Sentimental journey to Forest for wartime evacuee (From Bournemouth Echo)

Sentimental journey to Forest for wartime evacuee

10:00am Tuesday 2nd March 2010 in

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WARTIME evacuee Ramon Giles has made a pilgrimage to the New Forest with wife Sylvia from their home in South Wales.

Mr Giles – named Ramon because his mother was a fan of film star Ramon Navaro – wanted to show his wife the house in Barton-on-Sea in which he lived as an evacuee.

The Southampton-born octogenarian also visited the Balmer Lawn Hotel at Brockenhurst where he worked as a 14-year-old.

He and a friend were evacuated from Bitterne Park to New Milton at the start of the war. Mr Giles still remembers the indignity of being marched from house to house looking for a place to stay.

The pair were eventually settled at the home of a Miss Chillingsworth in Barton.

Born in 1928, Ramon left school at age 14, moved back to Southampton and joined as a pre-apprentice an electrical and plumbing business which had been sub-contracted to work for the Ministry of War at the recently requisitioned Balmer Lawn Hotel.

Ramon helped to fit out Nissen huts in what is now the car park. The work entailed putting in stoves, chimneys and electrics.

The workforce then prepared the hotel itself, which was rumoured to be the base for the commander of the British Eighth Army, General Montgomery, though that proved to be unfounded.

As the smallest employee on site he was the one selected to climb inside the hotel boiler, which could not cope with the numerous showers installed especially for the officers, and chip off all the calcium deposits that had built up.

He had to cycle from Southampton to Brockenhurst before beginning his day’s work, after which he would than have to pedal home again after earning 2d an hour.

When Balmer Lawn was handed over to the Forces, he worked at Burley Manor, helping to build a water tower and installing plumbing.

He later helped renovate Minstead Manor and installed machinery into some New Forest commercial garages which were used to manufacture aircraft parts.

After working as a motor mechanic, doing National Service and working in the aircraft industry, he ended up with his own motorcycle business in Newport, South Wales, which he sold when he retired at 65.