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This story was submitted to the People's War by a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ London and CSV on behalf of Irene Elgar.

When I went to Somerset in June 1940 I went to a completely new lifestyle. I was ten years old and my brother was 9 at the time.

I went to a house where fox hunting hounds were kept in kennels, in fact the house ‘The Kennels’. I can’t remember the name of the family I was housed with but they were a couple with their own daughter about same age as me. From then on my life was completely different.

I’d come from a working class background and the people I stayed with I think could be described as middle class. The first thing that impressed me about there place was that they had a telephone in the house. Very grand! Having said that, they had no indoor toilet facilities. Being in the country you had to use outside privies. Most people in London had those too but with ours at least you could flush!

One of my saddest memories was that I was split from my brother. We travelled together with the other evacuees and quite a lot of the families at the other end wouldn’t take on boys only the girls. That happened a lot, possibly they were thinking of the sleeping arrangements. So, my brother was in the same area but a few miles away from me. He attended the same village school, though.

Unlike my brother I was fed a bit like royalty. When the family came back from the hunt if a stag had been caught we would have venison for our dinner. I’d never been given such exotic food and the lifestyle was so different from my one in London.

Overall I felt like I was there under sufferance. I was an encumbrance. I just lived with it from day-to-day and I just accepted it. I think like a lot of people, I’ve just blanked a lot of memories out. It was a miserable time, it horrendous at times but I’ve but it all to the back of my mind.

Thinking about it now, I would never have gone although at the time I never had a choice. I had to be taken away from London for my own safety, or so the authorities said. In retrospect, I don’t think I did need to go away because at that time we were in what was called the ‘Phoney War’ because nothing was happening. I was only in June 1940 that Dunkirk happened. So, perhaps because of that happening, maybe that’s why it was so important for me and my peers to be evacuated. After that the Blitz happened 1940-1941.By the time my brother and I came back the bulk of the bombing in London had taken place. So actually, we did miss the worse of the Blitz but I didn’t really want to be evacuated and split up from my family.

School
We attended the village school and one of the teachers there was also an evacuee her name was Miss Bowyer. She was old and I don’t know why she was evacuated at that age.

It was strange being at the school. We’d gone from a custom built school with cloakrooms, toilets to a village hall. It was weird, the surroundings were weird. As a city child you were used to shops and facilities were round the corner and near by. In the country you had to travel miles to get to any thing.

I can’t remember what grade of education we were given or whether there were local children mixing with evacuee children.

Evacuee life
We stayed in Somerset until the following June in 1941. We weren’t really welcome. The reason why, is that the previous round of evacuees were not as hygienic as us. They were from the east end and I’m sorry to say that the child from neck-of-the-woods were not known for having regular baths.

When we arrived, from north west London, the family tolerated me but I have to say that I was looked after very well. I have no complaints.

The host families really didn’t want the evacuee child there. They had to be begged and pleaded with by the authorities, someone like today’s social workers, to take on these children. When we arrived off the train we only had the things that we stood up in. And our gas masks of course!

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