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With the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of war yesterday it naturally brought many memories to those of us who remembered it so well. I had just come home from Sunday School; it was a beautiful day. I listened with my parents to Mr. Chamberlain's speech and we were not at all surprised knowing what had been happening to Austria, Czechoslovakia and finally Poland with the Nazi invasion. I had been due to go on my first Girl Guide camp to the Isle of Sheppey and was so looking forward to it when the Guide Captain called the day before to say it had been cancelled due to the likelihood of hostilities. I was so disappointed. Mother had bought me a nice new kit bag, tin plates, mug etc. which I still have to this day! The first days of the war were eerily quiet but then the air raids started in 1940. There were different signals given on the siren, one to denote the enemy were right overhead. I used to have to come downstairs at night time and get in the cupboard under the stairs.

In September 1940 I went to stay with a school friend out in the country here, two miles from Ashford. My old school had received a direct hit as it was near the railway station. Mercifully the headmistress had just got her pupils into the air raid shelter and they were all saved. The Germans were trying to get our big railway works here. While I was out in the country there was fierce fighting overhead with the rattle of machine gun fire. Then one day a Messerschmitt came down in the farm opposite the house where I was staying. The pilot had landed in a ditch. He had received bullet wounds in his toes and down one arm. He staggered out and the farmer's daughter and others took him into the farmhouse. He was offered a drink of water which at first he refused (thinking it was poisoned), until she herself drank out of another glass nearby. In due course the military and police took him into custody and he was subsequently taken to our big mental hospital before final dispersal to a prisoner of war camp. We used to do this with all enemy personnel in this area. In due course a guard was placed on the plane. Then I went out to have a look at the plane that evening and, projecting from the oil-filled ditch, I espied a piece of paper protruding from it. Being a curious young lady of 14 I tugged at it and pulled it right out of the ditch and found it was a most beautiful map of southern England listing all our defences etc. and had been printed by Bock, of Berlin. It revealed to me the extent of their intelligence work in our country!! A staff officer was called and he and another officer took the map away and they both thanked me very much for finding it.

With the raids going on overhead with the constant rat-tattle of machine gun fire it was very tempting to look up at the skies instead of taking shelter. One of the saddest sights I saw while staying out there in the country was to see a poor Australian pilot coming down with his parachute in flames. He landed in a wood about a mile away. He was in a Hurricane fighter which the Germans caught; he leapt out of his plane but pulled the rip—cord of his parachute too quickly and the flames from the plane caught the parachute alight. Well, on Friday 13th September my father called to see me to say I was to be evacuated that very next morning. I travelled in a train to Oxford, which took all day as we had to stop and start so frequently. We travelled via Reading so as to avoid London. When I arrived in Oxford all of us children were taken to the Town Hall and with 800 of us I slept on the floor of the Town Hall on a mattress provided by the Red Cross. The next day they started to sort us children out and I was sent temporarily with two other girls to the home of an elderly lady living in Boar's Hill. I stayed there three nights and was then sent on my own to a billet off the Abingdon Road. I cannot recall the name of the lady or of the house, but it was indeed a very nice home and I remember there were trees nearby. She was very tall, had white hair, and was, I think, a maiden lady and quite elderly. She gave us oatmeal biscuits for breakfast and Keiller’s Dundee marmalade in those white stone jars (she was truly Scottish). I was not very happy there and finally landed up at Chilswell Road with a Mrs. W who had 3 boys and a girl of her own. I lived there until July 1941 by which time things were quieter in Ashford after the Battle of Britain Sunday, September 15th. I then returned home to Ashford in 1940.

My brother was evacuated to Witney as his school, Ashford Grammar School were sent there — my school went to Oxford. My parents also came to Witney, as my father was an invalid. He suffered from pernicious anaemia and a spinal disease akin to multiple sclerosis; and the authorities here felt he ought to leave Ashford as he had difficulty in walking etc. So my parents went to stay with the Misses Y… at their guest house at Corn Street. They were two sisters, Patty and Daisy. After my parents returned home the Misses Y…. went to America during the war as they had a sister out there; so they gave my mother their little Yorkshire terrier which we had for 61/2 years before he died at the age of 13. We had had a Yorkie many years before that and mother loved the little dogs. My mother continued corresponding with Patty and Daisy. Daisy died first and Patty lived to a great age and died in the Victoria Home, Ossining, New York, a home for persons of British descent.

The first school I went to in Oxford was called, I think, St Ebba’s. It was in a poor part of the city and the school was truly Dickensian with well-worn wooden desks, inkwells etc and the floor was stone. Then after a while I move to St Aldgate’s down past Christchurch and not far from Folly Bridge. I remember how new the police station looked then, so it must have been built just before the war. My school and that of another Ashford school had to club together and we were fitted in as best we could. The headmistress of St Aldgate’s was called Miss W… She used to wear a rather drab woolly costume and her hair was scraped behind in a bun; she wore pince-nez rimless spectacles and looked every inch the old type school-teacher. Our local paper published a photo of us pupils in that school, with Miss W and the photograph appear in their book ‘Kent in wartime (I believe that was the title). Unfortunately, I do not have a copy but remember seeing it in an antiquarian bookshop in Faversham years later.

Every Saturday morning I used to catch the 'bus in Oxford and travel to Witney to see my parents. My brother was billeted at another address in Witney. He was first billeted with old Lord H…. who lived at the Woodgreen end of Witney. He was well in his eighties and his family owned the Chubb firm of safes, locksmiths etc. I used to look forward so much to my Saturday trips and would then come back in the evening to Oxford. I used to take a short cut through a yard at the Marlborough Hotel. Mother took me one day for a walk to Ducklington. She liked Witney very much and it was quite the best place for her to be with an invalid husband. He was looked after by a Dr. D… there who lived in a big house just below the hotel. I understand he eventually died of cancer for we read his obituary in the Daily Telegraph. Father liked his doctor very much. Mother used to go to Boots library for in those days they ran a library as well as selling medicines etc. for reading was one of the few pleasures my poor father enjoyed. She worshipped regularly at the parish church, St. Mary's. It was such a treat to be able to live as normal a life in Oxfordshire as was possible in those days without being bombarded from the air.

Just before we left Ashford a bomb dropped only up the road from our home and mother, father and myself had just managed at 10 a.m. to get in the cupboard underneath the stairs. I must say I was very frightened. A whole street was demolished. I went out into the garden to find all the tops of our flowers were missing; only the stalks could be seen: the effect of bomb blast. Later,of course, during the war, we had to contend with the awful droning doodlebugs which swept low over our coast line from France. Many of them fell around Ashford and two churches were destroyed among other buildings. Oxford, by the way, was full of Jewish refugees as well as us children; but I loved the atmosphere of the university city and used to go to Christchurch Cathedral every Sunday to worship. I have not been to Witney since I returned home but I am told the whole place is much larger now; but am sure I would still recognise some of the places in Witney which I remembered from my wartime days when visiting there each week 49 years ago, in 1940-41.

I started work at Ashford Hospital at the age of 16 on 1st December 1941 doing secretarial work and I stayed there for 29 years.

My brother's name is Alfred J….. He was billeted with a lady on The Green, in Witney. He went to Ashford Grammar school and they all went off to Witney. He now lives in Nailsea, near Bristol; and I will try and persuade him to write about his experiences there. He has a very busy job now, with quite long hours, and has to travel to Wales each week.

I am glad your school had the opportunity to take part in an Exhibition last July entitled 'Witney at War', which proved very successful. Talking of a small theatre in Witney called the Barn Theatre at the back of a shop called Osborn Tite's, I seem to remember my mother taking me there on one occasion. I think we were both given complementary tickets because one, if not two of the actresses were staying at 81 Corn Street while they were in Witney. One was called, I think, Miss T…., for her mother was a permanent guest at 81 Corn Street with my parents and others. I cannot remember, however, what sort of a shop Osborn Tite's was or exactly where it was situated in Witney.

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