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I was one of the many evacuees and it wasn’t so bad

Prior to the onset of war I was living with my parents and brother and sister in Gibralter. When hostilities broke out we were evacuated from Gibralter to London. Things became very difficult in London and my father was called up to war. My mother stayed behind to work in an aircraft factory and my brother, sister and I were evacuated. My sister was evacuated to Edinburgh and my brother and I were evacuated to Yeovil in Somerset. We went to a stately home called Brimpton Dervesey. We were both urban children and arrived at this large stately manor and we lived and slept in a large dormitory; half of which was sealed off by a curtain, so that we wouldn’t look. But boys being boys every evening the matron used to disappear and we used to go behind the curtain and explore the many treasures that we found. The biggest treasure of all was a very large collection of lead soldiers. Can you imagine with a war going and being boys we had mock fights galore. There were battles of roundheads versus cavaliers and so on — it was really marvellous.

Life went on fairly normally and we had classes during the day. It was then that we really began to learn about the countryside. It was here that I found my first rabbit caught in a snare, which was really sad. Of course this was meat to the farmer and local people and it supplemented their meagre rations. I was there for 3 years — I went when I was 7 years old and came back when I was 10. I suppose it was a big adventure and I don’t remember too many tears. Of course I had my brother with me, who was 18 months younger.

We didn’t see any of the war down there at all despite the Yeoviltown Airbase being close by. We were fairly new to Cricklewood in London, having just come from Gibralter , so did not notice any great changes there when we came back. My brother was born in Gibralter where my father had a naval outfitters. We were evacuated by ship and we found out that the ship before us had been torpedoed, so we were the lucky ones. We didn’t see much of the Blitz although when we came back to London the V2’s were still around. My father used to take us by bus and we used to walk around and view the damage.

“This story was submitted to the People's War site by BARBARA COLLINS-NEWING from ´óÏó´«Ã½ KENT on behalf of Mr Colin Manvell and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

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