Call Sign January 2000

It seems fitting that the first in this short series from Call Sign's Sam Harris (D93J) should appear in an issue that looks back as well as forward...

THE EVACUEE

and warned him that no further land grabbing would be tolerated. Nevertheless Hitler cocked a snook at the world and on Friday 1st September 1939, his troops smashed through the Polish frontier and as a by-product of this attack, our parents who had registered our names at my school a week earlier when things began to look nasty again, took us to the school on the following day (Saturday 2nd) having been warned constantly a day earlier on the radio.
But where were we going? The kids were very tense, some forcing a laugh, some crying - especially when we saw parents at the school gates waving and blowing kisses. Many crying were crying as well, especially when they were asked not to follow us. How must they have felt seeing their kids going off to goodness-knows-where with the possibility of never seeing them again...

Continued next month...
Sam Harris

Jack and Connie Grimmett live in the Wolston Grange home for the elderly near Rugby. He's 81 while Connie is now 83. They are both reasonably well - at least they were when we last saw them in 1998. On Christmas Eve of that year they celebrated their Diamond Wedding (60 years). But I bet they still remember the happenings in the first year of their marriage....

   Saturday 2 September 1939 would find me, my two younger brothers and about 300 other kids whose ages ranged from 5 to15, lined up in the boys' playground of Stoke Newington Central School in Albion Road. Today it is called Grasmere and is still a very good school.
   I was in my first year as a pupil having left my junior school, Princess May Road, the year before and we were about to begin the most exciting, traumatic and even sorrowful journey of our young lives. We would be known forever as evacuees.
   In 1938, it looked very much as if war was about to break out and parents were cajoled by the-then government of the day to send their children away to avoid what would surely be wholesale slaughter by bombing from the air. On that occasion, evacuation would be very much a hit and

miss affair. No proper plans had been put in place as to where we would go and live and under what conditions. In fact, we had brought bundles of bed linen and clothes to school where they were placed in the classroom much to the annoyance of Harold Innocent - my form teacher - who insisted that there would be no war with Germany: "Mr. Chamberlain (the PM of the day) would sort it out" he told us. Sure enough, the PM arrived back at Heston Airfield (it's the field on the left when you leave the M4 just before the A4 roundabout on your way to Terminal 4), waving a bit of paper and saying that there would be "peace in our time!"
   So back home went the bed linen etc whilst a sigh of relief was heard throughout the land. But Chamberlain knew only too well that Adolph Hitler could not be trusted and plans were drawn up to put the country on a war footing, plus a more sophisticated form of evacuation.
   Czechoslovakia had been sorted and for a few more months all was quiet....
   Hitler now turned his attention to the Polish port of Danzig (now days called Gdansk) and demanded its return to Germany along with a strip of land known as the 'German corridor' that ran along the Baltic. For a change, the Allies (France and us) stood firm

ODRTS NEWSLETTER: DRIVER'S LETTERS (DECEMBER 1957)
I learn from the October Newsletter that our Chairman, Bonnie Martyn, is resigning and going abroad 'with deep reluctance'. Under these circumstances, I feel compelled to write and express my deep regard for him and to thank him for his untiring work and effort that he so generously gave to the London taxi trade. I must confess that I have often wondered how he had so much patience and energy to do all the things that he has so admirably done for us all in the radio world. I realise only too well what a task he undertook, having myself been associated with the cab trade for 30-odd years and I venture to tell you old boy, that without your guidance and good counsel, the	ODRTS Ltd would in my humble opinion, have been a complete and utter flop. I don't doubt that the anxiety, worry and forthright insults that he has secured and born, would have broken the hearts of many a man made of less stuff. However, there are many of us on the circuit who hold Bonnie Martyn in high esteem and readily appreciate all he has done for us, if that is a comfort to him as I am sure it must be. I would personally like to wish him good luck, good fortune, good health and may God bless him. Sincerely yours, R.W.Calcott, Black 17

THE EVACUEE

ODRTS NEWSLETTER: DRIVER'S LETTERS (DECEMBER 1957)