WW2 posters. 

We couldn't wait to get started on our great adventure. The coach arrived at Coleford in the 'Square' and we all trooped into the Town Hall. 

Coleford Town hall circa 1940

We stood or sat around waiting - there were three or four women looking after us and we were now known as 'evacuees'. Soon more women and men (mostly women) came in and started looking us over. I could see them pointing in our direction  and nodding and shaking their heads (mostly shaking).

Looking back I suppose the helpers were trying to keep the three of us together, but without success. As more prospective foster parents arrived they started to select children sitting around us, usually an only child or two from one family at the most, and they filled in a form and left the hall. This went on for an hour or so I suppose until there were only the three of us left sitting together with the four ladies who were supervising the selection. Then one of the ladies came towards us and said we would have to split up and go to different homes. Ralph and I went with one lady who had a car and we first went to a huge detached creepy looking house up a short drive. She knocked on the door and said a few words to whoever opened it (I couldn't see or hear what was said) but it was very brief and we left. 

We then went to a smaller detached house in Box Bush Road (it's still there) where I was shown in (Ralph was left in the car) and straight up the stairs to a small bedroom with a single bed, small wardrobe and a small dressing table. I sat on the bed and looked around and could hear the lady who had brought me talking downstairs. The house was so quiet after what I'd been used to - not a sound in the bedroom - and for the first time in my life I felt rather lonely, with a bedroom all to myself.

After a few minutes the lady called me downstairs and suggested I went with her to Mrs. Jones, where Ralph was to stay. When we arrived it was in fact a shop, a radio and photographers shop. 

(Its still there and was still a radio shop in the 1980s). It was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Jones  who had an eighteen month old son, John . We all went in, the lady in front followed by Ralph, with me bringing up the rear. You went through the main front door off the street, with a door to the shop and on the left and a door in front which opened directly into the living room. As I was closing the door behind us a voice called out from the kitchen for us to go through. We trooped into the kitchen where Mrs. Jones  was sitting by the fire with John on her lap, changing his napkin. For me it was the most welcome feeling I'd had all day. There was the smell of something nice cooking - by this time it was nearly teatime, the fire was blazing away in the old fashioned black grate with the oven each side . The lady introduced Ralph and asked Mrs. Jones if he was ok. Mrs Jones looked him over and said yes she was sure he would be alright.

I was looking around this warm homely family kitchen, thinking how lucky Ralph was to be billeted with a family like this. Then I heard the lady ask  Mrs. Jones if she would take two, they are brothers and this one is Tom. Mrs. Jones without hesitation said if she was going to have one she might as well have two, it was a double bed in the back bedroom after all. I felt as if I was home again and quickly nodded when the lady said we must go back to Box Bush Road and get my things.

And so began a very happy period of our lives, being evacuated with Mr. and Mrs. Jones and John in the Radio and Photographer shop in Coleford, Forest of Dean. After a few weeks Mr. Jones started to show me various things in the shop. His work room, dark room and studio, which was at the back of the shop and was a large wooden building with a glass roof. I eventually was doing small jobs helping Mr. Jones and one of my first regular jobs every evening was wiring up the accumulators for re-charging. A lot of the local people in the surrounding country area used batteries to run their old fashioned radios ('wireless' in those days).

These batteries were in fact accumulators which were glass containers about four inches square and eight inches high with a swinging carrying handle at the top. These accumulators contained plates and acid and when fully charged would run a radio for about a week. Mr. Jones had a charging set and the locals would bring their accumulators in, leave them overnight and collect them the next day fully charged. My job was to wire all the batteries together, positive to positive and negative to negative after banking them in rows side by side on a large steel tray about two feet wide and three feet long. When all the wiring was complete the whole bank was connected to the charger and left overnight.    

Mr. Jones also tried to get me involved with radios, but I was obviously a bit too young to grasp it all. However with his help I made a one valve radio. This was always the classic start in those days - to make your first one valve radio - and it worked.

Mr. Jones showed me how to load a camera with a film (mainly 'Box Brownie') type and customers (mainly women, who always brought their cameras with them) would ask me if I could load the films for them.

I can still remember feeling quite important being able to help them. I was about thirteen at the time. Mr. Jones suffered from asthma and used to smoke 'Potters Asthma' cigarettes, a popular early treatment for Asthma, with a very distinctive smell. He was quite ill some days and couldn't do very much. For many years afterwards every time someone was smoking 'Potters' it rekindled memories of Coleford.

Every fine Sunday morning Mr. Jones would take us for a walk in the forest. We could be, what seemed to us, in the heart of the forest after about twenty minutes. If Mr. Jones felt well we would sometimes take John and take it in turns to carry him on our shoulders.

I also received my first insight and experience of a photographers 'darkroom'. Although I didn't do any developing and printing, Mr. Jones allowed me to be with him in the 'darkroom' and watch him developing and printing the films. These would be his own studio work and the films brought in by the general public. I also served in the shop, particularly when Mr. Jones was in the studio taking photographs (portraits) - lots of children and mums and dads with their first child.

I can vividly remember the first time I saw prints developed. Mr. Jones dropped what looked like plain pieces of paper into the tray containing developing fluid, and watching the picture gradually appear onto the white paper - it was like magic to me. After a batch of printing when they were dry; many required trimming to remove the surplus, and leave a nice even border. This was a job I could do, and we used a standard office guillotine about twelve inches square.

We stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Jones until the end of 1941 when Ralph and I went home for Christmas and we didn't return. I can't recall why we didn't go back because we all got on so well like one happy family.

I was due to leave school the following July, reaching the age of fourteen in the June of 1942. Perhaps mum and dad thought I would be looking for a job within a few months and there were thousands of jobs on our doorstep at the Bristol Aero plane Company.

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