Lulu Buy | My Lulu | Community | Help Log In | View Cart
An Evacuee's Story A North Yorkshire Family in Wartime

An Evacuee's Story A North Yorkshire Family in WartimeAn Evacuee's Story A North Yorkshire Family in Wartime (book)

Print: $22.40

Download: $8.62

A poignantly written and graphically described story of the pleasure and pain endured as an evacuee during World War Two. Like so many of his young friends and relatives, John Wright was required to leave the love and care of his parents in Middlesbrough at a very young age to escape the attention of the Luftwaffe and to be evacuated into the hands of a crowded and unloving home in Haxby, a quaint village north of the great city of York. The book eloquently describes his voyage of childhood discovery in the beautiful countryside coupled with the cruel attentions of a foster mother whose motivation was not to lavish love and support to her unfortunate foster children, but to hurt and belittle them. It is a bittersweet story of innocent interludes and mean realities for an evacuee child set amidst the horrors and melancholy of that devastating conflict.
John Thomas Wright was born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire in April 1935. He was evacuated in 1939 at the age of four and a half and did not return until 1944 when he attended the Newport Junior School, Archibald Secondary Modern School and then Middlesbrough Technical School for Boys. In 1951 he started an apprenticeship as a riveter with the Teesside Bridge and Engineering Company. A keen racing cyclist he obtained work as a cycle framebuilder with Jack Taylor Cycles, Stockton-on-Tees, where he remained until he joined the Royal Air Force at eighteen years of age. He served for five years as an aircraft electrician with 217 Squadron based at RAF Kinloss in Morayshire, Scotland. For most of his service he worked on Neptune’s that were involved in air-sea rescue work and anti-submarine surveillance at the time of the Cold War. He taught himself to play both the clarinet and the saxophone and became a leading member of the station dance band which played at many dances and concerts. After demobilisation in 1958 he trained as a psychiatric nurse at St. Luke’s Hospital in Middlesbrough, where he worked for several years. In 1960 he was married to Enid and they have three children – all born in Middlesbrough – and six grandchildren. In 1965 he accepted employment with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Billingham where he worked as an analytical technician in the Oil Works laboratory. While there he undertook several educational correspondence courses before leaving to train as a biology teacher at Middleton St. George College from which he graduated in 1975. John accepted a teaching post at Kineton High School in Warwickshire. He then undertook further training in athletics coaching, becoming a top class coach to a number of County and Area champions and an International level athlete who represented Great Britain many times before competing in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. On retiring at the turn of the century, he began to reflect on his early life, which led to the production of his poignantly written and graphically described account of the pleasure and pain of being evacuated to a small, picturesque Yorkshire village during World War Two; An Evacuee’s Story A North Yorkshire Family in Wartime.