Excerpts from:
“Safe
Keeping”
The
Mother-to-Mother Letters
By John Cooke
Email: arachne1@aol.com
“I really
believe the separation gets worse instead of better.
However, it really doesn’t matter what we feel as
long as the children are safe & well.
That’s why we sent them there to you —
for their safe keeping, not for our pleasure.”
Vera
Cooke to Grace Bacon,
November 22nd 1942
.
Synopsis
“The green Atlantic swell, turbulent
and menacing, stretched off to meet the sky in every direction, and only the
muffled explosions of distant depth charges could be heard above the wind.
On deck, sheltering next to our appointed lifeboat, I watched
uncomprehending but fascinated, the telltale wake of approaching torpedoes.
It was 1940, and we were a party of children bound for safety in
America
.
A German submarine had attacked us without warning.
Only a few short weeks before,
as North Oxford filled with cherry blossom and summer’s languid
tranquillity started to envelope the city, my life as a five-year-old had
been secure and well-ordered, but the ominous threat of invasion and Nazi
domination was drawing ever closer. My
safe, familiar world vanished forever when I embarked on that journey to
sanctuary across the ocean. It
was a dramatic overture to four wonder-filled years of exile in
America
.”
Safe Keeping
is the intimate story of a small boy’s wartime exile in America,
documented month-by-month through the perceptive letters passing
between an anxious mother in war-torn England and a wise and understanding
foster mother in Connecticut — letters only recently unearthed.
Safe
Keeping is much more than just the moving story
of a rediscovered childhood. The
two mothers were women of remarkable insight and humanity, and their letters
resonate on many levels for they were articulate correspondents.
As their friendship develops we find them discussing through their
letters, not only issues of war and peace and the many concerns common to all
parents, but also probing the psychology of separation and loss, of
foster-adoption, child-rearing and education.
Struggling to maintain an illusion of normality in their lives, they
unconsciously paint vivid vignettes of the impact of war on ordinary people as
they report on rationing and shortages, conscription, death and sacrifice.
Book Contents
[In this excerpt only 22 sample letters are included]
Synopsis
Preface
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter
Two
Editorial Notes
Chapter
Three
Letters, 1941
Chapter
Four
Letters, 1942
Chapter
Five
Letters, 1943
Chapter
Six
Letters, 1944
Chapter
Seven
Postscript
Preface
“I want to go home.”
My plaintive five-year-old voice was barely audible above the howling
wind and the columns of spray ricocheting across the deck, yet it expressed
the sentiments of most, if not all the passengers on board — and brought my
mother close to tears.
The old
Cunard liner SS Antonia was four days out of
Liverpool
bound for
Canada
, battling heavy weather several hundred miles to the West
of Ireland. In those far-off days,
before aircraft routinely made the journey in a few hours, the sea passage to
the
New World
could be long and arduous.
Rough transatlantic crossings were always frightening — and memories
of the Titanic disaster, barely thirty years earlier, were still
fresh. Fear showed on many faces.
But it was not simple, primitive fear at nature’s wrath, but fear
borne of the knowledge of a threat more real and sinister — a hidden threat
lurking somewhere beneath the waves.
While I
cannot recall uttering the words that so fuelled my mother’s distress, the
occasion itself is etched vividly into my archive of early memories.
It was
Friday, July 12th, 1940
, and the convoy that had escorted us from the mouth of the
Mersey
was about to return to sea duties elsewhere.
Suddenly alarms sounded, and we were rushed on deck to our lifeboat
station — starboard side aft. The
life-jackets, which we had been firmly instructed never to be without, were
now donned in earnest. As we —
my mother, two sisters and I — huddled together cold and bewildered, we
learned that we were under attack from a German U-boat.
I was too
young to experience the fear and foreboding that must have gripped the
grown-ups. I recall only the
intense excitement of the moment, preserved as an indelible mental image of
the wake of a torpedo passing just a few feet under our stern —
and of the heavy, ponderous explosions of depth charges dropped by our
escorting Royal Navy Destroyers. Fear,
buried in the subconscious, would only manifest itself later.
Just days before, my life had been safe and orderly — some might even
say privileged — but Hitler’s impending invasion destroyed my childhood
idyll. To escape the threat of
Nazi subjugation, generous offers of hospitality from
America
were to bring 105
Oxford
children on this voyage to safety.
We were
lucky to pass unharmed on our Atlantic crossing.
Just two months later, 600 miles from land on the same route, the
luxury liner SS City of Benares, also carrying children to refuge in
America
, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine.
Ninety children perished in that
midnight
attack, and in all only thirteen passengers and crew
survived. One family fleeing the
London
bombing, the Grimmonds, lost all five children on their
voyage in search of sanctuary.
The arrival of our ship in Quebec on the morning of Friday, July 19th
was greeted with profound relief by those on board, and with jubilation by
enthusiastic crowds thronging the quayside to welcome us, particularly a
contingent of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry waiting to embark for
the homeward journey. Our narrow
escape had captured popular imagination, and the press would pursue us
vigorously for stories as we travelled on to
Montreal
and beyond.
Our arrival
also marked the start of my American exile, which was to last for almost four
years, and whose legacy would come to dominate all aspects of my life
thereafter. Few exiles can have
left such profound and happy memories as my American childhood.
This book is the story of that exile; documented month-by-month in the
correspondence exchanged between my concerned mother in distant, war-torn
England
, and Grace Bacon, my patient and understanding American
foster mother with six children of her own.
A further significant dimension to the story is added by my own buoyant
letters home. These were lovingly
taken down at break net speed on the typewriter as I spoke, and joyously
capture the confused torrent of thoughts pouring from the mind of a disorderly
but enthusiastic little boy.
Painted in
broad brush-strokes, the first chapter provides a backdrop against which the
mother-to-mother letters themselves can be read in perspective and better
understood in their social and historical context.
It is
impossible to deny that for me, the war proved a positive experience, and
contributed, albeit indirectly, to a particularly happy period of my life.
However, the fact that I was able to benefit from the conflict has,
even today sixty years on, left a residue of conscience that continues to
trouble me. It is not just the
thought of those who perished on my behalf on the battlefield.
As the horrors of the Holocaust came to light after the war, spreading
like a dark stain to tarnish the peace and mute the jubilation of victory, I
felt guilt at having escaped and enjoyed so much delight while so many
perished so terribly. The
publication of this book is thus, for me, something of a bitter-sweet
celebration.
Chapter
One
Introduction
“And
not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward look, the land is bright!”
‘Say
not the struggle nought availeth’
Hugh
Arthur Clough (1819–1861)
The lorry from Luker Bros, the
Oxford
removals company, had arrived in
France
some days before us. Loaded
with furniture and countless anonymous cartons, its contents were now spread
haphazardly throughout the house to greet us as we walked in.
We had bought the old riverside tithe barn in Saint Pierre de Maillé a
year earlier and were still busy with major renovations when the consignment
arrived from my father’s house following his death at the age of ninty-nine.
The scattered furniture and confused piles of brown cardboard boxes
blended easily and unobtrusively into the scene of general construction chaos.
Curiosity fuelled the chaos and disorder.
Boxes were hastily torn open at random and their contents carelessly
scattered in a rising tide of delight and nostalgia as long-familiar books and
paintings, silverware and furnishings were gradually released from their
protective wrappings. However, the
real treasure that lay hidden amongst the turmoil that now engulfed
La Grange
aux Dîmes would not be
revealed until much later.
My father had
died the previous year, just short of his one-hundredth birthday, and my
sisters, Judy and Jane, had undertaken the doleful task of sorting the
accumulated contents of his house for dispersal among family members.
After specific bequests and requests had been filled, much of the
residue was consigned to
France
, where we now had an empty building waiting to be
furnished.
Many items
had come originally from the old family home on the
Woodstock Road
in
North Oxford
, before passing later to Grove Cottage. Built against the
old city walls and overlooking the
Magdalen
College
deer park
in
St. Cross Road
, Grove Cottage
was the house to which my mother and father had eventually retired.
It had, at one time, been the home of the Nineteenth Century
poet Arthur Hugh Clough. Ever
since our wartime evacuation to the
United States
, his line “Westward look, the land is bright”
had acquired special meaning for them.
One by one,
as the anonymous objects were unwrapped and brought into the daylight, they
were greeted as old friends. Many
triggered vivid memories of childhood as, in my mind, I saw them where they
had stood when I was young. Thus
prompted, I wandered in my imagination from room to room,
re-living scenes and events from long ago.
My mother
had found
123 Woodstock Road
several years before I was born.
Although semi-detached, it was large and well-proportioned.
It radiated a subdued aura of respectability that would be sufficient
to instill confidence in the minds of visiting patients without triggering
alarm at what the fee might be. In
short, it was an ideal home for a young consultant physician determined to
build a successful practice. The
idea of a National Health Service did not exist in 1930, and like a young
barrister waiting for his first brief, the early years of private medical
practice could be lean indeed.
Putting
down the deposit was an act of faith, and an expression of confidence in the
future, for my father was lying gravely ill with pneumonia in a
London
hospital at the time.
He had recently been appointed an Honorary Physician at the Radcliffe
Infirmary in
Oxford
, a post that carried with it status, but no salary.
The Honorary Physicians would tend their hospital patients without
charge, depending instead for their income on private patients referred by
general practitioners or family doctors.
The house
had been built in 1856, early in Queen
Victoria
’s reign. This
was well before
North Oxford
was to become filled with the ornate Victorian mansions
that blossomed in the 1870s as soon as fellows of
Oxford
colleges were finally allowed to marry.
Mostly men of private means, they could afford to raise large families
and live in style. Our house was
of an age when even the most modest of middle-class homes were supported by a
host of domestic staff, and consequently it lacked even the most basic labour-saving
devices considered obligatory today.
When my
parents purchased the house, actually the remaining third of a 99-year lease,
for like most
North Oxford
properties the freehold is owned by
St. John’s
College
. It had
been modernised to some extent —
that is, the well in the basement
had been filled in and capped, and a single cold-water tap now provided town
water to the kitchen.
Further
improvements quickly followed. A
new coke boiler in the basement provided uncertain heat to a single radiator
in the hall and in many rooms the open fireplaces now sported a gas fire.
Although there were two bathrooms — a rare touch of luxury in those
days — hot water still had to be carried up by maids from the basement in
jugs. It was not long before
electric geysers and
Ascot
on-demand gas heaters were installed in the kitchen and
bathrooms, but the great copper cauldron in the scullery still had to have a
wood or coal fire lit beneath it to boil the laundry each week.
Only when I became old enough to complain loudly about the taste of
sour milk did my parents consider the purchase a refrigerator
— long held to be an
unjustifiable luxury.
Before the
war, domestic service still employed more people in
Britain
than any other sector of the economy.
A doctor’s household would unquestionably be expected to have at
least a cook, a maid or three, help for rough cleaning and, of course, a nurse
if there were children. There might well be several more indoor staff beside,
for the nurse would certainly expect a nursemaid.
It was the environment in which my parents were brought up, for they
were raised in the shadow of Queen
Victoria
’s reign, and they saw nothing strange about it
— at least at the time.
So it was
that, as custom dictated, I had a nurse — Nanny Elwood — who took care of
all my needs, and made sure I was neat and tidy when brought down after late
afternoon nursery tea to entertain briefly my parents in the drawingroom with
my presence. Nanny was a fully
trained Norland nurse and always wore her neat brown uniform when making the
daily excursion to the University Parks, pushing a high, elegant dark green
pram. Her wages were a generous
₤50 a year.
Nanny’s
life was not always easy, for she had a very lively and inquisitive charge,
who could readily cause acute consternation and embarrassment.
One day, when I was about four, we were en route to the Parks, when we
met an elderly lady out walking her Dachshund.
“What big shudders your dog has”, I announced conversationally —
I had recently spent the weekend on a farm with Nanny’s family and was
curious about animals and their anatomy. Peering
more closely underneath, I quickly correct myself.
“Oh no it isn’t – it’s a penis!”
Such words were unknown outside medical school and the impact was
dramatic indeed.
Poor Nanny!
Apart from
the nursery, my domain was the back garden.
Surrounded by high brick walls over which espaliered fruit trees
flourished, it had a greenhouse in one corner and a small pond that held
goldfish, frog spawn and small children in due season.
The network of lawns, paths, fruit trees and flower beds were a rich
kingdom in which to play, and in which my imaginary herd of cows could go
about their business unhindered. It
also held a surprisingly rich assortment of wildlife, — birds, hedgehogs and
other small mammals, insects and spiders — that were destined to spark a
life-long interest in natural history.
It was in the garden that my sister Jean performed an act of heroism
that would win her enormous kudos.
She was seen carrying me, her baby brother, up the path, caked in mud
and smothered in green algal slime, having rescued him from drowning in a
water tank in the greenhouse. It
would be more than twenty years later that she admitted that it was she who
had first pushed me in.
An auctioneer’s brochure at the turn of the
century had described our house as “reached by a handsome carriage sweep
through spacious pleasure gardens.” What
this meant, in fact, was that a car on full lock might just get round the
circular bed of roses in the front garden without having to reverse.
Somewhat earlier a coach house —the mirror image of one that still
graced our neighbours — had been pulled down and replaced by an extension
that contained a large drawing room, with two good-sized rooms above and a
maze of dark, mysterious cellars beneath.
The original owner, Rev. Henry Renton, had needed a space large enough
to house the organ his parishioners had given him on his retirement.
Sadly the organ was no longer there, but our grand piano occupied one
corner of the drawing room without intruding.
But impending war would overtake this safe, conventional,
well-regulated, town life, which would soon vanish for ever.
In the years that followed, my mother tried vainly to cope on her own,
but always ended up needing help. With
twelve rooms on four floors, a large basement and two staircases, cleaning was
always a major task, particularly with the dirt produced by open fires.
In
addition, with the coming of war, it would no longer was it possible simply to
give weekly orders to grocer, greengrocer, fishmonger, butcher or baker.
Rationing and shortages meant standing in queues for hours in the hope
that something might still be had on reaching the counter.
Feeding the household would become a major preoccupation, but even that
took second place behind the inflexible need for someone to answer the
telephone and open the door to patients.
I am always saddened to think of the hopes, dreams and expectations
that my mother must have cherished when she first moved to the house, but
which war would forever leave unfulfilled.
Behind the
North Oxford
façade of genteel normality,
Europe
was already starting unravel.
On
January 30th 1933
Adolf Hitler had usurped the chancellorship of
Germany
, so opening the floodgates of evil.
Following the chaos and devastation left by the First World War, Hitler
was but one of many fringe political agitators smarting under the perceived
inequities of the Treaty of Versailles. Building
on a quasi-religious nationalism, founded in ancient myths of Teutonic
supremacy and fueled by economic collapse, Hitler was able to capture and
exploit the mood of the German working class through meticulous planning and
superb organisation. Food and
financial support for the poor and unemployed won many hearts, while stirring
parades and well-staged rallies —
classic bread and circuses — nursed
and nurtured the bruised national psyche.
Hitler’s true agenda would remain concealed until later.
By the time
he became Chancellor in 1933, Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s
Party (Nationalsozialist or Nazi for short) had already built a
ruthless political machine that, like Stalin in
Russia
, ruled through terror.
A network of spies and informers paralysed open discussion, and all
opposition, both real and imagined was silenced without mercy.
Many old scores were settled. Those
brave enough to speak out simply disappeared, like Dr. Fritz Gerlich, whose
Munich
newspaper, Der Gerade Weg, publicly mocked and
demeaned Hitler for a time. Abducted
from his office and taken to
Dachau
in September 1933, Fritz Gerlich was never seen alive
again. His wife would later
receive through the post his glasses, broken and blood-spattered.
Thus was tyranny enforced. Germans
and foreigners alike found it difficult to believe, let alone understand what
was happening, and found themselves powerless to prevent it.
In 1938 my
parents visited
Germany
on holiday. I
still have the letters they wrote describing the beauties of the
Black Forest
. On their
return they spoke of their fears for the future, for they had seen with their
own eyes clear evidence of Hitler’s growing military might.
Hitler, they said, was preparing for war.
I clearly recall the impact this had had, even though I was barely four
years old. For days I agonised
over whether such important intelligence had been duly passed to the proper
authorities — specifically, had they told the king?
After the First World War, an air of isolationism prevailed in
Britain
. Fuelled
by memories of horrendous loss of
life and subsequent economic decline, the ‘Great War’, as it became known,
was naively believed, even by
Britain
’s leaders, to signal an end to all warfare.
Having thus deluded themselves, successive governments allowed the
country’s armed forces to wither. Consequently
in 1935, when Hitler announced German military conscription in blatant breach
of the Versailles Treaty,
Britain
and
France
found themselves unable to take effective action against
him. Even after Hitler denounced
the
Locarno
agreement and invaded the demilitarised
Rhineland
the following year, public opinion remained muted.
Only Winston Churchill, unpopular and politically isolated, called for
military intervention.
Events in
Europe
begin moving ever more swiftly and inexorably towards war,
and only now will British rearmament begin in earnest.
It is very nearly too late. The
technical brilliance of her engineers and mathematicians, in developing radar
anddeciphering German codes, will ultimately contribute as much as her
armaments industry to final victory.
In 1936
Italy
defies the toothless wrath of
Europe
and annexes the ancient
kingdom
of
Ethiopia
. Soon
afterwards civil war breaks out in
Spain
, and with German help, the Fascist dictatorship of General
Franco prevails.
Europe
is starting to fall apart.
In 1938
Germany
invades and absorbs
Austria
, to be quickly followed by annexation of the
Sudetenland
— the German-speaking region of
Czechoslovakia
. The following
year
Germany
finally arouses public outcry by taking
Prague
in the continuing dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia
, and annexing German-speaking
Memel
in
Lithuania
. Finally,
unhappy
Poland
is invaded, disappearing from the map as Hitler and Stalin
together claim hegemony over her lands.
Britain
and
France
, reluctantly honoring their treaty obligations to
Poland
, come to her aid and declare war on
Germany
on
September 3rd 1939
, but it is too late. The
Polish cavalry, plumed in splendour and armed with sabres, fights valiantly
but is no match for the mechanised might of the German tanks that engulf them.
The campaign in
Poland
is soon over, and there follows an interval of eerie calm
— the so-called ‘phony war’.
In this
twilight phase, combat seems remote and almost academic, but preparations for
war proceed apace. In anticipation
of attacks by the Luftwaffe, children are evacuated from
Britain
’s industrial centres to safety in the countryside and
the civilian population is issued with gas masks.
Air raid shelters, both public and private, are built throughout the
land — together with giant tanks of stagnant water to counter possible
attack with incendiary bombs. Barrage
balloons dot the sky and public parks are filled with trenches and ardent
groups of ‘Home Guard’ volunteers in training.
In
September 1939, after Stalin had joined
Germany
in the destruction of
Poland
, he then invaded
Finland
, expecting a quick victory.
The Finns, expert in winter warfare, put up stubborn resistance,
forcing Stalin to make peace for fear that
Britain
and
France
might come to their aid.
He was very conscious that
Britain
was
already active in the region, seeking
pretexts that would enable her to take the Swedish ore mines at Kiruna, which
were Hitler’s main source of the iron essential to his growing arms
industry.
In December
1939 the distant scuttling of the great German Battleship Graf Spee off
Montevideo
, in response to a perceived threat from three small
British warships, provides vicarious pleasure to the nation and fuels a false
sense of impending victory. However,
the widespread hope that Hitler’s thirst for territorial conquest might have
been slaked by his subjugation of
Poland
is soon shattered. In
April 1940 Hitler invades
Denmark
and
Norway
. In May,
Luxembourg
,
Belgium
and the
Netherlands
are overrun.
France
will soon follow.
German invasion of the
Low Countries
forced
Britain
and
France
to withdraw forces from
Scandinavia
, while other home-based troops, the British Expeditionary
Force, were quickly dispatched to
France
. They proved
no match for Hitler’s fast-moving armoured units.
Trapped on the shore around Dunkerque on the Belgian coast at the end
of May, they faced annihilation and humiliating defeat.
At the last minute the German commander, General von
Rundstedt, misguidedly and inexplicably withdrew his tanks in preparation for
attacks elsewhere. The respite so
unexpectedly offered enabled 338,226 British soldiers to be lifted off the
beaches by a flotilla of small boats, including many civilian pleasure craft.
The Dunkerque rescue, a military catastrophe of the highest magnitude,
would nevertheless pass into history, ranked in popular imagination with the
great victories of
Agincourt
and Crécy.
Once German
victory seems assured, Mussolini proudly brings
Italy
into the fray. War,
terrible and brutal, consumes all
Europe
;
England
now faces a danger far greater than ever that posed by
Napoleon’s threatened invasion in 1804.
With the whole of
Europe
conquered, by June1940 solitary
Britain
is left to face the might of Hitler’s victorious armies
alone and unsupported. Threat of
invasion is imminent, and there are few who dare to think Britain invincible
at this time — apart from Winston Churchill, who becomes Prime Minister in
May, heading a new government of National Unity.
With stirring oratory Churchill rallies public opinion and unites the
country in a new wave of optimism and determination to oppose the Nazi menace.
By the early summer of 1940, there is widespread concern, both at home
and abroad, for the very future of
Britain
, and for the consequences that war might bring to her
civilian population under Nazi domination.
Reports filtering in from the conquered nations of
Europe
paint an ominous picture of life under the German
jackboot. More than anything else,
it is the image of British youth undergoing Nazi indoctrination that arouses
the greatest passion and indignation. In
a matter of weeks, passion will be translated into action.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, American public opinion, strongly
influenced by those of German ancestry, and swayed by the isolationist
rhetoric of Lindberg and the ‘America First’ movement, shows little
interest in the fate of Britain. There
is strong, well-orchestrated opposition to any American involvement in the
events unfolding in
Europe
. A growing
flood of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution is reaching
America
. The fact that
they include many of the world’s leading scientists and musicians, and bring
personal accounts of widespread atrocities against Jews in
Europe
, attracts little popular attention and public comment.
Fortunately,
there are also people of vision and influence in
America
who, filled with moral outrage, cannot remain silent and
inactive. As the grim news from
Europe
filters through, its implications for
Britain
become increasingly apparent — something immediate must
be done. At the very beginning of
June 1940, half a dozen faculty members at
Yale
University
in
New Haven
,
Connecticut
put their names to a document of intent, and spurred on by
an anonymous donation of one thousand dollars, found the ‘Yale Faculty
Committee for Receiving Oxford and Cambridge University Children’.
This stultifying title belies the committee’s vitality.
The faculty response to a suggestion that members might take into their
homes university children from
Oxford
and
Cambridge
proves overwhelming. Accommodation
for 247 children is immediately made available, while offers of financial help
pour in from those unable to accept children.
In only three months, more than $40,000 will have been contributed –
over half a million dollars in today’s currency.
Time is
short, for a German invasion could be launched at any moment, and it is
obvious that official channels cannot be relied upon to respond with requisite
haste and expediency. Consequently,
a direct approach through friends and professional colleagues is decided upon.
Nominated by the committee to establish contact with
Oxford
, on June 6th Dr. John Fulton, Professor of
Physiology at Yale, and sometime Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford
, cables Hugh Cairns, Professor of Surgery at the
university.
Cairns
at once calls his friend Howard Florey, Professor of
Pathology, who would later achieve world fame for his development of
Penicillin as the first antibiotic.
Fulton,
Florey and
Cairns
had all been Rhodes Scholars at
Oxford
, and so turn instinctively to the Warden of Rhodes House,
Carlton Allen, for advice. The
response could not be better. An ad
hoc committee is immediately set up under Carlton Allen’s chairmanship
— as a barrister, his organising skills will prove immensely valuable.
Rhodes House thenceforth becomes the nerve centre and meeting place for
everything involved with the evacuation of university children from
Oxford
. Shortly after
the Yale offer is received, similar invitations arrive from Swarthmore and
from
Toronto
University
and all are handled together through Carlton Allen’s
committee. Meanwhile,
Cambridge
too is considering Yale’s offer.
The issues
involved, both moral and personal, are profound and all decisions reached must
inevitably affect many lives and carry heavy burdens of responsibility.
Cambridge
, uncertain how to respond, asks for time in which to
consider the matter further.
Oxford
, no less perplexed by a decision so momentous and beyond
all personal experience, prudently seeks outside advice and asks the
government for guidance. This
proves to be unequivocal, and
Whitehall
, acting with unusual alacrity, urges immediate
acceptance of the Yale offer.
Years
later, the reasons underlying this advice would be revealed.
In the event of a German victory, the children of
Oxford
were viewed as a repository of national identity — the
seeds through which
England
might rise once again from the ashes.
It would have been an awesome responsibility to have to carry through
life, and I am thankful that I long remained in ignorance of it.
The discussions at Rhodes House are deep and sombre as parents try to
reach a decision on whether or not to accept the American and Canadian
invitations. There is much
soul-searching and debate as the uncertain risks of Nazi occupation are
weighed against the undeniable heartbreak of separation and the mounting
dangers of transatlantic travel. Though
there remain many unanswered questions, a quick decision is essential.
Strangely, one factor that receives only scant attention is the risk of
air raids. The ‘blitz’ and the
Battle of Britain are yet to come.
Once families have made their decision for, or against, participating
in the scheme, attention quickly turns to practical matters, and the ad hoc
committee co-opts a solicitor and a local travel agency representative to
provide much-needed specialist advice. Passports,
currency restrictions and immigration questions, together with the mechanics
of group travel now dominate the discussions, as does the definition of
children to be applied in this context. The
necessary papers are quickly completed and passports for everyone obtained,
together with special permission from the treasury for each individual to take
with them just ₤10 in cash. Children
are finally defined as anyone under 15, and it is arranged that, provided the
sponsors agree, mothers of large families, or with very small children will be
allowed to escort them. My sister
Judy is just 18 months old.
Transatlantic passages are few and far between, not least because of
the growing U-Boat menace. Fortunately
places for 125 children and 25 adults are found on a ship leaving
Liverpool
early in July. Although,
in the event, not all the places will be taken by children from
Oxford
, a tight deadline has been set and preparations take on an
even greater sense of urgency.
Late in the
planning, a serious problem emerges. Despite
granting visitor’s visas to the group, the American authorities, it
transpires, are reluctant to admit aliens, even those from Oxford, as
long-term visitors, and there appears to be no easy solution.
However, following a flurry of transatlantic cables, it is discovered
that if we were to enter the
United States
through
Canada
, it might be possible to arrange the necessary permissions
in time. Consequently, late in the
day, the original sailing plans are scrapped, and
Montreal
becomes the chosen destination — later to be changed yet
again to
Quebec
in order to speed the ship’s turn around for the return
journey back to
Britain
.
Just one month after the Yale invitation reaches
Oxford
, the evacuation is about to begin.
Quite remarkably, all the necessary arrangements have been completed
within only three weeks. On
Monday, July 8th 1940
, with many bureaucratic questions still unresolved, the
party of some 105 children and 5 mothers gather at
Oxford
station for the train journey to
Liverpool
, where the SS Antonia is docked.
The
departure, like the rest of the undertaking, represents a huge act of faith.
Uncertainty hangs heavy in the air.
When the train reaches its first stop at Banbury, just 26 miles from
Oxford
, little Susan Lawson, aged five, is heard to ask, “Is
this
Canada
yet?” It
will become a familiar question during the days ahead.
It always
saddens me when people claim to recall little, if anything, of the magic and
wonder of their early childhood. The
journey to
America
on SS Antonia at the age of five generated a
multitude of rich and detailed memories for me.
Our tourist-class cabin was many decks down, hidden in the bowels of
the ship, and it was tiny. To my
intense dismay it had no porthole. A
steel girder, an I-section beam, ran across the top of the cabin, and I was
convinced that if I were to grip it with my fingertips, keeping my body
horizontal and with my toes resting on the top bunk, I might just be able to
touch the far wall. On each
attempt I progressed a little further out.
Suddenly, on what would be the last attempt, I could feel my fingers
starting to slip.
It was a
sensation I would experience again many years later when rock climbing in the
Llanberis
Pass
at the foot of
Snowdon
in
North Wales
. Even before
contact with the rock was finally lost, time had begun to slow down.
It is true — one’s life does indeed flash before one when the end
is close. Quite slowly, two
hundred and forty feet of vertical cliff began to move upward before me as I
fell, the features of each pitch and belay seeming to mock as they passed by,
until all went black — just as it had twenty years before when the steel
deck plates of the SS Antonia, patterned with large rivet heads, came
slowly up to meet me.
It was in the galleys of the
SS Antonia that one of my cherished childhood beliefs would be
shattered — although it was not the first to be undermined and lost.
Disillusion had initially come to me when I saw Father Christmas, or
Santa Claus, smoking a cigarette in the street.
It was not the cigarette that concerned me, but the fact that there
were two of him, chatting together.
The cramped cabin provided few opportunities for play.
Even the spacious hallway into which it opened was not much better, for
it was blocked with massive wooden crates, rumoured to contain gold bullion
destined for
Fort
Knox
. Thus I was
forced to find my own amusements — whenever I could escape my poor mother’s
anxious gaze. It had struck me
that the open ocean would be a splendid place for fishing.
A ball of string and a bent pin were quickly procured — I don’t
recall exactly how, so it couldn’t have been a great challenge.
But bait — that was something else!
So it was that I found myself in the Antonia’s spacious galley.
Clearly the chef would be the proper person to approach on such a
quest. But horror of horrors!
Like the multiple Santas, there were at least twenty people in the
galley, all wearing the tall hat that I had believed to be the chef’s unique
badge of office.
Despite my shattered illusions, I
persevered in my mission, and was soon rewarded with a large piece of meat.
Of this I am certain, for the rotted remains of it would eventually
attract attention and be discovered by my mother many weeks later in my
raincoat pocket, packed away with winter clothes in my trunk during the heat
of the
New England
summer.
It is
dusk before I can escape my mother’s vigilance.
Warily I creep towards the foredeck, anxious that no one see me, for
this is forbidden territory. Carefully
I reach under the rail and lower my baited line over the ship’s side, never
doubting that the morning will bring a noble catch.
Early next day, before anyone else is awake, I dress quickly and slip
out of the cabin. The ship seems
deserted — only the dull throbbing of the engines follow me as I move
cautiously, level by level upwards. I
am soon on deck, fighting a chill ocean wind.
The ever-shifting grey-green Atlantic swell, dotted with lines of foam,
vanishes into the light mist that surrounds us.
Nobody sees me as I move towards the Antonia’s bow — and
nobody would have known what had happened if I were to disappear overboard.
My line is still where I
had left it the previous evening, firmly tied to a convenient stanchion.
I start to pull it in, but something is holding it back — I must have
caught something huge. Curious, I
peer over the rail. However, the
ship’s side curves back sharply beneath me and the waterline remains hidden.
A cold fear still knots my stomach, and chills run down my spine each
time I re-live the scene. The
image refuses to fade. A small boy
is on the outside of the ship’s wet and slippery port-side rail, hanging on
by his left hand. Facing aft, he
leans out as far as possible above the cold, swirling waters, straining for a
glimpse of the waterline. I
discover in dismay that my line no longer reaches the water, that no great
fish is holding it taut. Impossibly
tangled and knotted, it now clings firmly to the ship’s side, snagged on
some protruding piece of metal. Disappointed,
I realise that fishing is a lost cause. The
details of that mid-ocean expedition will remain a secret for over forty years
— my mother forever spared the worst of it.
Meanwhile, in
America
our would-be hosts are facing problems of their own.
The Yale Committee will need, they learn, to become incorporated under
the laws of the State of
Connecticut
. This somewhat
daunting task is cheerfully undertaken at short notice by the law firm of
Arthur Corbin Jr., and will result, indirectly, in the donation of an
anonymous gift of $10,000. In
addition, the Yale Committee will need to become a participating member of the
nation-wide US Committee for the Care of European Children.
This affiliation brings with it additional bureaucratic obligations,
not least a requirement that all foster placements be supervised by a
recognised agency. The Children’s
Center in nearby
Hamden
agrees to be the designated agency, and quickly sets about
the considerable task of interviewing all the prospective foster parents.
When the party sails from
Liverpool
on the SS Antonia, there still remain major hurdles
that might yet prevent the entry of
Oxford
children into the
United States
. McGill
University is ready to receive them on arrival in Montreal, and the Yale
Divinity School to house them in New Haven pending settlement in private
homes, but the State and Justice Departments together have yet to agree to
provide the necessary corporate affidavit that will enable the party, armed
only with visitor visas, to cross the border and remain indefinitely in the
United States. In fact, the whole
venture very nearly founders indefinitely on medical grounds as well, when a
case of measles unexpectedly appears among the new arrivals in Canada and
threatens to prevent anyone crossing the border.
Members of the Yale Committee make urgent visits to
New York
and
Washington
to try and resolve these difficulties.
Future Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a Yale alumnus, is approached
and provides an introduction to the Solicitor General.
Even with such direct access to the exclusive corridors of power, it is
not until July 23rd, several days after the party has already
reached
Canada
, that the corporate affidavit is finally granted and the
way cleared for us to journey to
New Haven
— provided only that
the measles victim remains quarantined in
Canada
.
The anxieties that plagued
Britain
before we left in June will be realised all to soon.
On August 8th Hitler launches his blitzkrieg in
preparation for invasion, and the ‘Battle of Britain’ begins in
earnest. The pace of evacuation
from the cities increases, and invitations pour in from safe havens overseas.
In particular, American staff of big international companies such as
the Hoover Corporation offer hospitality to the children of their English
counterparts. However, following
the sinking of the SS. City of Benares, the British government bans all
further transatlantic refugee travel. We
have indeed been fortunate.
In retrospect, it is amazing that so much could have been accomplished
in so short a time, and without catastrophe.
This book is a testament to the foresight, dedication and determination
of the visionaries on both sides of the
Atlantic
who seized the moment and made the impossible happen.
To them I offer my profound thanks.
On arrival in
New Haven
our family was soon welcomed into the large, well-staffed
home of Susan Bacon Keith at
310 Prospect Street
. However, it
being already high summer, we were immediately taken to Pine Ledge, the Keith
country home in Holderness,
New Hampshire
, overlooking
Squam
Lake
. Here we lived
in some style until the end of the summer.
Breakfast was served on the uppermost of the three verandahs that
wrapped around the house, and provided stunning views across the water.
Hummingbirds were our constant companions, as they squabbled over the
sugar-water feeders hanging from every post.
It was an idyllic setting into which thoughts of
England
and war rarely penetrated – at least into my
five-year-old consciousness. My
world became the lakeside boathouse, in which floated Don Quixote, the
powerful motorboat that towed the aquaplane, and where lived giant Dolomedes
spiders hunting insects over the water surface.
The surrounding woods, I quickly discovered, were home to many small
creatures. My favorites became the
slow-moving, brilliant red salamanders hiding beneath fallen logs.
I was in paradise.
Some thirty years later, when I had returned to
America
with my own young family, aged Susan Keith invited us back
to Pine Ledge again, although she herself was no longer living there.
We arrived long after dark, but soon found a pair of large stone
gateposts that I knew marked the driveway.
The front door was unlocked, but no lights were on.
The house seemed strangely unfamiliar and did not in the least
resembled my memory of it, but long years had passed, it was dark and I was
tired. After putting the children
to bed I started to explore. There
were many books in the house, but none bore the names of either Keith or
Bacon, and gradually the suspicion grew on me that this might not, in fact, be
Pine Ledge after all.
It was
midnight
before I set off through the trees with a small
flashlight. Up the road some
distance, I soon discovered another pair of stone gateposts.
Surreptitiously I crept along the drive, fearful of being identified as
an intruder. The house was in
darkness, but something distantly familiar about its silhouette in the
moonlight tempted me to try the front door.
It too was unlocked. Suddenly,
in the feeble beam of the flashlight, past and present fused.
I was back!
With considerable anxiety I returned to the sleeping family.
Scenes of Goldilocks and the three bears returning to their rumpled
beds flashed before me as the children were bundled, half asleep, into the
car. The beds were quickly
smoothed to conceal our presence and, fearful lest we meet the owners in the
drive, we hastily withdrew. As
dawn broke the next morning, there was
Squam
Lake
, just as I had remembered it, spread out before us, the
magic in no way diluted by the passage of thirty years.
I have often wondered whether the neighbours ever noticed our brief
intrusion and puzzled over the identity of their mysterious nocturnal
visitors.
In the fall of 1940 we returned to
Prospect Street
, and the grown-ups must have turned their minds to
thoughts of where we children should live.
My mother had come with us on the journey because my younger sister,
Judy, was too young to travel unaccompanied.
I was five and Jean, my elder sister just eleven.
I remember her trying to stay upright on the new roller skates she had
received on her birthday at sea, as the deck thoughtlessly rose and fell
beneath her.
Under normal circumstances, all three of us might have been expected to
live together in one house. However,
at that time Jean and I squabbled constantly, and my mother decided that we
should be separated in the hope that absence might make the heart grow fonder.
This I only learned recently. I
am happy to report that the stratagem worked exactly as planned.
Searching for three homes instead of one was time-consuming.
Judy, with her freckles and bright red curls, was eagerly snatched up
by Eleanor Wilcox, and would become the ‘twin’ sister of Michael, her own
little boy. Rich and generous, she
would introduce Judy to a world of plenty — a stark contrast to her life
back in
England
at war’s end.
Jean was to
find herself with a relatively elderly, childless law professor and his wife,
who though well meaning, lacked the experience to handle with sufficient
warmth and understanding an unsettled adolescent.
Jean’s life in
America
was to cause my parents much concern.
Eventually she would leave the Borchard home and live happily, though
briefly, with the Yale Chaplain, Sidney Lovett and his family.
We first met the Bacons — Grace, Dave and their six children — while
we were staying with Susan Keith. Dave
Bacon and Susan Keith were cousins, and the two families traditionally got
together over the holidays. At
Christmas 1940 we too were invited to share the festivities at Hickory Hill,
the Bacon home in nearby
North Haven
. At that time
the Bacons, living some distance from
New Haven
, and not being a faculty family, had not even been
approached about taking in any
Oxford
children. However,
Grace (universally called by her childhood name of Gacie) and my mother
quickly established a rapport that would develop into a lifelong friendship,
and it was not long before the required paperwork would be completed.
I became the youngest member of the Bacon clan on
February 3rd 1941
— a fortnight before I turned six.
My father had survived being a pilot in the First World War — he had
had the good fortune to arrive at the front the same week that hostilities
ended — and was anxious to enlist a second time when war broke out again.
However, the authorities felt that as Clinical Dean of the
Medical
School
he was of more value to the country in training new
doctors and he was forced to remain in
Oxford
. Naturally my
mother was anxious to join him, but before returning to
England
in the early spring of 1941 she painstakingly visited all
of the 76
Oxford
children who had settled in
New Haven
and brought home a firsthand account of each to their
parents. It was a generous
gesture, totally in character, and one that would later be repaid on the rare
occasions that someone from
Oxford
would carry back firsthand accounts of her own children.
Today
Hickory Hill has been engulfed by suburbia.
Although the neighbourhood has changed, happily the house remains much
as I knew it. The brook no longer
flows and our dam has long since disappeared.
Houses stand on our skating pond, and although the woods remain, they
are no longer wild. The secret
places that only we knew, where once our forts and camps lay concealed, have
vanished, swallowed up by new roads and neat suburban gardens.
We were the only house on the street in those days, the sidewalk
disappearing into a jungle of sumac through which it was impossible to
penetrate. Only one other house
was visible, far off on the skyline. Eventually
a second house appeared and it was there that I was allowed to help lay a
tongue-and-groove wooden floor in an upstairs bedroom.
It was the first of many construction projects to which I have since
turned my hand.
The household that welcomed me into its midst so warmly was, by any
measure, unusual. Although now
enjoying relative prosperity, memories of life during the depression in a
tar-paper shack, without running water, had left scars.
Frugality, self-sufficiency and a strong work ethic were the
unquestioned way of life. The
oldest child was Betsy (20), who had already left home and would only appear
at the house intermittently. Of
the five boys, Tom (18) was the oldest, followed by Walter (15), Dunny (13),
Hugh (11) and Ben (9). I became
the youngest boy as number six. It
was not always an easy adjustment to be suddenly the youngest
— and a pack member.
David Bacon was “Uncle Dave” to me,
until, like everyone else, I came to call him “Poppy”.
He was an engineer, and when I arrived was vice-president of a company
that would soon be manufacturing components for twin-barrelled Oerlikon 20mm
anti-aircraft machine guns as part of
America
’s at-that-time-unofficial war effort.
However, his real calling was aeronautics.
After an outstanding student career at Yale, he had joined the
fledgling National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA) — the precursor of
the National Space Administration (NASA) — as head of wind-tunnel research
at Langley Field. Here he worked
with Orville Wright — and at his retirement was to be a consultant on the
first moon mission. His career had
spanned the history of manned flight.
The
work at NACA focused on research into turbulence, a complex and difficult
branch of fluid mechanics that involved an enormous amount of sophisticated
computation. Much of this was
carried out by female mathematicians, who bore the prescient title of
‘computers’. After Dave’s
first wife had died in childbirth, he was left with three small children to
raise. In time he would remarry
– to one of his computers.
Grace
Dunlap was tall and striking, deeply tanned, and with black hair that, when
unbraided, reached down far below her waist.
She came from
North Dakota
and was believed by some to be of Native American descent.
Their courtship was kept secret, and coincided with growing
disagreements between Dave and his superiors.
It was an early example of a problem with which NASA would later become
all too familiar — political intervention in scientific research.
Dave’s problems originated in
Washington
, where Max Monk, an unpopular German theoretician,
continually tried to interfere with his day-to-day operations at Langley
Field. Early in 1926 Dave and
Grace resigned in disgust from their well-paid positions, headed north and got
married. By the time I arrived,
Grace had contributed three more children to the family and had acquired an
uncanny ability to understand the ways in which the minds of small boys work.
In
the Bacon household, work and play were equally important, and inextricably
linked. In winter the woods
provided an abundance of firewood, but it had to be cut and stacked.
It seemed as though I spent long hours hanging onto the end of a huge
cross-cut lumber saw, but I had my own woodpile to maintain.
My greatest ambition was to have my own axe — only to be achieved
after I had stopped sucking my finger! It
was a long and difficult battle, but the carrot, always used in preference to
the stick, was eventually successful. When
the axe, soon after its acquisition, accidentally glanced off a wet log and
buried itself in the top of my foot, slicing through my shoe, my concern was
only that I might lose the axe and it was a long time before I could stem the
flow of blood and hobble unnoticed back into the house under cover of
darkness. Nothing was ever said
later, but the slash in the top of my shoe could not have passed unnoticed.
In
summer we were self-sufficient in garden produce.
The first year I grew my own garden — but ate most of the crops well
before harvest time. Later I would
help in the big garden. I also had
my own bees, and recall suffering terrible stings on the face when curiosity
overcame prudence and I foolishly peered inside to see how the honey crop was
progressing.
Thanks
to the Bacons, I have never made a distinction between work and play — life
is simply its own reward. In
winter, skiing and skating provided welcome breaks from wood-cutting and
snow-moving, while in summer heavy gardening would be followed by leisurely
sailing and memorable clambakes on distant beaches.
Self-sufficiency
found many expressions. Not least
was the expectation that one would become proficient in the use of tools.
After all, Dave was an engineer. Nobody
was allowed to use power tools until able to demonstrate competence with hand
tools. The essential test was to
make a water-tight wooden box. I
soon discovered that this meant the proper use of set-square and plane.
Filling the gaps with plastic wood did not count.
It
was a training that would stand me in good stead in later years as I designed
and built complex photography equipment and restored ancient stone buildings.
Through my life with the Bacons I gained the necessary skills and
confidence to sail alone in all weathers, always without an engine, and
undertake the necessary, often intricate, repairs that are an integral part of
owning a wooden sailboat. The rich
legacy I inherited from my years in the Bacon family is truly beyond
estimation.
***
It
was late afternoon in Saint-Pierre-de-Maillé.
The sun, already low in the sky, was reflected off the mill pond,
flooding the house with a dramatic, unearthly glow.
I was rummaging aimlessly though half-emptied boxes, periodically
transported in my imagination back to my childhood home, when I came across an
old plastic shopping bag that bore the insignia of a well-known Oxford
supermarket. Unpretentious and
almost overlooked, it proved to contain a priceless treasure, a magic window
into my childhood more graphic, more powerful than anything I could possibly
have imagined.
Lovingly preserved by my mother, but long lost in storage after her
death, were her own personal mementos of my distracted childhood, now brought
to light after remaining hidden for sixty years and more.
Letters and pictures, programs and cuttings in confusion.
I discovered, for example, that in September 1938, at the age of three,
I had played the dual roles of ‘Dream Elf and Page’ in a dramatic
production written and produced by my elder sister Jean and her cousin Daphne.
Here was the evidence — a handwritten program for an “Entertainment
to be performed at
3:30 pm
.”
At first I looked no further than the collection of early school
reports — reports that reflected painfully little academic merit, but
indicated that at least I was gradually participating better in class
activities. Nor was I really
surprised to learn that at an earlier age, during my first nursery school Band
Class, I had “conducted beautifully”, sang London’s Burning (“on
and on”!), and played my tambourine “with far more vigour than was
necessary”!
However, closer inspection was to reveal something of far greater
interest and significance. Jumbled
together in disorder, like Tutankamun's treasure, lay a confusion of letters,
the complete correspondence that had passed between my mother in
England
and Grace Bacon, my foster mother in
Connecticut
. As I
rummaged, I
would occasionally discover letters
that I myself had written — or more accurately that I had dictated, taken
down on the typewriter at high speed by Grace Bacon as I galloped on.
The improbable circumstances under which the two halves of this
correspondence would come to be miraculously united and preserved in one place
remains a mystery.
As I dipped
casually into the pile, picking up pages at random, I frequently found myself
unable to continue reading for the tears that kept welling up unbidden.
It became so profound and emotional an experience, peering into the
forgotten corners of my past, that I found myself quite unable to continue.
Quietly I returned the letters to their resting place, but knowledge of
their existence continued to haunt me.
Three years would pass before curiosity finally overcame emotion, and
drove me back to look again into the shopping bag.
Only then did the true significance of my inheritance suddenly strike
me. Not only did I have
unparalleled access to my childhood, but I had discovered a unique historical
archive that provided vivid vignettes of everyday life in a period of time
otherwise overshadowed by greater world events.
Friends who were permitted to look at the letters were unanimous in
their insistance that they should be published.
Yielding to their demands, emotion and embarrassment have, with
difficulty, been suppressed.
The
letters have been carefully transcribed as originally written, with only
minimal corrections to spelling and punctuation.
They have been lightly edited to remove references to people and places
of only passing interest, and that do not add materially to the story.
Otherwise the letters appear in their original form.
For most people today the Second World War has faded into history,
leaving only a blurred image of allied success.
The pattern of shifting fortunes that defined its shape, the victories
and defeats that gave it form, are no longer clearly remembered.
Later conflicts have naturally claimed priority for subsequent
generations. And yet it was
against this haunting backdrop that Grace Bacon and my mother conducted their
correspondence.
In
preparation for invasion, Hitler began a massive series of bombing raids on
England
in August
1940.
Britain
’s air
defenses were stretched to the limit as the Royal Air Force rose to the
challenge. On October 10th,
when victory was within his grasp, Hitler inexplicably called off the raids.
The Battle of Britain had been won by the narrowest of margins and at
enormous personal sacrifice.
Although
America
remained
technically neutral, supplies soon began to flow unobtrusively across the
Atlantic
as
Roosevelt
quietly
exceeded his presidential mandate on
Britain
’s behalf.
With the Lend-Lease act of March 1941 it became a flood, and Hitler
responded with mounting submarine attacks.
American merchant shipping losses climbed rapidly, reaching a peak
early in 1942. By the end of the year 8 million tons of shipping had been sunk
and only 87 U-boats destroyed. Changing
tactics, improved detection and above all superior intelligence and code
breaking, brought ever-mounting losses to the U-boat fleet, whose threat soon
declined. In 1943 only 250,000
tons of shipping were lost and 237 U-boats sunk.
In June 1941 Hitler turned against his erstwhile ally and invaded
Russia
.
Like Napoleon before him, Hitler underestimated the determination with
which Russians would defend their homeland, and his forces were soon fully
engaged on the eastern front, leaving
Britain
some
breathing space in which to recuperate.
The
war in
Europe
took an
unexpected turn in December 1941. Following
the Japanese attack on
Peal
Harbour
, Hitler
foolishly declared war on the
United States
.
Had he not done so,
America
’s war
effort would have been focused wholly on the Pacific.
However, outraged public opinion united the nation against
Germany
, and
America
’s massive
industrial might could now be brought formally into
Europe
.
Meanwhile,
with the threat of invasion receding,
Britain
’s
attention shifted southwards to the
Mediterranean
.
It was vital to retain control of the
Suez Canal
, which linked
Britain
to her
colonial empire in the east. Churchill
was also convinced that in the
Mediterranean
lay the soft
underbelly of
Europe
, through
which
Germany
herself
might be directly attacked. In
addition, from bases in the eastern
Mediterranean
, Hitler’s
oil supplies in
Romania
could be
disrupted.
British naval control of the
Mediterranean sea
lanes was to
play a major role in defending
Egypt
by
restricting supplies to the German forces in
North Africa
intent on
controlling the
Suez Canal
. General
Montgomery’s victory over Rommel’s
Afrika Corps at the battle of
El Alamein
in October
1942 was quickly followed by an American invasion of
Algeria
, then a
French colony. From the ensuing
confusion in
Algeria
, General
Charles De Gaulle would emerge as the leader of the Free French forces,
despite strong American opposition.
From victory in
North Africa
, the allies
attacked
Italy
, landing in
Sicily
in July
1943. Italian resistance quickly
crumbled and Mussolini was overthrown and executed by partisans within the
month. Although an armistice was
signed in September,
Germany
had had time
to move forces into
Italy
, and
fighting would continue throughout most of the country.
Rome
would not
fall until
June 6th 1944
.
Two
days later Operation Overlord began, the greatest seaborne invasion in
history, when allied forces from
Britain
landed in
Normandy
.
This was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
The following year Hitler committed suicide at the end of April, after
Russian forces had entered
Berlin
.
By
May 8th
1945
the war in
Europe
was finally
over.
It
is easy to forget, when absorbed by the events unfolding, that the letters
record thoughts at the moment of writing.
Sentences unfold as they occurred in the writer’s mind — no
opportunity to retract, revise or re-spell as today’s computer-aided authors
enjoy. The clarity of ideas and
freshness of phrase are lasting tributes to my two mothers’ thoughtful
intellegence, understanding and power of expression.
Chapter
Two
Editorial
Notes
Few letters indicate the year
in which they were written. Indeed,
often it was unclear even which pages belonged together.
Slowly, laboriously, page by page the letters were transcribed into the
computer. My lamentable keyboard
skills, coupled with my mother’s handwriting, often made this a difficult
and frustrating task. Fortunately
Grace Bacon’s letters had been largely typewritten.
Once transcribed, it had to be determined to which letter a particular
page belonged. This was not
usually a problem when all pages had been written on similar paper, for many
paper stocks were used, although it was sometimes necessary to make a careful
forensic examination of the jagged edge where a sheet of paper had been torn
from a notepad. Pages torn out
together on a letter’s completion all exhibited similar characteristic tear
patterns. However, some letters
had been written on several different paper stocks, making the task of dating
more taxing.
Fortunately, a few letters indicate the day of the week as well as the
day of the month upon which they had been written, and these were to prove
valuable markers in determining the year of writing.
Otherwise it became a matter of detective work using internal clues —
references to events and places — to discover the correct year of writing.
Finally, after several months of work, the letters could be assembled in
the correct chronological order, arranged by date.
In the three years between March 1941 and June 1944 Grace Bacon had
written at least 53 letters and my mother 44 — actually there had been more
written, but a few had become mislaid, some were never received, while others
had been mutilated beyond recognition by the censors.
Nevertheless, it remains an extraordinary collection by any measure.
It is rare indeed for both sides of a correspondence to be brought
together in one place, let alone virtually intact.
Bearing in mind that at each end, letters were circulated widely among
family and friends, it is miraculous that so many have survived.
Very few appear to be missing. In
future, correspondence such as this is destined to disappear as ephemeral
email and instant messaging displace the ancient and honored art of
letter-writing. One cannot but be
struck by the time and dedication two such busy women devoted to letter
writing each week, and I for one remain profoundly grateful.
In
addition to the correspondence between Grace Bacon and my mother, the
collection also included over thirty letters that I myself had written to my
parents in
England
. Written is
perhaps the wrong word, for they had been taken down by dictation.
As I observed at the time, it was a bit like making a telephone call.
Twenty-two of these letters are included here, either because they are
specifically mentioned in, or supplement, the primary correspondence.
They include many asides that were not intended to be recorded, but
shed entertaining light on the writer.
In order to identify the letter’s three authors more easily, a
different font is used for each. Because
my mother’s letters were handwritten, they appear here in a calligraphic
font — considerably easier to read than the original.
My own letters are reproduced in a san serif font.
It will be
noticed that letters do not necessarily appear in the chronological order in
which they were originally written. Neither
do they alternate regularly between authors.
This seemingly confused sequence reflects the varied delays, often
considerable, with which post passed through the hands of the censors and was
then shipped across the
Atlantic
, and it comes closer to the order in which letters were
actually received. The prime
consideration has been to bring letters that refer to one another as closely
together as possible. Even so,
several letters may intervene between a question being asked and the reply
being received.
Chapters
Three to Six
Twenty-Two
Sample letters
At the Hare & Hounds
Hotel,
Westonbirt, Glos.
March
21st, 1941
[My
mother’s first letter on her return to
England
]
Dear Mrs. Bacon,
It
is quite time I wrote to you, but the days have gone so quickly since I got
home & there has been so much to do & so many people to visit.
You cannot imagine what a continual comfort it is to know that John is
in your capable hands & to know he is safe.
When I hear those terrible sirens my first thought is “anyway the
wretches can’t hurt the children”. It’s
a relief too to know that if the food question gets difficult they won’t
have to suffer.
I
haven’t started housekeeping yet as we are still on holiday but am looking
forward to getting down to it next week & I believe that quite a lot of
ingenuity will have to be used to get variety into the menus.
We are not short of food but you can’t have everything that you used
to have in such large quantities! I
have had an efficient sister-in-law looking after things for me & she has
managed very well — I only hope I can live up to her standard.
I
had a very interesting time before I came away seeing all the parents of the
unaccompanied children. There was
a big tea party here held by the wife of the chairman
of the Oxford Committee & I was glad to be able to give news of all the
children & in most cases, letters or presents.
The grass-widowers too have been eager for news & I have been able
to give them plenty.
By
the way, I wonder if you can substantiate the story of John knocking out the
school janitor? It evidently
happened while I was there but I wasn’t told!
It came via another mother to her husband!
I can believe anything of John!
Life
goes on in very much the same way at this little place & the hotel is warm
& comfortable with food that is plain but good.
As in all parts of
England
,
planes buzz overhead & everywhere you see signs of the military, but this
does not prevent the country from looking peaceful & lovely from lots of
baby lambs playing in the fields. We
take lots of walks through the old stone Cotswold villages & it is
wonderful to find things so much as I left them — 8 months ago.
One gets such different ideas about things away from home.
If
you need anything for John please let us know — shoes, socks, shirts — I
can get anything up to $50 a year for him without duty — by the newest
regulations. Let me have his
measurements. I do hope he is
behaving properly & not giving you too much trouble — but it’s too
much to hope that he is not being a nuisance in some way or other.
I know John! Please give
him my love & tell him his Daddy & I visited a hermit’s cave today!
You’ll have to explain that, I’m afraid!
With
love & continual thanks from us both
Yours
ever,
Vera
Cooke
P.S.
Everyone over here is
thrilled with all the help the
USA
is sending us. Good old
Roosevelt
!
Hickory Hill
North Haven
24th March 1941
Dear Vera and Alec:
I
asked John how he would like to start his letter.
“Do you want to write it to both
your
mother and your father?” John
replied, “Yes, but I’ll call them by their proper
names,
Vera and Alec.”
[Dictation
from here on:]
“It’s
just like telephoning, isn’t it? I
am sleeping in bunks with Walter and he has his arm in a sling.
The bunks are one on top of the other and I sleep in the bottom one.
Wallie sleeps on top. When
Walter isn’t here I have the room to myself.
I think I like it better when Wallie is here.
Uncle Dave had a cold but he’s better now.
He came yesterday while we all chopped wood and built fires of brush
— and that’s how it got better. The
boys and I hauled up a big rock yesterday — Gacie took a picture of it and
we’ll send you one when it’s finished.”
[Letter
interrupted here while John goes to feed Terry, the dog.
We are having vacation this week, which John seems to be enjoying
thoroughly. The first part of it
we had good sliding and skiing, and now its warm enough to cast off the
leggings — a joy to us all. John
has returned and we resume quotation:]
“Saturday I went to see The
Thief of Baghdad again and went to a party afterwards at Anne Bacon’s
— she is six too — I’m six now. (Does
mummy know that I am six? Well, we
might tell her to make sure.) It
will take a long time until I’m twenty-five!
I’ve found some songs that
are on my record at home: Rule
Britannia and Some Speak of Alexander — Gacie has them in a book
and we sing them. All the boys
sing them too, and sometimes Uncle Dave when he is here for the singing.
When the singing is over for me I march up to bed while they sing a
march.”
[John has
just found a ski magazine that seems to interest him far more than letters
just at the moment, so I’ll finish this without more dictation.
As I look back over this letter it seems a bit of a hodge-podge but I
took it down as it came, thinking it would be more interesting than as though
it were censored.
We had supper this week with Dutch friends of ours who still have major
portions of their families in
Holland
. Of course,
all their mail is censored and they say each letter says “We have plenty to
eat” and then this is followed later in the letter with expressions of joy
such as “We are so lucky — we have a piece of meat for Christmas dinner”
or “We are so happy — a friend brought me six eggs for a birthday present”
and this latter from a city which was formerly the egg exporting capital of
Holland. So naturally they feel
that the stories of abundance are for the benefit of the censor, and to ease
the minds of the relatives in
America
.
Our
short-sightedness in this country is beginning to show already in our armament
work — metals are woefully lacking where there could have been an abundance
with proper planning, and in spite of that we are still allowing strikes in
vital industry. The union
situation is appalling and at the moment seems to be run by a bunch of
racketeers.
To return to
the real subject of this epistle — the Yale Committee has written to us asking about plans for the summer for John.
Apparently many of the children are going to go off to camp for the
summer; but we have felt that John was just getting established here and that
we would rather have him with us for the summer with perhaps a week or two off
somewhere for a little change and holiday.
He seems very happy doing the things we do and I really think it would
be better than sending him off to some Committee-sponsored camp.
However, if you feel differently about it will you please let me know?
Yesterday
John amused us very much — he came flying down the hill and said.
“Didn’t I come fast? Don’t
you think I look rather more streamlined with my arms out like that?”
We assured him that he did, tho’ the idea of that chubby little boy
looking streamlined amused us no end.
Dave sends
his kindest regards as I do
Sincerely,
Grace
D. Bacon
123
Woodstock Rd.
Oxford
April
10th 1941
My dear Gacie (if I may be so
bold!)
Your
letter was the greatest pleasure to us, &
we were most interested to hear of all the family doings.
It seems so curious to think that all you people were deep in snow
while our garden here was definitely beginning to “burgeon forth” & is
now bright with daffodils. Between
you & me I am far more interested in my onions than my daffodils this
year! It’s thrilling to see one’s
own vegetables sprouting where a short time ago there was lawn.
We have not taken all the lawn up but we have two pretty good beds in
the middle of it, where we hope the potatoes, peas & beans will grow.
This digging for victory, as the government calls it is most
satisfactory when things go right, but I have been much disgruntled by finding
all my young lettuces being eaten by big fat woodpigeons that start pulling at
them as soon as it is light.
We
have staying with us my husband’s niece Margaret & her little girl Mary,
aged three. They had a pretty bad
spell of “blitz” near
London
& the child hadn’t been out for a walk for two months ‘till she came
to us. When the bombs started
falling she & her mother used to get under the kitchen table & start
polishing the floor — the floor being the safest place.
I think Margaret must have had wonderful self-control & could not
have imparted any fear to Mary, as the small thing has apparently come out of
it all completely unscathed & calls the air raid sirens “our friends”.
It
is lovely to have a little girl about the house — she is almost 8 months
older than Judy & of course the children’s nurse, who up to the time
they came was doing housework, is delighted to have a bit of her old job back
again. Margaret
& I take it in turn weekly to do the cooking & we all,
including the nurse, have war jobs as well on certain afternoons.
There always has to be someone one the spot to answer the phone &
let in the patients, so we are all busy & enjoy it too.
We
have no maids as everyone who can should be released for war work.
A good bit of time has to be spent going round the shops as things are
not as easy as they were in the catering line.
We have plenty to eat but certain things are difficult to get & one
has to use imagination more in thinking out meals.
Oxford
is very crowded just now & one has to be early at the shops to get some of
the more popular things. Mary
& nurse have just gone off each with a gas mask hung over her shoulder
(& the former pushing a doll’s pram!) to try & obtain some cake.
I ought to have made some but I’m not a very clever cook &
rather slow. I doubt they will get
any - this being Easter weekend — should have sent them, earlier!
I
do fire watching on Mondays now. If
there is an alert I spend an hour walking up & down two blocks & if
there’s nothing doing I come indoors and watch the skies from the nursery
window. I fall asleep off & on
but always wake up if I hear a bomber overhead.
We’ve been lucky so far but one has to be ready.
We have two bags of sand in our porch ready to put out an incendiary if
one falls anywhere near.
Please
tell John the old Italian organ grinder still comes every Saturday for his 6d.
He came while there were no children in the house at all, but Daddy
never forgot him. He has even been
known to leave a patient to go out and pay him!
I
went to
London
on Monday last. My husband had to
go to vote for a new president of the Royal Society of Medicine, so I and one
or two others took the opportunity of a lift in the car.
I spent some time gleaning things here & there in the shops in the
way of food & then went to look at the damage.
It is amazing how life goes on as usual & how used you get
to the gaps in the rows of shops. There
are many blocks untouched at all & thank goodness Big Ben looks the same
as usual! It made me furious
though to think they had the damned audacity to touch
Buckingham
Palace
.
Even there, though, the damage is very slight.
But it’s such impudence!
Well, must stop & make a
cup of tea & then get a pudding for supper.
With
love to you all & a hug for John (if he’s not too big to take it)
From
Vera
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
1st
April 1941
Dear Alec:
(I’ll write this letter just to my father because I haven’t seen
him for so long). I’m reading
very well and I’m on the grandmother stories, and that is very far in the
first book. At our school we have
proctors to keep the school quiet and today I was a proctor.
I hope I won’t get on the list at all this week for talking in the
halls. I’ve been down to our
boat and I helped with the varnishing. The
boat is 31 feet long and takes five feet of water to sail it in.
The mast is about 40 feet long. I
went into the boathouse with Dunny and saw the mast there.
I have a garden and plant flowers and radishes and peas.
I get a hoe and dig a line and put fertilizer in and put in the seed
and cover them up. Today my
radishes were up and so I weeded them. And
I take an hours rest and look at books.
Now about the Easter Eggs. I
colored three — I really had more because I put two designs on a few of my
eggs. We climbed a mountain before
Easter and the name of it was the Sleeping Giant.
We had a picnic and we had sardines, hamburger, milk, rolls, tomato
juice, doughnuts and marshmallows — some people toasted them and some people
didn’t.
With love from
John Cooke
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
April 21st 1941
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Cooke,
John’s letter (his third) was taken down just as he talked, tho’
there are always a few asides that I am not fast enough to catch — some of
them choice, I’m afraid. Your
letters have been a great delight to John — two and a postcard have arrived
since your return and he wants each one read twice and discusses them very
thoroughly.
I haven’t been able to substantiate the story of the janitor
knock-out and think it must have been confused with the incident of the
stone-throwing which you no doubt know about — at least I hope you do for it
was very funny.
John continues to be lots of fun for us all.
He is a perfect fit for country life and seems very happy
As to his clothes — they
will really be a very small matter and he is growing so fast that I’m afraid
that by the time we got the arrangements made he’d be a new size.
So why don’t you let us do it, and you send him the occasional
handkerchiefs? Also a necktie once
in a while, and sometime for a gift he would love a leather belt — all our
boys wear belts and he has decided that he must wear one too instead of his
braces. The one he is using could
easily go around him twice but he cherishes it, and I’m afraid it could only
be supplanted by an English one.
Miss Lawton investigated us the other day — John and I were gardening when
she arrived so we let her sit on a fertilizer tub and watch — the visit wasn’t
at all painful, to us at least, and I hope she considered me adequate as a
foster parent — she didn’t say.
John was very sad — in fact his eyes filled with tears — when he
discovered that he couldn’t send his vegetables to
England
, but was consoled when he found that he could sell them to
me and buy something less perishable to send with the proceeds.
Life goes on much as usual here, with the people of many minds as to
foreign policy, our part in the war etc. At
the moment there is much talk of new taxes — incomes in the upper middle
classes to be hit particularly hard it seems.
The thought seems to be that the very rich have already been taxed as
much as the traffic will bear.
Supper time
for the young and I must go to read to them — I like to keep up the
tradition that reading at supper is better than radio, but at times it’s too
keen for me.
Sincerely,
Grace
Bacon
123
Woodstock Rd.
Oxford
June
19th, 1941
My dear Grace,
How
I wish you might see the joy & interest with which your letters are
received! I read them aloud at
breakfast & of course John’s
too. How darling it is of you to
give us all the details for which we long & it is also from you that we
get a good bit of our news of Jean & Judy too.
You must spend so much time & thought on your letters & it is a
work of art to get so much out of John. His
descriptions are fascinating — do you take down his words verbatim in
shorthand?
We
have just had a terrible blow. The
only other grandson in the Cooke family has been killed in an airplane crash.
We do not know the details yet & only heard last night.
He was such a splendid youngster — not more than 20 & had just
got his wings — the only child & loved by us all.
I think John should know if you think he is in a fit state to receive
news of this kind. I don’t see
how we can keep all sorrows from him & I’m not sure it would be right to
do so. Of course he may not
remember Allen, but it was only the summer before last that he was swimming
& playing with us all on the beach at
Bournemouth
.
John is the only boy on this side of the family now.
He must some day be made to realize that he has to take his place in
building up his country again & that we look to him & his generation
to carry on where these poor lads left off.
He is having such a wonderful chance now & I pray that he will be
worth all that is being done for him. I
wonder if, without any sentimentality, he might be talked to about this
occasionally. These children must
not forget altogether what others are suffering.
Is he ever homesick, by the way? Don’t
feel you can’t tell me if he is, and on the other hand I shan’t be hurt if
he isn’t! In fact, I sincerely
hope he isn’t & I can’t imagine for one moment that he is!
I
am having a rather hectic week. I
have been in for my first aid & home nursing exams, had a day in
London
& have had a mother & three children to visit me, the youngest of
which I hope I am to be allowed to keep, if not for the duration, at least
some months. His name is John
& he is 18 months & is curly haired, blue eyed & chubby so
like my John was at that age. The
mother is doing war work & has to find, anyway, temporary homes for the
children. Our nurse wants to keep
all three & I think it may come to that.
If only I could find more domestic help I would not hesitate.
We
had such a lovely picnic in the garden — we hadn’t had anything like it
since the children went away. We
were very lucky this week in getting ½ lb of chocolate biscuits, & we
felt absolutely pre-war! The
children all shed what scanty clothes they had on, played in the tiny pond,
& rode John’s old tricycle, which he has grown out of & played on
the swing and had a lovely time. We
hated to see them go, but of course this was only an interview so I couldn’t
expect the mother to leave her baby right away.
You probably think I’m cracked sending my own away & then taking
on some more, but I was one of the very few lucky mothers & there are a
great many who would have taken the opportunity too if it had been offered to
them, so I feel the least I can do is to give a home to another child in what
has hitherto been a safe area.
Of
course, no one can foretell what will happen in the next few months but I
think that for a time things may be pretty grim & I am very
thankful my family is right out of everything.
It was a good step closing down all the German consulates in
America
.
Roosevelt
is simply speeding ahead in everything & we are all tremendously grateful.
Please
give my love to all the family & tell John I loved his letter all about
his overnight trip & baking of the clams.
I’m so glad you are teaching him to use his hands.
Tell me more about your dissatisfaction about John’s schooling
sometime, & could I see his
last 2 reports? I hope you’re
not too bothered.
Love,
Vera
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
,
Conn.
July 3rd 1941
Dear Vera,
June is always a full month in this family and this one was a corker
— lots of fun but no time for rest and reflection, and practically none for
letters. Dunny’s class held
their commencement here and they came to a picnic supper, 93 strong.
It rained cats and dogs so it was held indoors and a shoehorn might
have been useful to get the latecomers in.
Tho’ a little thick it was lots of fun and you would have loved to
see John entering into all the festivities.
It came a little hard when he had to go to bed before the party was
over and apropos your question about homesickness, that is a case in
point. I think he has found that
change in our way of living hard to manage — if I can make myself a little
more clear — I feel, as I hear him discuss his life in England that the life
of a six year old boy would be very much separated from that of the rest of
the family, coming together at planned intervals, tea time, certain
expeditions etc. Well here in our
household, where there has never been a children’s nurse and never more than
one servant, and sometimes not that, the life is of necessity very different
— most things are done together, younger members separating off from the
main group when the business or pleasure in hand is not suitable for them.
Well John loves the part of doing things together, but has not yet
learned that the doing things in suitable turns is part of the whole scheme,
and I think has moments of thinking “it wouldn’t be this way if I were at
home”. He has never said
anything of the sort, nor shown any other signs of homesickness, but I have
wondered if that wasn’t what was going on in the back of his head at the
times when he was sent off to bed while something very exciting was going on.
We had a real
triumph last night tho’ — Dave came home about seven and said “lets take
a little sail tonight with the Webbs and Harris families.”
Well, I knew that meant a
midnight
return, so when John said, “Do I go too?”
I told him that it would be too late, but that he was going on the
weekend cruise. For the first time
when suffering a disappointment like that his eyes didn’t fill with tears
and he waived us goodbye very gaily, tho’ he and Ben were the only ones not
included. I was much pleased for
it is the only way things can be managed here and it looks as tho’ the
hurdle has been jumped.
As to the school question, I’m still not completely decided in my own
mind about that — I’m sending the two report cards that have come to us.
As you see, even tho’ they say there has been improvement they say he
is still “stubborn”. Well now,
he is never stubborn here and so I feel the fault cannot be entirely
with John. Then too, as I work
with him in his reading I can’t see that they’ve gotten anywhere with that
— we are doing it everyday this summer but I feel it would be easier if it
had not even been started at school, for it seems to me all that was
accomplished was a resistance to the whole thing.
However, I think it is worth another year’s trial for the sake of
continuing certain friendships and contacts and then we can see.
I assure you that I will watch things closely and help him with his
work at this end.
I will tell him of his cousin’s death for as you say he can’t be
shielded from everything. The only
times that we have discussed specifically the trouble and tragedies in the
rest of the world are the times when I feel he is being unreasonable about
having things (particularly food) exactly according to his preconceived ideas.
As you may have gathered I have little patience with fussiness in such
matters and about a month ago, when John opened the meal by saying that he
didn’t like mashed potatoes, we spent quite a little time discussing just
what peoples in other parts of the world were having for their lunch that day.
We have
posted ration lists on the bulletin board and now there is a plan afoot to
live for two weeks on an English ration list if we can get an accurate one.
I feel that children are not made permanently happy by being shielded
from every unpleasantness, but I do feel that we should give them as much of a
feeling of security as we can. I
know that you must have hundreds of questions about how we handle different
things as they arise, so do ask them and I’ll do my best, for I want you to
share as much as possible in the delightful process of John’s growing up.
I’ll stop and give John a turn — no I just type as fast as I can
and when he gets ahead of me he waits until I catch up — he curls up here on
the couch and then when I pause, comes over to the desk to have me read what
he has written.
Love, Grace
123
Woodstock Rd.
Oxford
Aug
6th, 1941
My dear Gacie,
We are very grateful for your long letter of July 3rd.
It gave us a great insight into the difficulties you are encountering,
& obviously successfully overcoming, in John.
I have read the reports through carefully 2 or 3 times & I must say
I did not feel, particularly in the first one, very impressed by the way they
have coped with John. I especially
disliked the phrase “ partly from lack of interest & partly from his
preoccupation with his finger-sucking”.
Well it is Mrs. Beach’s business to stimulate interest in her
children & I felt there was a definite touch of annoyance that she had
failed to do this & that the finger had won.
The habit, I know, is an irritating one & she showed her irritation
of it. The report, to me seems to
lack any sympathy with the terrific psychological upheaval the child was going
through. He had been uprooted from
the security of his home & his father’s presence, had passed through
many phases before settling at the Keith’s where things for a small boy were
far from easy & then me, his only link with home, was severed & he had
an absolutely new set of adjustments to make.
Is it to be wondered at that he “fought his playmates & weeps
easily”? The world must have
seemed a very strange & insecure place for a small chap & I really
think if it had not been for your loving & sympathetic interest he might
well have become what is known as a “difficult child” to the
psychologists. But thank goodness
you have saved him from that & my debt of gratitude to you can never be
repaid.
I
think the idea of making John live on an English diet for a couple of weeks
would be quite a good one. This
may give you a slight idea.
55
cents worth of meat a week, but during the summer liver & kidney is
unrationed.
2
oz. of butter
2
oz. cooking fat or marg.
½
sugar
8
oz. cheese
4
oz. bacon
2
oz. tea
1
egg
½
lb jam a month (Golden
syrup & marmalade come under jam, but not honey — but you can seldom get
it).
That
is the actual rationed food. Besides
that there are other things that are not easy.
I am only able to get one packet of cereal a week & ½ lb.
biscuits. Tomatoes, raspberries
& gooseberries disappeared directly they were controlled.
There a few dessert gooseberries at 85 cents a lb. & plenty of
cherries 60 cents a lb. But one
can’t afford that. Peaches are
60 cents each! I have tinned fruit
in store but can’t get any more yet, & I keep mine for emergencies
mostly. There are fresh vegetables
in plenty, but no oranges or bananas, of course.
Lemons, thank heavens, have appeared again after several months &
fish is now controlled & reasonable. Milk
is difficult in some places, but I have so far been lucky & I hope I may
continue so as I have my little foster son with me & hope to have more
children later on.
Honor,
the children’s nurse, is still with me & I think will be exempted from
civil duty as she is doing good work with us & as long as she remains I
can do the war work that seems most suitable & that I like — having
children of people who are engaged in war work to stay with me.
I have got a maid for cleaning etc. now so things are easier & I
just have the cooking & my war job two afternoons a week to do now.
It
has been almost impossible to run a doctor’s house of this size (12 rooms, a
large basement, 3 flights of stairs at the front & two at the back) with
only a daily woman for 2 hours, & I really have felt very exhausted. Things are better now though, & we even hope to take 10 days
vacation soon, but first my sister & her three children & nurse are
coming for a fortnight next week.
Lots
of Love, Vera.
The
Mill Inn
Withington, Glos.
Aug
29th 1941
My dear Gacie,
Many
thanks for your interesting letter of August 4th. You
really are the most enterprising family & we both love to hear of all your
doings. Your children are all so
independent & courageous — the boys doing holiday jobs & learning
& seeing so much, & Betsy learning to fly!
John’s life with you should be an inspiration to him & I feel
sure he is getting a grounding which will set his feet on the right path.
This is something of a mixed metaphor but you will understand what I
mean. It sounds to me as though he
too has more enterprise and courage — I was really delighted to hear of his
jumping into the water — the thought would have filled him with terror a
year ago. That incident alone
shows how things are going with him.
It
is curious to think how the war has completely changed his life.
For me it has made a gap which is never filled, but for him it has
brought a freedom and a breadth of living which he would never have known.
I sent him away because I thought it was the only thing to do at the
time — things looked so very black — but I never realised what the
complete change of environment would mean for him & what a much fuller
life he would lead. I am glad for
his sake that I returned to
England
because otherwise he would never have gone to live with you, & although I
did my best, he certainly wasn’t getting from me all that he needed, living
as we were rather on top of each other.
The
thing that really worries me is the indefiniteness of all this.
We can none of us tell how long the war will last and how can we expect
you to look after our child for an unspecified number of years?
And what if anything should happen to us both in an air raid?
John’s wealth at the moment is not very great — he would have about
£1500
if we should get killed, & if my father’s business survives this war
there would in the dim distance be a little more to come to him, but it is
difficult to know how much.
If
we should be bumped off I would much rather John were brought up a good
American until he was able to choose for himself than be sent home to a
country and relations he had almost forgotten.
Of course, after the war it will obviously be easier to get money out
of the country & then relations over here would be able to pay for his
education & training in some trade or profession.
But
what about you? How long,
honestly, are you prepared to keep him, with taxes flying skywards and war
only just around the corner? How I
wish I had had all this conversation with you while I was over there but I’m
afraid I should have found it a very hard subject to discuss at that moment.
I buried my head in the sand & tried to make myself believe it
would not be for more than a year.
If
only we could help you as you are helping us.
I suppose it is not possible that you have a banking account in
England
?
I know a few people have — but they seem so few.
I don’t seem even to be able to help with clothes.
They just go down if I send them, & then the waste seems so dreadful when clothes
this side are already rationed. The
only way that I can see we may ever be able to repay you (& that is
providing we survive the war!) is by having your boys over here & showing
them something of England — but that seems so inadequate & such a long
time to wait. I have never before
had time to write to you much on this subject but at last there is nothing to
interrupt me.
With
love & many thanks for the snapshots which I was terribly glad to have
(how that boy has grown!)
from
Vera
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
Sept 17th 1941
Dear Vera,
Your August 29th letter, written from the Mill Inn, has just
arrived. The uproar has almost
ceased here for Dunny went to Taft this afternoon, Walter left for
South Kent
yesterday, and Tom goes tomorrow.
Besides having the boys getting off we’ve had two house guests so
life has been full. Now I see a
lull and will answer your letter immediately before something else comes up.
I really think that this is a better time to discuss the matter of John’s
future than last February would have been.
To begin with I now know John and I really knew him very little when
you left
America
. We are very
happy with him and I feel sure he is happy here.
At the moment he is flying parachutes from the upstairs window and
singing at the top of his lungs as he runs down to retrieve them.
He has just had a haircut and bath for he was so dirty after the day’s
mud digging that one could scarcely find the boy underneath.
He and Ben have been building an elaborate system of waterworks this
week and have been filthy most of the time.
Another little story I must tell you — my sister has been here and
last week on the boat John handed her the stops from the sail to roll saying,
‘the visiting lady always does this.”
She said “And are you the visiting gentleman?”
John said “Oh no! I’m
one of the family now, you know”. So
I really feel that he feels completely at home now.
When he came here my thought was that it would probably be for at least
four years — and with that in mind we have made certain changes which would
not have been worthwhile if he were to be here for only a year — if I had
thought that, I would have tried to make as few changes in his way of living
as possible and treated him as a temporary guest.
But thinking of the longer period, we have tried to fit him into our
way of living and the adjustment was a little hard at times for him I know.
But now it all seems to be perfectly natural to him — in fact, if I
forget to assign his chore in the morning he comes and asks for it.
Any question of discipline is always quickly settled by an affirmative
answer to his question “ Is that the way the other boys did when they were
six?”
The financial question is negligible now — his clothes cost so little
— with a big garden and a big family one more for meals makes little
difference — his school tuition is being taken care of by some kind
anonymous soul and our own financial condition at the moment is easy.
As to the future, it is difficult to prophesy as you know, but I refuse
to worry about it, and if you are willing to have John share pot luck with our
brood I’m sure we’ll all be happy that way indefinitely.
I’ve come to think that the only real security is good health and
happy memories and I think we can be reasonably sure that John will have those.
The only
thing that I find hard about having him here is the responsibility for his
physical welfare — I find myself worrying about accidents far more than I do
with my own and hedging him about with unreasonable restrictions — I shall
have to learn to get over this for my common sense tells me that worrying
about a child never kept one safe. But
I find it difficult to be philosophical about risks for another person’s
child.
School opens
for Hugh, Ben and John a week from tomorrow — I do hope it goes well for
John next year –he has improved a great deal in his reading this summer —
if only they would capitalize on his wonderful sense of humor I’m sure it
would go swimmingly for he has a wonderfully keen mind and learns so easily.
He knows the names of all the different types of boats he has seen this
summer and can even distinguish between a ketch and a yawl, and many people
never learn to do that.
Love,
Grace.
123
Woodstock Rd.
Oxford
Oct
18th 1941
My dear Grace,
Your
lovely letter was much appreciated & it is the greatest relief to us to
know that you can keep John for some time to come yet.
If you ever feel waves of gratitude rolling over you, please note that
they come from this side of the Atlantic & they roll along as often as I
think of you, which is very very frequently during each day!
How
I would like to know who the kind soul is who pays for John’s school —
I do hope his or her kindness will be justified by that young person.
I’m
hoping you had time for a bit of a holiday — young people are very tiring to
have about one all the time & a husband & wife should make a get-away
from time to time. I find my three
foster children very nice to have about the place, but I’m always ready to
hand them back to Honor after I’ve had them on her afternoon out!
I
am now a VAD (Red Cross nurse) & have given up the blood transfusion work
to go & help in the maternity hospital instead.
I go, or am just starting to go, 3 times a week from 2-6 in the
afternoons. I like the work but it’s
frightfully tiring, and I felt at first as if I’d never find my way about.
I don’t have anything to do with the babies yet, but I take teas to
the mothers (having previously cut dozens of slices of bread) &
then I help with the washing, bedpans, bed making & take temperatures
& pulses. This last I find agonising
in case I don’t get it right! Alec
thinks the attractive uniform is wasted in a women’s hospital!
I certainly feel very businesslike in my apron with a big red X on it.
Alec
& I have joined the Bach Choir again this winter as usual.
It is good to get away from things & go to have a good sing once a
week. We are doing the B minor
Mass — I expect you have often done it too.
We hold our rehearsals in the Sheldonian Theatre — an uncomfortable
place but romantic. Handel used to
conduct his orchestra there & it was built by Wren in his early days.
John has been to the top of it & looked out at the spires of
Oxford
but he won’t remember.
Will
you tell him Nanny wrote to me the other day & asked about him?
Say she is married & has got a nice house where he will visit her
one day. She is coming to see me
soon. He loved Nanny &
she thought there was just no one like John — he was the first baby she had
entire charge of.
What
a magnificent stand the Russians are making .
I hope we can send them all the help they need before it’s too late.
Everything seems to take such a long time.
They are saving us, I’m sure.
Lots
of love to you all,
From
Vera
Hickory
Hill,
North Haven
30th
December 1941
Dear Mummy and Daddy,
It is just past Christmas and I forget the way we celebrated in
England
.
This is how we celebrated here. We
put the tree up the day before Christmas.
I helped Dunny put up the wreath with sleigh bells.
And I got a book of the Royal Air Force from Aunt Grace, I think it
was. And we put up tinsel, but we
didn’t put the balls up this year.
And Christmas Eve we read
the story from the bible and it’s the same one I think is in one of my
books. But Gacie knows it all by
heart anyway. Then we hung up our
stockings. Then I went to bed and
in the morning I discovered that Santy had brought up my stocking and I got a
hockey puck to play ice hockey with. When
it was light enough to look at pictures or read we opened our stockings in our
beds and then we took them to Gacie’s bed and eight people could get into it
on Christmas morning.
It was only eight because
Betsy didn’t get here until
nine
o’clock
. And we
had a parade singing Come All Ye Faithful and I led it.
After we had opened two presents we had our breakfast — two of the
big ones that were underneath the Christmas tree.
And I liked my Indian suit very much but the pants got dirty very fast
— Gacie is going to wash them they were so dirty.
And I loved my house-building blocks and I don’t know how to put them
together yet but the boys help me and we’ve made one nice house and a garage
— in the building block book they don’t say garage.
I got a nice green wagon and Hughie gave me a can of nails.
And I had a package of Ban-Aids and it said “Sentinal, Band-Aids for
cuts, blisters and small wounds”. And
Wallie gave me some red ear-muffs and Dunny gave me a circus thing with a
little spring thing with a monkey on the end
And Ben gave a Tinker Toy that I can build everything with and Tom gave
Ben a set bigger than mine but we can’t use them together because we would
get them all mixed up. And Ben
made a funny contraption and ran it with the steam engine we have.
And I could have gotten a Tinker Toy with a wind up motor and an
electric motor.
And we had a very nice
Christmas dinner with sixteen people and then I went to bed.
And that is the end of my letter because I’m tired of writing and I
want to get out and play with my wagon that I was telling you about.
I think this a sort of funny time to be writing a letter myself because
I’ve just finished breakfast.
With love from John — and Gacie’s going to finish the letter
because I have so many things to do.
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
Dec
30th 1941
As you see, exhaustion set in suddenly but what a stream of
conversation we did have — John is so full of Christmas excitement — I
think he has had a very happy holiday and he added greatly to our joy — his
enthusiasms are contagious and he was fairly bursting with secrets before the
day arrived.
The festivities were many and varied and I won’t attempt to enumerate
them all. Our Christmas was a very
happy one — I think we here in this country clutched a little at happiness
this year feeling that next year might have brought many changes.
Tom is almost nineteen and there seems to be trend towards lowering the
draft age, tho’ the last law left it at twenty.
We are already feeling many results of war — tire rationing is the
most drastic change to come so far. It
will make a great change to our living habits and some of the change will be
for the better no doubt. Many
things are already hard or impossible to get, especially those involving
strategic metals. However, as long
as the war touches only material things I feel we have nothing to complain
about, but I fear we have all gotten soft with good living.
To return
to more pleasant subjects — John amused me last night.
We were coming home from a party and I complimented him on his behavior
saying, “ John I was so proud of you tonight — you were practically
perfect.” He said, “What did I
do that I wasn’t plain perfect?”
You see he has high standards.
Our best
wishes for a happy New Year — We’ll take good care of your darling boy and
my New Year’s resolution is to be a better reporter on his doings.
With love, Grace
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
Jan 17th 1942
Dear Vera,
John has just finished typing his letter and while I’m still in
practice of rapid typing — and I can assure you it is very rapid in order to
keep up with his ideas — I’ll get a short one off.
Your printed letters are a great success — they seem so much more his
own since he can really read them with very little help.
And the letter from his father meant so much to him — he kept it on
the hall table to display to all visitors for a long time
The war as
yet is hard to realize here in this country — the most obvious thing is our
rubber shortage — no tires. I’ve
rationed myself to 75 miles per week and since my former mileage was 250 it
requires some changes for us all. It
means more staying home, more walking and more bus!
The first two I enjoy thoroughly, but I can’t say so much for the
last — I hate waiting for the buses and then they are so hot when they do
come. With all tire and car
production stopped we will se more changes by another year, and everyone here
is looking for a long pull.
Dave is
frightfully busy — anti-aircraft gun parts and airplane parts.
He spent the first part of the week in
Detroit
and is in
Washington
for the next few days — I hate being a widow over the
weekend.
By the way, your last letter wasn’t censored — will they not be,
now that we are allies? I do wish
you wouldn’t worry over the money part of John’s life here — I know you
must have many other things to thinks about, with your foster children’s
problem mother! I hope that has
all been straightened out — it must be very difficult taking charge, with
the mother always in the offing — we none of us would do things at all the
same way, and I don’t but see how there could help but be difficulties —
like these divorces with the children living with both parents!
With John’s
schooling taken care of, his expenses are negligible — they really amount to
nothing worth mentioning. As to
his schooling, I find that that comes from a so-called Mellon fund established
to help English boys in college here. Since
there is no use for it in that way now, it has been diverted to use for boys
in the lower schools — isn’t that a help?
During the
latter part of the Christmas holidays I took the Bacon boys to
New Hampshire
for skiing — John stayed with Mrs. Myres and the visit
was a great success from all standpoints — she said he was a perfect guest
and thought him quite delightful. He
has taken to using certain big words lately and the latest one is “technique”.
He amused me so much the other day — I was playing him the records of
Hayden’s G Major Symphony and I said “John do you want me to tell you a
little about this music?”
“Oh yes”
said he, “All about it. I’m
very much interested in Papa Hayden’s technique”.
Well, I must
stop and figure out income tax — that will be my busy work for the next
month I think — you see I’m the family bookkeeper so it’s my job.
Our income taxes are not as large as yours, but I believe we have many
so called “hidden” (I can find them) taxes, which compensate.
Love from us
all, Grace
123
Woodstock Rd
Oxford
February
10th 1942
My Dear Gacie,
Two
such lovely letters again written on January the 17th!
You are wonderful to keep me so up to date in all yours & John’s
doings. I can’t remember if I’ve
written since the letters telling me all about Christmas.
You & John gave such an absolutely perfect picture of such a
joyous time and I’m so grateful to you for making his first Christmas away
from me so terribly happy. I
remember the meeting of the Bacon clan the year before & how even then —
when I little thought you would soon mean so much to us all — you & the
boys gave us such lots of presents & made us feel part of that grand
American family. Not just
refugees. This war has taken away
much, but it has given me, personally, a great deal too — friendships &
memories that otherwise I could never have had.
I keep on remembering that when the news seems so terrible & the
children so very far away.
And
now these lovely letters about the winter sports!
I can just picture it all. But
I know a little of what it must mean to you.
You are always there — you have to be — to be consulted, to plan
and to advise, and you are never free & I don’t suppose you ever get a
rest from it!
I
am so sorry about the cutting down of the car mileage —
America
is so dependant on cars because the distances are so great & your
activities so many. I do hope you
won’t have to be rationed in many things — Lucia Fulton said you were only
allowed to buy 1 lb. of sugar at a
time, but I expect she meant 1 lb. a head per week.
We are rationed in soap this week!
One piece of toilet soap or 3 oz. of soap flakes or one
piece of scrubbing soap per week per person!
So dirty or don’t launder, which?
I suppose everything will be rationed before the war is over but they
are doing it gradually so we’ve plenty of time to get used to it &
wonder in an amused fashion where the blow will fall next.
My private guess is toilet paper!
I
know my memory is dreadful - I must keep a note of when I write to you
because I can’t remember if I told you the proofs and report etc. arrived
safely. It is good of you to send
all that because we do feel that we are sharing closely in John’s growing
up. I think I shall know him best
of the three when we meet again. The
letters are so absolutely John & I can see his face as he tells you
what to write. I thought his
report quite encouraging & am far more interested in the fact that he gets
on well with his companions & is interested & bright at handwork than
that his writing is untidy & his arithmetic poor!
This also applies to me too & although I hope he will be far
better than me at both these subjects, yet I shan’t worry if he doesn’t
excel himself for a bit! I am
awfully glad that he is really reading better now & I think that is
certainly due to you.
How
I do hope with you that the war will end before Tom is called up.
It is awful to have this cloud over all you do & to feel that these
happy carefree family days are passing all too quickly.
I look back on the last few months before I took the children to
America
as almost paradise now — but I don’t suppose they really were.
We were all together though.
With
lots of love,
Vera
Hickory Hill
North Haven
25th November 1942
Dear Vera,
As I look over the letter John finished before supper the regret comes
once more that I haven’t kept copies of them all — they really make a wonderful record of his changes and growth.
I wish you could have seen him as he dictated the part about popovers.
He got the recipe from the kitchen and struggled to read the script.
I noticed he remembered the temperatures and times without referring to
the recipe at all. His delight
when his popovers were pronounced by Dave to be about the best he’d ever
eaten knew no bounds and now he’s eager to try more cookery.
Yesterday the
third Christmas package came from you marked “woolens”: so now I think
everything is here. John’s only
wish for Christmas so far is for a Scout Knife so I think that will be what I
shall hide for him in the cupboard from his father.
I hope you like his present to you — as he looked at it when we chose
it he said, “ Why Gacie, this is a really lovely book.”
Have I told you before how well school is going for John this year?
His third grade teacher is fine and seems to understand him so well —
he gets on well with the other youngsters and comes home at the end of the day
looking fresh as a daisy. Hugh
said that he has become the defender of the weak, no less.
There is a new lad there — very nice, Hugh says, but smaller than the
others and very shy — of course the combination is fair meat for
persecution. Hugh said he saw John
a few days ago standing in front of the little boy warding off all comers
saying “ Aw leave him alone — he’s alright — he’s really nice.”
We here have been so thrilled with the war news lately.
It seems really to be a turning point doesn’t it?
Last week I worked a bit on fuel rationing — when I heard people
groan at their allotment I was glad we were safely changed to coal.
Hugh and Ben take care of the furnace; they are paid 50 cents per week
and fined 25 cents whenever the fire goes out.
So far we’ve collected no fines.
John is looking forward to the time (spring) when we start the little
hot water heater, for he is to be allowed to tend that.
Our gasoline ration has been cut to 3 galloons per week for
non-essential driving — essential here means that by which you earn your
living. That gives me 50 miles per
week and I find I can manage on that quite easily but it does make life
different. I’m going to try and
save up a bit for the holiday time when the family is bigger and I need it
more.
I’m feeling particularly sentimental about this Christmas for I’m
afraid it is the last one we’ll have all together.
Unless the war is over Tom and Walter will be in the service next year
for our 18-19 draft bill has gone through and Tom has already had his
questionnaire. The fact that he is
enlisted in the Army Reserve Corp and is enrolled in an engineering course may
give him a chance to finish his year but we don’t know.
Walter will, I think, be able to finish the year out and then he plans
on an officer’s training school for Merchant Marine.
I’m not at all Spartan about it and though I don’t say so to them
it makes me sick to think about it.
Must stop now and do a bit of sewing — the boys are rolling bandages
for English hospitals — maybe you’ll use one that John rolled — and I
have to sew them into five yard lengths before they can roll them so must do
my stint for they have run out of supplies.
With love
to you both,
Grace
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
14th December 1942
Dear Vera,
For a long time I’ve thought that I would take one day with John and
follow him through the day, just what he did with bits of conversation quoted
verbatim, and send it to you — last Sunday I finally got at it and jotted
things down so I wouldn’t forget them so I’ll start from the beginning and
give the best history that I can of his day December 6th, 1942.
His first appearance followed our breakfast tray — he never leaves
his room until he hears that come up. He
found us talking in bed and stopped suspiciously: “Are you doing income tax?”
“No, not today, John; why do you ask that?”
“ Because I just hate income tax”.
Dave: “Why do you hate income tax, John?
It doesn’t trouble you very much does it?”
J: “Yes it does because for a whole
day neither you nor Gacie will play with us. “
G: “Well, you don’t need to worry yet John for it will be another
month before we do that again.”
J: “Then I’ll go get my breakfast.”
This
conversation dates from a Sunday in January last year when Dave and I secluded
ourselves all afternoon to finish the income tax accounts.
I get things all together and figured out and then we go over them
together to be sure there are no mistakes, and John just can’t bear to have
us shut ourselves away like that. He’s
very funny about it.
He
reappears in a few minutes. “Gacie,
can I have an egg?” “Yes, if
you’ll be sure to clean the dishes.” J:
“ I think I’ll just boil it this time and then I won’t have the frying
pan to clean.”
We see no more of him until we get up some time later and find them all
skating on the small pond that forms across the road.
John now skates very well for an eight year older — and what is more
important from my purely selfish standpoint, is a complete self-starter —
gets his own skates and puts them on without help.
A little
later I joined them on the pond and John skates to the accompaniment of a
steady flow of conversation, of which every sentence starts with “Gee Whiz.”
I won’t attempt to get that conversation down, but after I’d been
there a wee bit he comes up and says so sweetly “ Would you like to skate
with me?” He puts out his hands
in the approved boy-girl manner of one crossed over the other, and off we go,
he proud as punch as he says “I can skate with you now just like the other
boys do, can’t I?”
We skate until we are tired and then, with Dave’s help, decide to
burn off the tall grass at the edges of the pond so that the next rain will
make it bigger. We get rakes,
brooms and wet sacks and do it very scientifically so that the fire won’t
get away from us and burn too much. It’s
lots of fun and John loves to do it. This
takes about an hour and as we were finished John looked up at the sky and said
“Look Gacie, we’ve burned away all the clouds but one, there’s just one
little white one left and all the rest is blue sky.”
The dinner
bell rings at this point and we all do full justice to it.
It was rare roast beef, which we all like, followed by gingerbread with
hot sauce on it. We’ve
completely corrupted John for he now likes deserts as well as we do.
The table conversation covered many subjects, but ended thusly.
J:
“I don’t understand at all what makes the sun go from one side to
the other.”
Ben: “But you see John, it doesn’t.
It’s the earth that moves. See,
I’ll show you” (picking up a salt cellar with which to demonstrate).
J:
“Oh no! I know what would
be better (he runs to get the globe) now you can really show me.”
All join in the explanation at this
point and we finish up the little subject of astronomy in a few minutes.
J:
(studying the globe) “ Oh look, here’s Australia on the other side
of the world from England — and when they talk about British soldiers in
Australia I though it was right close to England.”
That opened the subject of the
British Empire
and we finished that off with the desert, so you see his
range of interests runs quite a gamut.
Rest, during which he plays with his soldiers in his room, follows
lunch, and then he gets himself ready for the carol singing at Dwight Chapel.
He can take his own bath and make himself spick and span — needs help
only for the tying of the tie. He
sings with a large group of children who form a Christmas Choir there every
year — Hugh isn’t singing this year for his voice has changed to bass and
that isn’t very desirable for a children’s choir.
Home again for tea and John says “Shall I help you with tea?”
(He looks about the kitchen) “Um!
Rolls and honey — oh I just love Sunday, don’t you Gacie?”
He helps me with tea, which we have on
Sunday night with just firelight and candlelight and it’s always very
festive. The children all love it,
and so do the grown ups, if the truth be told.
Then a bit of singing, and John trots off to bed, making the goodnight
kisses last as long as possible, but really awfully good about always being
the first to bed. And so ends his
day — I think he is really very happy and we all think the way in which he
adjusted to so many changes is really remarkable.
On Saturday we took the boys to see H.G. Wells’ Things to Come.
It was pretty gory in the beginning — I hadn’t remembered that
from the book or I doubt if I would have taken them but the last part was fine
and they were all so interested — John was very proud that it had been
written by an Englishman and produced in England.
Then yesterday we had an elegant snowstorm so we skied all afternoon.
There was much more that I wanted to say but the Christmas pudding must
be made and many letter written so I’ll leave the rest until after
Christmas. I wish we could send
you part of the fun we will have with John this Christmas but the best I can
do is to tell you all about it afterwards — so that I will do, and in the
meantime a great deal of Christmas love from us all.
Grace
Dear Mummy and Daddy and Honor,
How is home? Is the garden
coming on all right? And the roses
all blooming like everything? And
I hope the hose and everything is OK ‘cause you won’t be able to get any.
And I hope Hill is OK. And I hope the
swimming pool is all right. And I
hope all my boats and my money and my train is all OK.
This is what’s happening out here.
Well, since I last wrote Anna Bet and Ellen Keith have been here —
Anna Bet is one of Hughie’s little girl friends, and then of course you know
Ellen Keith. And there was a party
for Tom because he’s in the army now helping to lick the Japs, and the night
after the party they spent the night out here.
And Anna Bet lives way out in
Mt.
Carmel
so it would be kind of hard for her to get home on the night of the party.
And
Saturday and Sunday we were working on the dinghy and we had to paint it and
sand it, and wash out the paint and varnish brushes afterwards.
And we made a hole right through the soap when we washed out the
brushes — when you wash the brushes you just paint the soap and we painted a
hole right through the soap.
And a little later Mrs. LaFarge Senior came out, and we had a good
dinner with rib roast. And oh yes,
we had apple pie for dessert. And
then we went to dancing school and watched Benny’s class dance, and Hughie’s
too.
And I built a water wheel and cut myself on it.
I made it out of tin and took it down to the brook and it works like a
streak of lightening. And I had
Tommy Osborne out the day after I made it.
And we wrestled and we built a dam down at the brook.
Oh yes, and during the vacation I went to the children’s concert —
they played the Overture to the Magic Flute, and the Dance of Death,
and then the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
And then we had Peter and the Wolf and then we had (What’s
that Gacie when the piano plays with them?)
A Piano Concerto. Oh yes,
we had that too and it was an eleven-year-old girl that did it.
And she came from
Massachusetts
.
And she was very good too.
And I’m going out to sail my Star right now so this is the end
of my letter.
With
love from John
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
March 30th 1943
Dear Vera,
Every time I write a letter for John I’m impressed with the size of
his vocabulary — doesn’t it seem very large to you for a little boy?
He does a good deal of planning of his letters now — he said today
“I think I’ll start this letter with a little talk about things at home.”
“Don’t you think that would be a good idea?”
The only prompting I do is from my diary when he asks me what has
happened since he last wrote. He
loves having his letters read back to him and is always so pleased with them.
Lately he has become very much interested in games — checkers and
Parcheesi are his favorites at the moment — he and Tom played countless
games of checkers while Tom was home. He
is wonderful with John, just as he always was with Ben, and their sorrow at
his leaving was quite touching. His
going took so many of my thoughts that I’m quite ashamed to say that I quite
forgot to remind John of the cable he meant to send on your birthday, so you’ll
have to take the will for the deed.
John’s papers have come from the British consulate and I’ll fill
them out today –this is the day I’m devoting to desk — how it does pile up!
Tomorrow I spend the day at an all-day meeting of the Public Health
Board members for the state. I
have two good works — one Public Health Associations and the other Zoning
Commission. The latter is an
elective post and we regulate all building in the town — sizes of lots,
building lines, uses to which property may be put etc.
It is a useful work in a growing town and I’ve been doing it for
about five years and find it very interesting.
I’m really not much of a club woman so concentrate on these two
things.
Saturday the garden was plowed and while Ben and John were at the
concert, Hugh, Dunny and I planted 300 feet of peas.
We always grow a lot for they are our favorite vegetable.
We’ll put in two more plantings during the next two weeks.
How I love to garden — the house suffers from a distinct lack of
attention from now until fall.
We’ve all been so excited over the North African news — if only
Rommel doesn’t fool us all again — he is foxy isn’t he?
5:00 P.M.
I didn’t get this finished and have been out all afternoon making
surgical dressings — we make them in this neighborhood twice a week.
I was a little hesitant about going today since it was a rainy day with
five frisky boys here, but I did and all went well.
When is “Little Austerity” due? — I want to
tell John just long enough ahead for him to have some of the anticipation, but
so he won’t think it too long a wait — I’m sure he’ll be very much
pleased.
We haven’t made any camp plans yet — I don’t know how adequately
the camps will be staffed this summer — boys for counselors will be scarce,
I should think, and I don’t think John would react very well to a complete
staff of females — he is certainly a man’s man!
We have
joined the Spring Glen Club, which is nearby and has a swimming pool, so that
will be fun for him if camp doesn’t seem practical.
We
are going to put the boat over too — getting to and fro can be done by bus
though it takes twice as long. Dave
gets so much relaxation from his sailing that I think it worthwhile even
though our use is limited.
I can’t remember whether or not I mentioned receipt of your February
check — they come so regularly, and it’s always fun to feel that it is a
little windfall for this and that. Some
bought John’s shoes — he hasn’t had any other clothes since Christmas
except those on his birthday. Then
we took some of it for the spring window washing, only this time I hired Hugh
and Dunny, for the Window Cleaning Co. has had to replace men with such
inferior help that I knew I’d get a better job from my own boys, and they
were eager for the extra money — baseball equipment was in the offing for
Hugh, and Dunny has his eye on a bicycle.
John and Hugh announce that dinner is nearly ready for the first
contingent, so I must stop and read to them as they eat — we’re reading
Masefield’s Dead Ned just now. On
Monday nights we read “The Mystery of the Bronze Frog” for on that
night Timmy LaFarge always comes to spend the night and we wanted a book that
he could keep up with and John was very much pleased when we chose one of his.
With love from us all
Grace
Hickory Hill,
North Haven
May 23rd 1943
Dear Vera,
John’s letter has been written for a week but the out-of-doors has
been so alluring that I’ve not spent much time at the desk.
Tom gets his two-a-week, and he’s such a good correspondent that I
can’t fail him, but I feel I’ve done badly by you during the spring.
The other
day I went into school to play in a baseball game, and in the course of the
afternoon I met Mrs. Mallett, John’s teacher.
She said she felt sure John could do fourth grade work next year but
that his work was erratic; I’ll admit it must be a little like teaching a
very lively flea at times, but with his ability I have no doubts about the
eventual outcome scholastically speaking.
As you can see from his letters his interests don’t exactly center of
the three Rs at the moment!
Our summer plans look like this at the moment — Betsy in New York
except for a week in July, which she expects to spend with a group of five
girls on Cape Cod — I’m no end flattered because they want me to join them
and I may. Tom, who is finding the
life interesting and not too hard, will be at
Fort
Bragg
for a while and then move somewhere else in the south. Walter will be sworn
into the Merchant Marine June 1st, and called within thirty days.
He’s hoping for a cruise on our boat with three friends before he
goes and then for a little time around home — I expect he’ll be home for
weekends for some time, for his training base will be nearby.
Dunny will probably be in a work camp — sounds a little grim, doesn’t
it? But forty-five boys live in a
supervised camp on a pond and from there do farm work for surrounding farmers.
Hugh and Ben will be at home — Hugh expects to become wealthy from
people’s abandoned Victory Gardens — we feel as you do that many people
are biting off more than they can chew in that way.
Our garden is big but there are many of us to care for it and to eat
the produce and then we’ve been doing it for so many years that we know the
pitfalls.
You say that you have gone into maternity clothes — are maternity
clothes rationed — how I should hate to spend coupons on those things!
Evening Now.
When John
arrived home from school I told him that there was a letter from you for him,
and if he would bring it to the tea table I’d read it to him while he had a
cup of tea. After we’d finished
I told him that I’d had a letter too and that there was a lovely surprise in
it. Did he want to guess, or
should I tell him? He voted for
the immediate telling, and when I told him that you were going to have a
little baby in about three months he jumped up and down with excitement and
said “Well I’m a greased monkey’s uncle!”
A rather surprising exclamation, but I agreed to report reactions
verbatim. Then after a pause he
said, “How does she know?” A
long discussion of the whys and wherefores followed in the course of which I
said that it took nine months for the baby to develop.
John said “ It’s going to be born three months from now so that
means it’s been growing for six months doesn’t it?
That’s where my arithmetic comes in handy” and off he flew to see
how his boats were doing in the pond. I
have agreed to take him to the
Peabody
Museum
soon so that he can see just how babies grow.
Love from us all, Grace
123
Woodstock Rd.
Oxford
Jan
2nd 1944
My dear Grace,
Thank
you so much for your nice long letter of November 22nd, which
arrived on Christmas day. I am,
more than ever, certain that it is right to get the family together again
& I cannot help feeling somewhat unhappy at John’s reaction to returning
home, but I am glad you sent his letter uncensored because I do know where I
stand. I realised from the very
first what difficulties would have to be faced when eventually the children
came home — I even realised that I might be parting from them forever when
Nazi invasion seemed so likely in the Spring when I returned, and if I could
face that, it seems pretty weak to be distressed by the problems that may
confront me now. Even if you were
willing to keep him indefinitely, I do not believe it would be right for John
to be brought up as an American & desert his own country when
England
will be needing all the manpower she can get in the future to replace her
losses & from a selfish point of view, he is our only son.
Can you talk to him along these lines if occasion arises?
I would hate him to be scared & to feel his life endangered when he
was sent to safety, but I think the special opportunity offered him should
allay any fears he may have and certainly conditions over here don’t seem to
justify his next few years spent away from his home.
He
returns to a comfortable, old fashioned house, without perhaps the luxuries to
which he has been accustomed in the States, but with facilities to allow him
to develop along his own lines. I
am giving him a room of his own, with a room leading from it to be used as a
boy’s playroom. That means he
can put down his trains & leave them without fear of things being “tidied
away” when he’s called off. He
can have a carpenter’s bench there too & when he has friends in he’ll
have a place to take them where they can do as they like.
The two rooms have a back staircase leading to them from the garden, so
he can run in & out as he pleases without going through the house &
having to keep quiet because of patients.
When
he was a very little boy he would peer over the banisters & say, “Are
you a pashunt?” to anyone who happened to come in.
He was always curious to know about things when he was small.
At the beginning of the war he would pull up the blackout curtains so
that an air raid warden would come — just to see what one looked like!
We
had a grand Christmas day & I have not enjoyed one so much since the
children went away. I had Pamela
Jane to decorate the nursery for & always with me was the thought “Next
Christmas, with luck I shall have them all here.”
We went to the Macgraiths & Brian plucked, trussed and cooked the
goose himself & made a really pre-war pudding.
We contributed half each of the ingredients — the Macgraiths & us
— there were 7 to mid day dinner and ten for tea.
The one terrific slap was that at
4 o’clock
on Christmas night my evacuee lady was taken violently ill with gastric ‘flu
and we had to get the ambulance to get her into hospital straight away.
She was there 4 or 5 days and we looked after the 14-year-old daughter.
My hat, what an eye-opener that child gave us!
Lazy, incompetent, disobedient, ungrateful, selfish & with the
mental outlook of a child of 6! And
I had always thought her such good, quiet little thing about the house!
Anyway, I am trying very hard to get somewhere for them to go by the
end of this month because I want the rooms done up for the children.
Its difficult to find anywhere, tho’!
I’ve cycled miles looking for billets.
It will have to be a job for the mother when she can have her
unsatisfactory daughter with her.
Pamela
Jane is a very good baby, but naturally she needs a lot of attention.
The fortunate thing about her tho’, is that she does sleep when you
put her down & you know you’ve finished with her for the moment &
can get on with her washing etc. She
was excellently behaved on Christmas Day & listened to the King’s speech
like a true Briton! Speaking of
that — did John hear it? Because
his majesty spoke to & greeted the children “here & beyond the seas.”
I get a particular warm feeling when he addresses us at Christmas time
& especially when I hear “God
Save the King” “played before he speaks.
They are a wonderful couple & such an example of good family life.
It was terrible at the time, but perhaps the Duke of Windsor’s
abdication worked out for the best in the end.
But I shall never forget the awful feeling of having been deserted
& let down that it gave me at the time.
How
I do ramble from one subject to another!
Please accept the cash we are allowed to send — it will only
be for a short while anyway & if you really can’t bear the sight of it
give it to the committee. Hell!
What a lot we owe that committee & I doubt if the British
government will ever let us pay it. My
pocket money
alone was 5 dollars a month when I was there.
Lots
of love & may this New Year be the last war one,
Yours
Vera
123 Woodstock Road
Oxford
May
24th 1944
[written
just after my return to
England
]
Dear Gacie,
I arrived home on Easter Sunday. I
got home just in time to wash my hands and have lunch.
I was terribly tired and I was almost dead from starvation because I
hadn’t had anything to eat for such a long time.
Daddy was at
London
to meet me.
Mr. Macbeth and Alastair, Daddy and me, and Francis Boston and Mrs.
Boston all had breakfast. We had
an egg each and some bacon and then we went home and saw millions of barrage
balloons on our way.
Mummy was waiting on the front steps, and Jean and Judy were just
running downstairs like a cyclone, and they sounded like a million elephants.
Judy was squeaking and screaming, just like a mouse that has a cat
chasing it. And Jean was yanking
Judy’s hand so hard she was almost falling over.
When I came in I was almost smothered by Judy and Mummy, and Jean didn’t
get a chance at me. I thought the
house must have been bombed and rebuilt because it looked so funny inside.
And now I think it is about time that I thanked you for having me over
there for such a long time. And it
was very very kind of you to have me there even if I did make a nuisance of
myself sometimes. And I wish you
and Uncle Dave and Benny, Hughie, Tom, Dunny, Wallie and Betsy would all come
over on an aircraft carrier just like I did, because we had great fun.
And now I’m signing off in a nosedive,
With lots of love,
John
***
Chapter
Seven
Author’s
Postscript
Although
the correspondence between Gacie and my mother would continue on for another
thirty years, the wartime letters come to an abrupt halt on my return to
England
, leaving many unanswered
questions. Not the least of these
is the profound imprint left by the American experience upon the subsequent
course of my life.
Closure,
however, has proved surprisingly elusive.
The letters, and the profusion of memories ignited by them, have been
found to contain the seeds of every significant (and many less significant)
events that serve as mileposts in a wonderfully rich and diverse life.
Blown as spindrift before the winds of chance, I have no complaint
about the voyage on which the Fates have propelled me since that first
momentous passage across the
Atlantic
, even though it was not
the original course envisioned by my parents.
However, to chart the myriad channels and shoals through which my
Connecticut
childhood has since led
me, proves to be a considerable navigational challenge.
To
do this journey justice, I find, will call for more space than a single
chapter at the end of this already substantial book.
Nothing less than a separate autobiographical volume can suffice.
Although I am always suspicious of autobiographies, for herein lies the
art of editing history to reflect one’s adopted image of self, nevertheless,
the letters provide a brutally level playing field from which the truth cannot
readily be hidden by selective amnesia.
The
saga of my return to wartime
England
on board an aircraft
carrier, recounted below, is the first of many vignettes prompted by the
discovery of the letters. Thereafter
life broadens into complex network of inter-connecting threads that lead from
hesitant adolescent uncertainty through brash self-confidence to (I hope)
mature humility. It is a story of
boundless enthusiasms and insatiable curiosity, fuelled by undeserved measures
of extreme good fortune. It
reflects a life that I would not wish to exchange for any other.
“My return journey to
England
in the spring of 1944 would prove memorable indeed.
I was one of about thirty small boys travelling on a new Royal Navy
aircraft carrier from
New York
to the Clydeside
port
of
Greenock
. We had
been placed in the care of a young officer, who clearly had no understanding
of children and how to handle them.
With earnest solemnity we were instructed exactly what, and what not,
we would be permitted to do; where, and where not, we might go on board.
It was made abundantly clear that any transgression would be met with
dire retribution.
To a mischievous nine-year-old this was a
challenge too good to pass up. There
were lamentably few parts of the ship to which we might legitimately go —
naturally they were the least interesting.
Over the course of the voyage there would be very few compartments on
that carrier with which I did not become intimately familiar.
In retrospect, it proved excellent training for a later incarnation,
when I became a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm during my two years of National
Service.
The engine room, where I was made welcome by the
stokers and other denizens of the ship’s nether world, was naturally a prime
target. To someone already
fascinated by mechanical devices, it became a source of endless pleasure and
delight.
The greatest prize, however, was to gain access to
the hanger deck, an area from which we were quite specifically banned.
Terrible punishments were threatened to those who ignored the ban, but
the beatings I received never outweighed the delights to be found there —
except once! I had gained
entry to a Grumman Avenger in the hangar, and after spending some time in the
cockpit, made my way up into the machine gun blister above.
Once inside, a small metal flap could be pulled up to form a floor.
After about twenty minutes of shooting down imaginary German aircraft
it was time to leave. However, I
was quite unable to find the catch that would release the metal flap beneath
me. Try as I might, there
was no escape, and so I remained trapped in mounting apprehension.
After what seemed an eternity, the hangar deck
suddenly sprang to life. To my
horror I could see planes being rolled onto the elevator and taken up to the
flight deck. This was not a
possible consequence of my disobedience that had ever crossed my mind, and was
beyond imagination. In due course,
my plane too was lifted into the daylight, without anybody noticing my
presence. Only when the rightful
occupant tried to enter, in preparation for the sortie about to take off, was
one very frightened little boy discovered.
The punishment that this episode attracted is one
of the very few beatings, out of a very considerable total, of which I have
specific recollection, for the pain endured several days in the form of
extensive bruising. But there then
followed the most wonderful Divine Intervention.
The mess deck where we ate had long tables running
athwart ship. The sea was calm and
the wooden partitions that divided up the tables in rough weather were not in
use. The officer responsible for
my discomfort was seated at the head of the table, and I was seated painfully
close to him on his right side. Suddenly,
without warning, the ship made a violent change of course, heeling over
sharply to port. In
disbelief I watched as the entire contents of the table started to move,
gathering speed as plates, glasses, cutlery and water pitchers swept down to
engulf my nemesis. As food
and table settings poured into his lap, he overbalanced backwards, to vanish
beneath a mountain of wet, gooey debris.
In that moment I knew that I had God on my side.
The crossing had taken almost three weeks when we
finally disembarked in
Greenock
. By
the time we boarded the packed train to
London
, night had fallen, and as there were no vacant seats,
we were forced to stand in corridor. My
only memory of that long nocturnal journey was of being surrounded by friendly
soldiers and sailors, who plied us constantly with cigarettes, asking all the
time about life in
America
. No doubt I
obliged with a suitably embellished fantasy.
The long letter from Gacie, detailing for my
mother my normal routines, by some happy stroke of fate would not arrive in
Oxford
until several weeks after me.
As rightly predicted, I took full advantage of this opening so happily
offered. After arriving home
I was put into the bath and thoroughly scrubbed to remove the ingrained dirt
of the journey — and the strong smell of tobacco.
Clean, indeed polished, I was left in the nursery while my mother went
to the kitchen to get me supper. When
she returned, I was neatly clad in pyjamas and dressing gown, riding on the
rocking horse — and smoking the cigarette that I swore I always had before
retiring.
My mother was placed in a difficult situation.
Much as she had to exercise some restraint and discipline, she was also
very conscious of the need to humour me through this difficult transition,
where so much was new and strange. By
being too strict, she might risk alienating my affection.
Without the knowledge of my normal routine in
America
, she was prey to my wildest flights of fancy, at a time
when I had but limited regard for the truth.
Despite this
lucky window of opportunity, adapting to life in
England
proved difficult —
probably more difficult than I would have acknowledged at the time.
It was not just separation from my American family and the life that
went with it; nor was it the austerity in wartime
Britain
.
It was integration into the English school system that would prove the
greatest hurdle – a spectre destined to follow me for the next ten years.”