´óÏó´«Ã½

We were evacuated from school to North Wales. On the day that we arrived, we were taken to … by train to Wrexham and then from Wrexham by bus to a local village called … which was just outside … We were all assembled in the village hall and a host of WVS’s ladies came in and we were all picked off in ones and twos and threes depending on families. Eventually there were only a few of us left. There was myself and another girl whose name I can’t recall now but she came from the same school as me but wasn’t in my class. The WVS lady took the pair of us, put us in the back of her car and drove us down to a very out of the way farm house. If anybody knows the area of… there is the aqueduc bridge which goes over the … which is called the … and it used to take the canal boats across … to the other. Huge edifice you know, miles high and this farm house was actually underneath the bridge on the actual … we arrived quite late in the afternoon and everywhere looked deserted and terribly … I didn’t know where in earth we were coming to. … This very elderly lady appeared dressed completely in black from head to toe with a bonnet on and … We were just left with this old lady … The only thing I remember about it was that there was a tin of corned beef and a large block of … chocolate…
We were there for about a fortnight but it was the most … two weeks of my and I’m sure the other girl’s life. We were fed for three days on the corned beef that … We were taken up to a bedroom… but we couldn’t get the door to close and we couldn’t understand why. In actual fact, the whole building was out of … because it was beginning to … and we used to have to actually almost crawl up to bed and in the morning when you got out literally … to the window or the door. The following morning when we came downstairs the old lady I asked where we were to go to the toilets and where we were to wash and she took us out into the garden which was completely overgrown. She took us down to what is now called a … and I will always remember, it really amused me because it had three holes in the wooden seat: two for adults and the little one in the middle for a child! Having shown us where we were to go to the toilets she then took us a bit further down the garden where there was a large wooden … and on it was a cracked old … and that was where we had to do our ablutions! I can’t recall any other meals that we had in this place, it was just a terrible terrible haze!
The school that we were allocated to was at the top of the hill and we had to walk from the farm house right up into… and then up the hill to this school where we were allocated. Then we would be fed up there and then we would come home at four o’clock and we would return back down to the farm house but it was always closed, we couldn’t get into the house. So we would sort of play around the outside or sitting … whatever it was and we’d learn very quickly that the old lady had a trap … which would take her into the nearest little town which was called … There she would go and drink herself silly! And then the horse would bring her back home at night… and we would be sitting … waiting for the horse to bring her back… and we would go in. Well this went on for about two weeks and on one occasion we’d come down from the mountains from school in rain, torrential rain! We were absolutely …to the skin. And we got there the inevitable happened, we had to sit and wait until the cart arrived to let us in. We actually slept in our clothes that night and the next morning we got up and went back up to the school and just as it happened, they had an elderly nurse who used to call to see if any children required any … or any thing like that. I was asked to take my gabardine and clothes off and my white vest underneath was navy blue! They wanted to know why it was so discoloured and they then found out that we’d been absolutely … to the skin. … We were immediately taken away from the old lady and we went to stay with a district nurse and her husband just for a few days. This was a beautiful new built house which I had never seen … with glass doors inside! To go from where we’d been to this place was almost like heaven. But we were only there for a few days and then we were split up, the other girl went to another house and I went to … with the family called Matthew’s in … and I stayed there until I returned to Liverpool and I had an absolutely wonderful time with them.
Because my father had died before the war started, my mother was widowed with a little baby and she was evacuated to another part of… she went to. And the Matthew’s actually did want to adopt me because they only had one daughter and we were like sisters.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Merseyside’s People’s War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.