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 [1] , 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