大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Geoffrey Redman from Crawley Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs Jean Gosling with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Evacuees caught in the snow

After being evacuated to several places, I finished up, aged nine, in a small village called Hanwell nr. Banbury in Oxfordshire. My sister and I were staying with a farm worker and his wife in a small cottage with a long garden. Situated half way up the garden was the outside loo, attached to the pig sty. Everything was very basic!
One morning in the depths of winter, we got up to find very deep snow (about 12 inches or so) and we were too small to venture up to the outside toilet. So, the lady of the house put on her husband鈥檚 big farm wellies and walked in front of us to make holes in the snow for us to put our feet into. Unfortunately, the lady鈥檚 footprints were a bit too far apart for my six-year old sister to cope with and so my sister let us know that she didn鈥檛 like the situation - she had a foot in each hole and was crying. She must have been very frightened, unable to move with one foot in one hole, and the other foot stuck in another hole!

Sent from pillar to post

At age five, I was sent away with my older brother, on a double-decker bus from Croydon. Our destination was Brighton. One day my Mum and Dad came to visit us, my Dad was in his Army uniform. We were walking along the promenade and were 鈥渟napped鈥� by a photographer. I don鈥檛 remember barbed wire on the beaches, and one day we saw troops exercising in their singlets on the slopes down from the promenade.
When Brighton was bombed, we were moved again, this time to Wonersh near Guildford. My brother and I were split up and went to separate homes. The little school was on a common and one lunch time there was an air battle going on, so I stayed at home until it was over. The children still in the school had to shelter under their desks.
By this time I was traumatised and I was put in a home by the people I had been living with. My mother and father decided to fetch me back home to Croydon. My father was discharged from the Army and was at home in bed with tuberculosis. My younger sister (aged 5) and I were moved away as it was not a good idea to be near Father. We moved to Deddington in Oxfordshire and stayed with two spinster ladies, who were quite religious. We were then moved, for reasons unknown, to Hanwell near Banbury. We were the only evacuees in the village and stayed with a farm worker and his wife, who had lost their little son to meningitis. While I was there, my Father died and my mother came to see me in her widow鈥檚 clothes. My youngest brother and sister were with her and I didn鈥檛 see her again till I went home.
It was not always happy time, though it was nice being on a farm, and during school lunch time I would take the farm worker鈥檚 lunch when he was ploughing. They had two big horses and later a petrol tractor and I would sometimes sit on the mudguard! The farm worker鈥檚 sister Betty married Jackie, the younger brother of Randolph Turpin the boxer. They lived in Leamington Spa and she brought Americans to the farm, before she met Jackie! The Americans gave us food parcels, though we didn鈥檛 really need them!
After a while my sister was sent away to a home in a nearby village. One day the children from the home came to my village and I begged for my sister to be allowed to stay to lunch. Eventually they agreed as I said I would take her back, even though it was several miles. Unfortunately, my sister was punished for not going back with the rest. I stayed at Hanwell until after the war had ended. I think the woman I was staying with was reluctant to let me go as I was useful around the farm, carrying the shopping and so on.
My sister was collected by the WRVS in a car, which then collected me and took us to Banbury to catch the train to Paddington. I was so pleased to come back to my Mum and my brothers and sisters. We are still finding out what happened to each other!

Remembering VJ Day

The family I was staying with in Hanwell, Oxfordshire, had relatives in Leamington Spa and we went there for the VJ Day street party. Strung across the road was an effigy of Hitler which was set on fire! There was some debate as to whether I should be a fairy or a land army girl in the fancy dress competition, but the land army girl won! The man of the house was hilarious, dressed as a chinaman complete with pigtail and he had the actions off to a T! Attitudes were a bit different in those days. We all paraded round the block and he headed the procession, shuffling along. He was the star of the show!

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