大象传媒

In 1939, at the innocent age of 7, I set off for school one morning. On arrival at St. George's Road School in Hull, we children were herded into the Hall by the teachers, who gave us all a gas mask and a bag of groceries and then proceeded to tie labels onto our clothing - showing our names and the number of the bus we had been allocated. I did not realise at the time that this label was, in fact, an evacuee tag! My mother had not told me that I was to be sent away to live and I was under the impression that we were going on a school day trip.
There was much excitement as we set off on the bus. We arrived at Langtoft, near Driffield and were taken into a school assembly hall to be picked over like cattle, as the local residents chose which child to foster. It was very humiliating to sit there and wait for someone to pick you out and it felt as if nobody wanted ME! However, I was still blissfully unaware of the actual reason why we had to sit there to be chosen by these strangers. Eventually a Mr & Mrs Woodmansey, an elderly, childless couple, chose me and took me home. Their house had no running water and had an outside earth WC. All water had to be drawn from the village pump. Once I had been put to bed I began to realise that I would not be going home! It was quite a shock, and I cried myself to sleep. In fact I cried myself to sleep many times. My sister Olga had also been evacuated, but had been sent to Whitby. However, after a few months they transferred her to Langtoft so at least we were in the same village. It transpired that we would have to stay there for all of four years. We never saw our Mother during this time as she was occupied with working on munitions and looking after the rest of the family...there were 8 children in total...so she was a very busy lady indeed.
My father was in the Royal Navy. One day Mr & Mrs Woodmansey took me to meet my father in Bridlington as a surprise. He was dressed in full naval uniform and I didn鈥檛 know who he was and didn鈥檛 recognise him. However, we did spend a happy couple of hours together and it was wonderful to see him after such a long time. I missed my mother and father and all my brothers and sisters very much.
I recall watching the blitz over the nearby towns from the hills around Langtoft. The whole sky would light up and we could hear the noise of the guns and bombs dropping. These sights and sounds will remain with me for ever.
It was not until 1943, at the age of 11 years, that I was able to return home to my mother and the rest of the family. When I arrived home and saw all the tremendous devastation I was very relieved to see that our old house had survived all the bombings. It was so good to be home again with my family around me!

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