大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the site by the 大象传媒's Peoples War Team in the East Midlands with the Hickman familys permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The article was collated and written by a Jessica Hickman a pupil at Moseley Primary School, Anslow as part of a Peoples war Project."

I was a 13 year old boy in September 1939. I went to St Lukes School in London. We had to pack our suitcase and gas mask and take them to school every day. One day we were going to the country. Some of the children were told they were going to Canada on a boat. These children never arrived; the boat was sunk on the way.

I had to carry my case and gas mask to the bus which took us to Canning Town railway station. We then went by train to Evergreech Junction, Somerset. It took us all day and night to get there because the train kept stopping.

When we got there we were put in a hall and told to wait quietly. The adults went out. On the tables were packages of food. We pinched a lot of food and hid it in our cases. We weren鈥檛 bad children but had been hungry and poor for a long time and had never seen this much food before. My father had been injured in the First World War and couldn鈥檛 work so my sister and I had had to help our mother get food. Sometimes we had pinched it, other times we had earned it.

When the adults came back into the hall they chose children to live with them. My sister and I were almost last but were chosen with another boy called Felix by a lovely lady. We were well looked after and ate better than we had all our lives despite rationing.

We went to school for half days and then went to work on a farm the other half. The farmer used to give us eggs and taught us how to hunt rabbits with ferrets.

My mother sometimes came down to Somerset for the weekends and the lady that looked after us gave her food to take home. We were very lucky some children were not so happy.

My sister enjoyed Somerset so much that she stayed there after the war. I came to Burton where my mother had been evacuated to.

The first time I saw an air raid was the bombing of Bristol. We watched this from my bedroom window. We saw a plane caught in a search light and brought down by the anti air craft fire.

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