News of the vicious strapping eventually reached the vicar of St. James Anglican Church, who oversaw the boys’ home. The vicar paid Miss Menzies a visit in her office. The two of them had a heated exchange of words. After the visit, news spread among the boys that the vicar had forbidden Miss Menzies from using the leather strap to punish them. David, like the others, breathed a sigh of relief. Sadly, the boys’ change in fortune didn’t last. Four days later Miss Menzies was so frustrated that she again picked up her leather strap, and the beatings continued.
Despite the threat of harsh punishment, David found lots of good times at the home. On the weekends the boys had free time to play, when David’s sports prowess was allowed to shine. They would gather on the playing field next to the house and play endless games of cricket, rugby, and soccer.
One of David’s other favorite activities was building forts in the enormous pile of wood used to fire the stove in the kitchen and the coppers used to boil water for the laundry. David and some of his friends would pull out pieces of wood and restack them until they had created a kind of cave in the middle of the wood pile, and then they would climb in and play make-believe games. The results of their fort-building efforts were not always secure, and on more than one occasion the whole woodpile collapsed on David, leaving him battered and bruised.
On warm summer afternoons, the boys were allowed to play in the swimming pool, where they would float in inner tubes and splash and chase each other in the water. The pool had just one problem: no filtration system. Instead, it was filled from an artesian well on the property, and with no chemical additives, the water slowly became murky and green. Finally, when the water was so bad that the boys emerged tinged with green from the algae, the pool was emptied. Then the boys had the backbreaking task of scrubbing every inch of it clean before it was refilled. David didn’t mind the effort of having to scrub the pool on a regular basis. To him it was worth it for the luxury of having a swimming pool to play in.
David learned that many of the boys in the home had secret hiding places, and he decided to find his own hiding place. One night after the lights went out, David climbed out of bed and sneaked into the yard. He counted off six paces from the back door, turned to his right, and counted off eight more paces. At this spot he took out a small knife he had “borrowed” from the kitchen and cut out a square of sod, removing it carefully. He then dug out several handfuls of dirt to make a hole big enough in which to place a tobacco tin, and then he replaced the sod. This was now his secret hiding place where he planned to hide any money he found, since the boys were not allowed to keep any money on them.
When he had stashed several pennies, or perhaps a threepence or a sixpence, David would sneak out at night and retrieve some of the money from his secret hiding place. He would make sure that no one was watching him, and then he would cross the road to the store to buy a bag of candy or some broken cookies, which he would gobble down as fast as he could before heading back to his room and quietly hopping back into bed. His full stomach and the small adventure gave him a feeling of power, and that feeling was worth the risk of being caught—and punished.
Four months after David had arrived at the boys’ home, it was time to get ready for Christmas. David heard lots of talk about a Christmas party at Clouston’s mill. Arthur Clouston was the owner of a successful sawmilling business and had himself grown up in an orphanage. As a result, he now did whatever he could to help children in need throughout the Hutt Valley region. He was the person who donated the huge pile of firewood that David liked to build forts in.
Finally the day of the party arrived, and Miss Menzies told the boys to line up outside. Excitement mounted as two flatbed trucks from the sawmill pulled up in front of the home. The boys, along with Miss Menzies and Miss Adams, climbed onto the back of the trucks and held on tightly to each other. The trucks headed eighteen miles north up the Hutt Valley, where they turned onto a branch road that led up the Akatarawa Valley.
The road was narrow and winding, and more than once David thought he might be thrown from the back of the truck as it lurched around a sharp bend. The road wound along the side of a narrow river gorge and then finally descended into the upper reaches of the Akatarawa Valley. There on an open stretch of flat land beside the river sat two rows of houses in which the mill workers lived. Beyond the houses was the sawmill.
The two trucks pulled onto an open grass field bounded on one side by the sawmill and on the other by the river. Mr. Clouston enthusiastically welcomed his guests, and soon several more trucks arrived bringing children from other orphanages to the event. Before long the field was alive with children laughing, playing, sack racing, three-legged racing, egg-and-spoon racing, and chasing a greased pig.
David had never had so much fun before, and things only got better when he heard the sound of an airplane buzzing overhead. He looked up to see a red biplane circling above the field. As the plane circled, it let loose a flood of candy that crashed to the ground like hail in a storm, only this hail was sweet and delicious. Soon David was scurrying around trying to scoop up as much of the candy as he could before the other children got to it. In truth there was more candy than any one child could collect and eat. Like David’s, the pockets of the other children bulged with candy.
As if that were not enough, Mr. Clouston called everyone to the tents that were set up at the end of the field. There laid out for his guests was a feast of sausage rolls, sandwiches, and cream cakes. The sight of so much food was like a dream come true to David. And an endless supply of lemonade flowed with which to wash down all the goodies. David ate and drank until his stomach ached and he was forced to sit down for a few minutes to rest and let all the food and candy settle.
Finally the party was over and it was time to leave. David climbed onto the truck for the journey back to the boys’ home, carrying with him lots of memories to relive in the days to come.
Life continued on at the home, with the annual Christmas party being the biggest and best event every year. But David could not stay at the home forever. By September 1953, he was only two months from turning thirteen. Four years after arriving at the Anglican Boys’ Home in Lower Hutt, David Williams once again found himself on a bus. He was leaving the home behind and heading for Masterton, a town located sixty miles north on the expansive Wairarapa Plains. Located at Masterton was Sedgley Boys’ Home for teenage boys, also run by the Anglican Church.
At Sedgley, David was reunited with Wocky, who had transferred to the home the year before. Wocky was able to help David get oriented to his new surroundings, just as he had done in Lower Hutt.
Sedgley Boys’ Home was situated on twenty-five acres of land on the edge of Masterton. A large house that sat on the property contained dormitories for the boys, a dining room and kitchen, and quarters for the home’s supervisor. Like the boys’ home in Lower Hutt, the house was surrounded by flower gardens and expansive stretches of lawn where the boys could play various games. And like the Lower Hutt home, Sedgley had its own swimming pool where the boys took an early morning swim. It also had a large, fully equipped gymnasium, along with a workshop and a milking shed and dairy. It had a much larger chicken coop and acres of vegetable garden. As Wocky explained to David, the place was pretty much self-sustaining and there were always plenty of vegetables, butter, and cheese to eat, along with fresh milk to drink. But as David soon discovered, being self-sustaining meant that there were plenty of chores that needed to be done each day.
The day he arrived at Sedgley, David was instructed to report to the kitchen at five-thirty the following morning to help prepare breakfast and then wash and put away the dishes. Helping in the kitchen would be his chore for the next three months. Other boys were milking the cows, separating the milk and cream in the dairy, doing the laundry, or tending to the vegetable garden. The boys had hardly a moment to spare, and any spare minutes were filled with trying to secure a place in the pecking order of the home.
Before leaving the boys’ home in Lower Hutt, David had been one of the older boys. He was looked up to and respected by the younger boys at the home. But because David was one of the youngest boys at Sedgley, he had to set about establishing his place in the order of things. In particular this meant once again contending with Ross Mense, the bully from the Anglican Boys’ Home who had come to Sedgley two years before. At Sedgley Ross was an even bigger bully, ordering the younger boys to make his bed, clean his shoes, and even do his chores. It wasn’t long before Ross zeroed in on David and tried to bully and intimidate him into doing things for him. But David had decided he was not going to give in to bullying. When Ross tried to get David to clean his shoes for him, David flatly refused.
“If you don’t, I’m going to beat you up,” Ross countered.
“Well then, you’ll have to beat me up, because I’m not cleaning your shoes,” David replied determinedly.
That is exactly what Ross did, beating David till his nose bled. But still David held firm, and the frustrated bully stormed off.
On several more occasions Ross tried to bully David by beating him up. But with each beating, David’s resolve not to give in grew stronger. David reasoned that eventually Ross would tire of expending so much energy in his bullying efforts and give up on David. That is exactly what happened. Soon a smoldering stalemate developed between David and Ross, and the bully moved on to look for other boys to do his chores for him. David’s stand against Ross earned him the respect of most of the other forty boys at Sedgley.
By the time David had celebrated his thirteenth birthday, he was feeling quite at home at Sedgley Boys’ Home, and he looked forward to all that life had in store for him.
Chapter 3
Life in Masterton
Come and look at this,” one of the boys called excitedly.
David and five other homies were on their way to St. Matthew’s Anglican Church to attend Sunday school, and they ran to see what the boy had found.
Lying in the street was a single bullet.
“Let’s pelt it with stones and see if it’ll go off,” one of the homies suggested.
David gathered up a handful of stones from the side of the road and gathered round the bullet with the other boys. Then each boy took a turn hurling a stone at the bullet. As David soon discovered, the bullet wasn’t easy to hit with a stone. Finally, a stone thrown by one of the homies connected with the bullet, causing a loud crack and a puff of smoke. The boys cheered with delight.
At the same moment, David felt his leg start to sting. He looked down and saw blood flowing from a gash in his thigh, which had been grazed by the bullet. He watched the faces of the other boys go ashen when they saw what had happened. By now the pain was intense, and David unbuttoned his shirt and took off his undershirt, which he tied tight around his thigh to try to stop the bleeding.
Once the undershirt was securely in place and David had rebuttoned his shirt, the boys continued on their way to Sunday school, David hobbling along as best he could on his injured leg. There was no thought of heading back to Sedgley. That would only get them into more trouble. Instead, David sat through Sunday school in agony, trying to think up a story to explain his wound. Finally he decided he would tell Mr. Jonkers, the current master at Sedgley, that he had fallen on the way home from Sunday school and cut his leg. After Sunday school, he told the story to the other boys, who all agreed to stick to it.
