大象传媒

This story was submitted by Garry Lloyd, a CSV volunteer, on behalf of Joan Polden, who has given her permission to put her story on the website and understands the terms and conditions.

When German bombs blew up the gasworks near our home in l940 the risks of bringing up eight children on her own during the Blitz became obvious to my mother. The two youngest, my brother Harry and I, were to be evacuated.

Thus we found ourselves with gasmasks, small cardboard cases, ticketed and labelled on Croydon station 鈥� with scores of other endangered children 鈥� bound for Cambridgeshire. I was in tears when my mum waved us off. My dad had died of tuberculosis before the war.

Bewildered and anxious, when we arrived at Haddenham, Harry held on to me tightly and kept telling the formidable reception committee: 鈥淢um says we have to stay together. We musn鈥檛 be parted.鈥� Instructions of this kind were widely ignored, depending on available accommodation. But Harry鈥檚 resolve and insistence saved the day. We were taken by bus, together, to a fruit farm in the village of Aldreth near Haddenham.

I had never seen a farm before. Farmer Drummer, and his wife, had four children, two girls and two boys, a lot older than us. Their parents were a kindly couple but, understandably, there was some resentment from the children. I had to share a bed with one of the girls. The farm grew fruit for the Chivers jam factory, but also had cows, chickens, and dogs. Unlike wartime food we were used to, we were amply fed. We had warm milk straight from the cows, filtered through muslin, and real eggs, a wonderful change from the powdered variety of our diet in Croydon.

Harry went to school and helped the farm children with fruit-picking, until he fell from a tree and hurt his shoulder. I was too young to take part and spent much of my time in the kitchen with Mrs Drummer. She was affectionate, but I missed my mum, who visited us on a day travel permit about once a month.

For two years we lived our farm life, until Mrs Drummer fell ill and was taken to hospital. Harry and I returned briefly to Croydon, but we were evacuated again. This time Harry went to Pulborough, in Sussex and I was sent, with my sister Lucy, to Southwick on the outskirts of Brighton.

It was a complete contrast. We lived with a fireman, Mr Bristow, his wife and a son about the same age as me, in a small two-up, two-down cottage. Lucy and I shared a bedroom and once again 鈥� unlike many evacuated children 鈥� we met with nothing but kindness, despite the son鈥檚 reluctance to share toys with me. Though the sea, which I had never seen before, was a stone鈥檚 throw away, we never swam in it. Nor could we visit the beaches, which were festooned with barbed wire and defences against German invasion.

I missed the farm. The food was more spartan in Brighton, relying as it did entirely on rationing. We spent three years there until the bombing became worse than at home, so we returned to Croydon. After the war I kept in touch with my kindly farm family, and returned to Brighton for holidays with the Bristows. Unlike many children of my generation, evacuation did not have any negative effects on me and my family. We were happy, and we were lucky.

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