Memories - Lawrence Wardle

(L-R): Lawrence, John & Myvanwy, Peter and Roland

This is the first part of a group interview carried out in 2007 with Lawrence Wardle, Peter Hoff, John and Myvanwy Morgan and Roland Wardle. In this first part of the interview, Lawrence introduces his initial experience of the evacuation. My special thanks to the interviewees and also to Sue Smith, a blind person from Sheldon, who has trancsribed the audio tape to text:

“My name is Lawrence Wardle, otherwise known as Wag. My parents lived in Ladywood, Friston Street. My mother went back to Leeds, her home town so I could be born there and be qualified to play cricket for Yorkshire. When my time came, they already had one Wardle, so they didn’t want me, but that’s all by the way.

We moved from Friston Street to Harborne, West Boulevard in 1930 and in 1936, I think it was we moved to Wolverhampton Road South and I lived there for the next few years until the war, when I was evacuated in 1939 and was at school in Monmouth until 1942, after which, I went to Birmingham University. I qualified as a dentist and moved away from Birmingham eventually, but going back to the evacuation, which is what it’s all about, this had a tremendous effect on my life.

I think, to understand the business of evacuation, you’ve got to understand how different things were then. There weren’t the fears I think for young children. We had much more freedom, where our parents didn’t want to know where we were all the time and we wandered off. I was a keen scout and spent a lot of time away from home with that, so when the actual evacuation came and I had to leave home, it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I didn’t know if it was for the rest of my life, or just for a short time.

Going back to the evacuation then, I think we had a preparation for it the year before when leading up to the Munich problem, settled by Neville Chamberlain going to see Hitler, there had been a trial run and I think the idea then was that we would go to the school farm which was at Evenlode in the Cotswolds. When it came to it, presumably they had asked the permission of our parents to take us away from them when war came, I don’t know, but anyway, I think it was a Friday, the 31st of August, we were called to school and we turned up with our gas masks, which we had been provided with. With a change of clothing, I suppose a few pence in pocket money, I don’t know and there we were, divided into teams of sixes in the playground and all the senior boys took charge of a team of six, eventually they were made sub prefects. I don’t know if they have sub prefects at school now and we had to control our six members.

We then eventually set off marching down Broad Street towards Snow Hill station singing songs from Gaudeamus, or our version of the songs and at Snow Hill station, which was crowded with soldiers and all sorts, we were put on a train and off we went with lots of stops and starts. We had no idea where we were going. All the station names had been blocked out so we didn’t know where we were, but eventually, we finished up at, I think we went to Ross first and then changed from the main steam train on to a little push-pull train that took us to this place that turned out to be Monmouth.

There on the platform were a lot of trestle tables with orange squash and things and buns. We just embarked and helped ourselves from the table. Then lots of lady helpers who were hanging around helped us and the girl guides took us one by one to billets where we were going to live for the next few years. Most of the school had gone and there were about ten of us left and all the ladies were looking a bit desperate, but anyway, they eventually took two of us, Dennis and I and we went to a house in Prior Street opposite the post office in Monmouth.

A little lady came to the door and the lady said "I've brought your evacuees".

She was a bit non-plus and said "I only said I’d take them in an emergency".

They said, "but this is an emergency".

"But I haven’t got a bed for them".

"Oh never mind, we’ll fix that".

So the lady helping, one of the girl guides, took the two of us around to the, was it the Shire Hall or Rolls Hall? There they had a whole stack of furniture and we carried an iron bedstead back and eventually we went back and got a mattress. We went up four flights of stairs to a room at the top that hadn’t been used. There wasn’t any electricity, no water, never mind, we put up the bed and that’s where I slept for the next three years. The lady, Mrs Beal, I was in contact with me until she died a few years ago in her nineties. A lovely lady and I can almost say, it was probably the best years of my life. It certainly formed me in the way I went."