now that they had to pay something for me being evacuated and they were just as glad to get out of that. It must have been an added hardship but I guess they thought I should be away from the air-raids.
When I restarted back at my old school in Brighton I was greeted like a hero by the teacher. He put his arm around me and said he was glad I was back to see things out, and not like the others who had left rather than be together in the fight for our lives.
This was strange coming from a teacher who previously had shown very little caring towards me. Again, he was a retired army officer and must have linked being evacuated as some sort of weakness; that's what I thought at the time.
August and September were hell in Brighton and all along the south coast. Here the Battle of Britain was fought.This prompted another famous speech from Churchill. The one that went, "Never has so much been owed by so many to so few."
This battle prevented the invasion of Britain and forced the Germans to attack Russia. As Christmas of 1940 came we were off the hook, for the time being. The invasion was put on hold. Christmas 1940 wasn't a good one.
By now we were fully into food rationing. Everything was in short supply, even food for the pets. My shoes were repaired from old car tyres picked up at the Brighton Town dump in Sheepcote Valley just down from us; such was the dire straits we were all in.
In the spring of 1941 the Brighton Racecourse near us was allocated to people for garden plots. The theme was, "Dig for Victory." We had a section of the course near the one mile post were we planted all kinds of vegetables.
I used to go there three times a week to hoe the crops.I didn't like doing it but I had no option. The seed potatoes were all dyed blue to stop people eating them instead. Didn't it occur to the authorities that you peeled potatoes before you cooked them for dinner!
Also in 1941 the Racecourse buildings were used for people and not horses. The authorities rounded up all those people in Brighton of German and Italian decent and placed them in internment.
We thought this to be really great but now I understand the cruelty of it all. These people were just as patriotic as the rest of us but because they came from the countries against us in the war they too were considered to be the enemy with the potential to be a threat to the rest of us.
In March 1942, I became 14 years old. This meant that I was to leave school and start work. Easter came at that time so this was a natural time to leave as the school was closing for the Easter holidays.
On the last day of school I went to the Head Master's Office to say good-bye to the school where I had spent 10 years of my life. Mr. Raisebeck, the headmaster, asked mei f I was sorry to be leaving. I said I was, to which he said, "Get your arse out of here before I kick it."So, that was the parting I received from my formal education, along with a report that said I was willing but wanted watching!
My first job on leaving school was with Graham, Hooper & Betteridge, barristers and Solicitor's for Oaths, at 1 Old Steine Brighton. My job was to be reading type writtenreports for errors, and general office help. I was told that if I did well I could become articled and go on to become a solicitor.
I got 10 shillings a week, minus 4 pence off for UIC. I gave Mum 7 shillings a week and kept 2 shillings and eight pencefor myself. There was another man working there who didn't like to do his fire watching duty at night.
I was too young to do this, which was to throw the incendiary bombs off the roof of our building, when they fell during the air raids. We made an agreement whereby I would do his duty for him while he signed the register that he was there.
At the weekend he would give me the money, which was three shillings for a night.
While I was there I caught the chicken-pox, which they used as an excuse to fire me.
My next job was as an apprentice to a piano tuner and repairer.This tedious job called for me to clean the inside of pianos, cover the hammers with new felt, and be a general handyman. I got 12 shillings a week at that job. It didn't last very long though.
The business was conducted from the boss's house, and since there was no gasoline for his car he would go off on his bicycle with his tool kit to the calls. I was left in the workshop to carry out repairs.
One day I went down to the garage and got in the car, which was in the garage. I started it up, when it suddenly went backwards and out through the garage door, which was closed!
In the latter part of 1942 there was a big drive on to recruit boys between the ages of 14 and 17 to become coal miners in the north. This appealed to me but was immediately squashed by Mum. At the same time there was another drive to recruit boys 14 to 17 (under the age for service in the military)for a scheme called, "British Boys for British Farms."
The idea of being on a farm appealed to me, and this time Mum wasn't as opposed as she was to going down the coal mines. As it turned out, British Boys for British Farms was a program whereby you went to a large school in Bristol for practical teaching coupled with daily placement on local farms for the hands-on learning.
I signed up, went to Bristol and from that was able to secure employment full-time on a farm. I went to several farms, picking up more and more experience along the way. It wasn't long before I became a very good milker, and people who could do that were very much in demand in 1943.
After some bad experiences living with farmers in their homes I decided to get a job near home and live at home again. I was able to secure a job at a farm in Woodingdean, which is about 8 miles from Brighton.
To get there meant climbing several steep hills, and the only way I could get there was on a bicycle. Milking startedat 6 a.m. so this meant I had to get up and be on my way by 5 a.m. at the latest. Most times I was corked before I started work for the day.
In those days the Germans were dropping small personnel bombs on the Downs where the cows grazed. After one cow was blown up by walking on one of these small bombs we decided to draw for who would go out in the dark and bring the cowsback for milking.
We had a glass in the stalls with four straws in it. Whoever picked the shortest straw got to go get the cows. It wasa scary experience but we all took out turns, and all of us came to no harm.
As 1943 went on, the bombing raids got less, in so far as Brighton went. We continued to be plagued by the flying bombs, pilotless planes that crashed and exploded when the fuel for the engine ran out. We also continued to be attacked by rockets, the V2's. These were largely aimed at London and seldom came down in Brighton.
All of this had an impact on those people employed in the rescue of bombing victims, like Dad was. The impact wasthe dismantling of many the rescue crews, including the heavy rescue crew, which was Dad's group.
One day Dad came home to tell us that his job was being phased out. The worst news was that he was not going to be offered his job back with the Brighton Corporation since they hadn't decided on any re-organization to deal with new situations that had come up since the war.
In other words, Dad was without work and was offered a pension that wouldn't even pay the house rent, let alone buy food and clothes.
As 1943 came to a close, Dad was told he would be made redundant early in the New Year. Needless to say, what we were all going to do was the thoughts in all of our minds. One thing for sure was we couldn't stay where we were, we didn't have enough money to pay the rent.
It was then I hit on the idea of getting a job on another farm that provided a tied house with the job. At least we could survive!
Farm jobs changed in March and September, which would come about just right.
In the spring of 1944 I got hold of a copy of the West Sussex Gazette, the newspaper where the farm jobs were always listed.
I saw one advertisement that offered a good three-bedroomed house with the job, but it was in Barnham near Bognor Regis.This was a good way from Brighton and the cost of moving that far was another factor.
In late March of 1944 we all moved to Barnham, and I started a job there of milking 40 cows by hand, and running the milk delivery in the village. Dad & Mum seemed relieved that we could start living again. While there Phyllis came out of the army and came to live with us.
We also had a member of the Women's Land Army lodge with us, and she also worked on the farm. The owner of the farm wasn't a good boss: he drove me hard from early morning until night. I was gradually getting fed up with it.
While there it was announced that the United States had dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. We all thought it wouldn't be very long after that for the war to end.
In the fall of 1944 we left Barnham and went to another farm near Hassocks.
The next part of Gordon Mills' story can be foundunder Hassocks, West Sussex.
Gordon Mills, Canada, 2002
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