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(continued from Part I - story A8972986)

Daphne Warburton is willing to have her story entered on to the People's War website and agrees to abide by the House Rules.

As it happens, it was a good thing we were all evacuated. On the night of 19th March, 1941 (the day before my 12th birthday) two land-mines, locked together, fell on the 2nd and 3rd houses from the bottom of our small garden. Our entire back house wall fell in, every window broke and the main door was blown off. Every one of us would have been killed or badly injured. My parents were across the road to help a neighbour, Mrs Leslie, with a new baby, as her husband was in the Air Force. Our house was uninhabitable and my parents had to move. I was very, very upset about it.

One afternoon in about 1943, during a raid, a German plane flew low and shot at Roy and Rosemary. They threw themselves along the base of a wall of a bombed house and were not injured.

The sirens frequently woke us in the night and we all had to get up and go to our very, very damp, clammy and cold Anderson shelter in the garden. One night an incendiary bomb came through our roof, through the landing ceiling, hit the banisters and bounced through the open door of Roy's bedroom, hitting the chest in there. Every place it touched, its phosphorous set that place on fire. Daddy was watching from the shelter door, so rushed in with a shovel and a bucket in which he put the bomb. He then put out the small fires.

Our parents were very protective and very fussy about our up-bringing, and didn't want us to be evacuated/brought up by others, so refused to let us be evacuated with our school in September 1939. It means that my evacuation experience was not typical.

In September 1938, a year before the war was declared, there was what was known as the 'first crisis', i.e. threat of war. School children, me included, were given forms, for their parents to sign, authorising the evacuation of their children, and a separate paper listing the things parents should provide. A few weeks later there was a 'dummy run', and the children had to take their items to school so each class teacher could check that each child had the required things.

I remember that there had to be a label on a string with the child's name, school etc. that could be put round the neck, or attached to clothing. There also needed to be:
- 2 sets of nightwear (not a dressing-gown or slippers as not many could afford them)
- 1 extra set of underwear (one to be worn, of course)
- 1 pair of shorts or trousers for boys
- 2 dresses (again, one to be worn), or 1 gym tunic with 2 blouses for girls
- 1 'woolly' (jumper or cardigan)
- 2 pairs of socks
- 1 toothbrush
- 1 flannel (face cloth)
- 1 coat
- 1 pair of gloves.

There also had to be a small case or travel bag. I noticed that some poor children ('poor' meaning not at all rich) had their things in a brown paper carrier-bag instead of a case. They had to have about 2/- (two shillings): actually10p in today's money but the equivalent of about £2 to £3. I think that they had to have a stamped envelope, a piece of writing paper and a pencil (to write to their parents with the address of their billet), a packet of sandwiches (I think cheese was suggested), an apple and an 8oz bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate. The latter made me envious, as we only ever had 2oz of sweets or chocolate at a time! It was meant to sustain the evacuee, and provide energy if the journey became long or there was a delay of some kind. When September 1939 came and the children really were evacuated, each child also had to have a gas-mask in a cardboard box (provided by the Government), with a cord so that it could be hung round the neck. I think a teddy-bear or toy was also suggested.

I didn't see the evacuation of my school and I don't know how the children reached the railway station to take the train to the places to which they were sent. Few people had cars, so either coaches took the children from school to the train, or else parents took them by bus to the station.

Re; question 9 (in Story A8972986)

When I went to Maidstone in September 1940, my mother took me, and two other small girls, by train, and delivered us to Maidstone Grammar School, which King's Warren was sharing. My school had already been there a year, so only we 40 or so new girls were taken to our billets, by volunteer ladies.

It was September 1941 when King's Warren moved from Maidstone to Bedford, to share Bedford High School, because Kent had become as dangerous as London. We went by train and volunteer ladies were waiting at the school for us, with lists of addresses where evacuees were to be billeted. I think it was complete chance where each child was taken and not pre-arranged. I believe that in September 1939, in some places, local people met the trains and selected which child they would foster.

When I first went to King's Warren in Maidstone, I needed much more than the things the government listed. I had to have some non-uniform clothes as well as a quite extensive, full school uniform. That wasn't easy because clothing was rationed and the list required clothing coupons for 2 or 3 years. I probably had some belonging to my family for 1940, as one couldn't have coupons in advance.

I didn't have to have 8oz of chocolate — pity! However, I had much more that 2/- so I bought some sweets!!

My father knew the City of London very well. Before the war, he had put the pure-gold leaf on the globe and flames at the top of the monument to the Fire of London, on the Statue of Justice on top of the Old Bailey, on the top of the towers and other places on Tower Bridge, amongst other places. At Easter 1941, he took my mother and me to London to see all the damage to the Wren churches and other wonderful historic buildings, and particularly to show me the damage caused by the bombing and fires we had both witnessed the previous December. Incidentally, he worked on those buildings only from ladders, with no scaffolding and no harness of any kind.

On the afternoon of the Sunday that war was declared, we all had to go to the school to be fitted with gas-masks. Yvonne's was red, because she wasn't yet 3, and was called a 'Mickey Mouse'. Ours were black. The rubber smelt horrible and I found mine very claustrophobic and suffocating. We all had to go through a tear-gas chamber to check our mask didn't leak. Completely defeating the object, I held my breath — just in case mine leaked and I breathed in the gas!

Soon after, we all had identity cards, and had to carry them, for security reasons. Yvonne was AZKR.158/6 and I was AZKR.158/3. I think the letters gave county and town, perhaps street, and the figures located the house. The figure after the '/' showed one's place in the family — father was /1, mother /2, eldest child /3 and so on.

Most food was rationed and permitted quantities were small: meat, bacon, eggs, cheese, sugar, tea, butter, sweets/chocolate, lard and margarine. One also had a monthly allocation of 'points' and could select from tinned goods, ham, jam etc. At some periods, coal, and coke etc. were rationed out in a less rigid way, as also were flour, bread and such, and sometimes even potatoes and apples. These weren't in our ration books, but purchase was restricted.

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