Writing for Fun
July 2016
The Long Journey - Bob Wendelkin
Time is on the perhaps the greatest and longest journey of all, our journey in comparison is but short and insignificant by comparison. For us the longest journey we make is from the day that we come into this world to the day that we leave, for time continues its long journey totally unconcerned.
For me my journey began on 11th July 1942, in the early hours of the morning in Writtle Place near Chelmsford. I’m told on the night that I came into this world the Luftwaffe paid a visit to Chelmsford to drop bombs on the town and in particular Hoffmann where they made ball bearing and the Marconi Company where they made radio equipment.
For me I was in Lord Petre’s house warm and comfortable waiting until my mother was fit enough to take me home to our bungalow in Hullbridge. It was to Hullbridge that the family had bought a bungalow and left London to avoid the bombing that was going on in London.
My memory of the first year is somewhat limited. I do remember my mother washing me and when she poured the water over my head it was always too hot for me. Of my father he was in the RAF and I’m certain that I can remember him, when he was on leave, putting his head into my pram, he was wearing the RAF forage cap. I remember him because I burst out crying. My brother is six years older than me and I don’t really remember much of him when I was four years old and he was ten and a ten year old and a four year old do not have very much in common. So in many respects I was brought up as a singleton.
Of the war I remember the sirens sounding and the family having to make our way the shelter that was built near Coventry Corner. I remember standing outside the Shelter with my grandfather and Albert Moore and listening to the drone of an aircraft and the two of them saying I think he is up somewhere over the River Crouch. I was only two and three quarters when the war with Germany ended and the killing of innocent people stopped. The only thankful thing was that the evil men who caused the war and brought so much misery to the world and ordinary people of Europe also perished along with their evil ideas.
During the war my mother kept chickens and rabbits to help with the rationing, in fact at one time she had over 100 chickens and in exchange for Egg Rationing she obtained chicken feed so she was able so supply eggs to the family and the people in the village. She used to buy young chickens from a Hatchery in Wickford. They would put the chicks on the train so that they could be collected from Rayleigh station by Mr White who was the local Carter with a horse and cart. He was not altogether a nice person. I’m told that on one occasion there were some German POWs working in the field close to where my Grand-Mother lived. He drove his horse and cart on to the field to chase the POWs around and tried to whip them. Some years later in a conversation with his recently bereaved widow a friend expressed her sympathy only to have the reply from Mrs White. ‘Yes, who would have thought I would be so Bleeding Lucky?’
It would appear that Mr White had left her about £25,000, which in the late 1940’s was worth a lot more than today.
My Mother during the war used to take me with her when she used to go to pick potatoes and peas. She also used to go ‘gleaning’ where she would go into the corn fields after the corn had been harvested and pick up the ears of corn that hadn’t been threshed and collect the corn to feed to her chickens.
But to continue my journey in time, I had two friends they were Michael and July they were close neighbours to my Grand-ma’s bungalow. We were all of about the same age around three or four but it was a different world in those days we were free to wander around without grownups constantly looking over our shoulders for grownups. We were able to climb trees, play in the stream that ran past the bungalow and go into the corn field that was adjacent to my grand-ma’s home.
Then came the end of the war and my Father left the RAF and came home to us in Hullbridge. Before the war he worked in London and he returned to his old job. This meant that he had to walk from Hullbridge to Rayleigh Station about five miles in the early morning to catch a train to London then on his return if he was unlucky and he was unable to catch a bus he would have to walk back to Hullbridge. He did this for some time but as their house had been destroyed in the war we were entitled to have accommodation provided in London. We were provided with a Prefab in the East end of London. I was not five when all this happened. I remember the journey to London in the removal lorry, and a lump of scrap at the side of the road that was supposed to be a piece of a Doddle-bug.
It was at this time I started school at Bonner Street School. I think on the first day I was a little tearful but eventually settled in. One of the lessons we had to draw the Union Flag and we had pastels to colour the crosses. I hadn’t been at school very long when in the November I had problems with my left leg. At first they thought I might have a TB Hip and I was taken into the Princess Elizabeth’s Hospital for Children in Hackney. Although I never saw my parents for about a month they visited the hospital every night but the nursing staff wouldn’t let them into the ward as it could disturb me. It was during this time that they brought into the ward a TV so that we could all watch Princess Elizabeth’s wedding, we were given a piece of cake and told it was a bit of their wedding cake. Eventually after about a month I was able to leave hospital and return home I later found out that I had a twisted ligament. Once again a different world I and a young friend Lenny Burrell at the age of five used to take ourselves to school, not like to today where children are shepherded to the very gate of the school.
I remember in 1948 Mum and I visited an Aunt who lived close by and I went to sleep in a chair and it was on the day that Prince Charles was born.
My Mother was not happy with the environment to bring up her two boys. On one occasion a lorry load of raincoats was stolen and quite a few people in the area suddenly had new raincoats to wear. My parents decided that they wanted to leave the area. Perhaps if Mrs Kray had been of the same opinion then her sons may never have gone the way they did.
In February 1949 we moved from London to Hornchurch where Mum and Dad bought a house that had been built on a site left by a bombed house, they paid £1,600 for it. I was then aged six I now had to go to a new school, but that’s another story and the continuation of a Long Journey that has gone on so far for nearly another seventy years.
[Bob is in the white shirt]