大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jan Bedford of Kent County Council Maidstone Library on behalf of Myra Hagen and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

大象传媒 People鈥檚 War 鈥� Madginford Library Wednesday 21st July 2004

Mrs Myra Hagan

I was just a child coming up to 11 at the beginning of the war and my first memory was the actual declaration of war. I was in church with my parents and the vicar had arranged for a radio to be in there and we actually heard the declaration of war. We carried on with the church service for about 20 minutes I suppose not much longer and then the siren went. Of course everybody panicked and I can remember my parents grabbing us all and taking us home. It was actually a friendly aircraft that had gone over so there was no need to panic but of course everybody thought the worst.

Then my aunt in Scotland phoned my mother and said to send the children up to her, she lived in Dumfries just over the border. So the three of us my brother, my sister and I were packed off to my aunt in Scotland, where in fact I stayed for six years. That was the last time that we lived really as a family, after that we all split up.

I stayed up there, but my brother came back after one term because he was about to sit his school certificate. My parents decided that the war hadn鈥檛 really affected Dover at the time. We lived just outside Dover, so they decided he would be better to come home and go back to his old school and sit his school certificate. In fact the Dover schools were not evacuated until May 1940 and they all went; the girls school which I had attended went to Caerleon in South Wales. The boys including my brother were then evacuated to Ebbervale, which was quite a contrast from the country area where we were living.

I stayed up in Scotland and because of the different Scottish education system I went in to the junior school. One of the first memories I have is that we had to sit a compulsory Burns exam. We had to have an oral exam and we had to stand up and recite a Burns poem, which to me was just like a foreign language. I was absolutely dreading this exam, we had a written exam, which wasn鈥檛 so bad because I could memorise what to write down, but it was the oral that I was dreading. It happened to be the day before sports day when I was practising with another girl for the three-legged race and we tripped and I split my chin open and finished up at the local hospital having stitches. I never did sit the Burns exam. I can remember my aunt coming into the hospital to see me and she said, 鈥淲ell I didn鈥檛 think you鈥檇 go to such lengths to avoid the Burns exam.鈥�

As well as the three of us in the first place, our 2 cousins from Edinburgh came down and also stayed with the same aunt because everybody seemed to panic at the beginning of the war and they thought Edinburgh would be a target. My aunt had 3 young children of her own, so there were 8 children under the age of 15 she was looking after. As if that wasn鈥檛 enough in 1940 I think it was, it was after my brother returned home, my aunt was told that she must have 2 munitions workers. It was a large house and there were 2 rooms up in the attic, and she was told that she must convert those 2 rooms and take 2 munitions workers. So these 2 young women arrived from Glasgow and they weren鈥檛 exactly the most desirable. They would come in at night drunk and you could hear them going up the stairs to the attic with a clang of bottles. My aunt would find bottles on the stairs, so in the end she went to the billeting office and told them she could not have this in a house full of children. Eventually they agreed and the munitions workers were taken away.

Then my 2 cousins from Edinburgh went back home because there again Edinburgh wasn鈥檛 too much of a target. My sister was a great worrier, to me I suppose at that age it was a bit of an adventure to start with, but she was older and very worried and concerned about my parents in Dover, who of course were undergoing quite a lot of bombing and shelling. She developed a duodenal ulcer and it was decided at that stage that she could leave school at 14, and go back to stay with my parents so that she wouldn鈥檛 be worried about them. That meant I was left up there on my own. It felt a bit like the 10 green bottles. I stayed there until March 1945.

Before my cousins went, I can remember we used to try and raise money for Spitfire funds and all this kind of thing, and we actually put on a concert, which with hindsight must have been awful for the audience. It was just in my aunt鈥檚 front room. We all did various little sketches, sang and other things. We roped all the neighbours to come and I suppose we charged them so much to come, we found it great fun. I don鈥檛 know what they thought of it, but we did raise quite a bit of money.

Another memory was the winter of 鈥�40/鈥�41 when we had a lot of snow. Our school was closed because many came from the country. By this time I was in the senior school, which was built for 800 and with all the evacuees, there were 1500 pupils, so it was quite crowded. In this particular winter it was so snowy that we couldn鈥檛 go to school. My little cousins found the snow was right over their Wellington boots.

There were a lot of troops in Dumfries on the way to Stranraer and the trains were getting stuck. The snow was drifting over the top of the telegraph poles and in fact they lost a train somewhere between Dumfries and Stranraer. The trains could get to Dumfries and no further. So there were all these troops, soldiers, sailors and airmen wandering around the streets with nowhere to go. My aunt asked some Canadian airmen if they would like to come in, just for a cup of tea, about 4 or 5 did so and they were so grateful. She asked them where they were going to sleep for the night, they said they didn鈥檛 know, they鈥檇 been told they could go to some hall, but there were hundreds of them wanting somewhere to sleep. So in a rash moment I suppose, she said 鈥淚f you鈥檇 like to come and sleep here you can do so, and if you鈥檝e got any friends, they can come too. They thanked her, of course, very, very much and they all disappeared. Within about half an hour they came back with some friends. I don鈥檛 know how many there were, but they kept coming and coming through the front door. We finished up with them everywhere, they were in the dining room, they were in the lounge and in the sitting-room too. They slept on the floor all night. We were providing cups of tea and so on. The only complaint was really from my uncle in the morning because he couldn鈥檛 get into the bathroom to shave. Some of them came back the next night. She heard from several of them even after the end of the war. They were so grateful for the hospitality.

We were given special holidays in October to help with potato picking. We were all issued with dungarees, which we thought were great because it was the first time we鈥檇 ever worn trousers. We were picked up at the school by lorry and taken out to various farms and of course to us it was wonderful because we got off school. We helped with a bit of fruit picking which wasn鈥檛 so good because they were damsons and they had terrible thorns.

My parents all this time were still in Dover, my father was working in Dover. They suffered with shelling, but by March 鈥�44 they did decide I could come home for holidays, which of course was absolutely fantastic. With shelling there was no warning when the shells were coming over. They used to have, I don鈥檛 know whether it would be the observer corps, or somebody up on the cliffs, and they could see the flashes, providing the weather was fit. They would sound the siren, which was always sounded twice. They would sound it once and then there would be a gap, and it would sound again so that people knew it was going to be shelling as opposed to bombing. Of course everybody got off the streets and in Dover they used the caves as shelters.

My parents were very lucky as we had an unusual house in that it was built into a hillside and they had discovered that at the back of the house there was an old tunnel that they thought at one time had some connection with the castle. It had arched brick walls. The end of it obviously was all blocked but it made an ideal air raid shelter. They had got it all equipped with everything that was necessary. We used to go in there whenever the shelling warning went. Even if the house had been hit we鈥檇 have been perfectly safe because it was under at least 6 feet or so more of soil.

One of my experiences of shelling came when I was in Dover seeing some friends and the shelling warning went and because I didn鈥檛 live in Dover my friend said you鈥檇 better get home. Whenever the shelling warning went, all the buses got out of Dover; it didn鈥檛 matter where they were supposed to be going, they just went out the nearest route. So I got onto a bus which I thought was going roughly in the right direction and I finished up at River, which was the little village next to ours. As we were going along a very straight road there was a most enormous explosion. The bus literally jumped up, I don鈥檛 know how many inches but it felt quite high, and we were all shaken and bruised but the driver, with great presence of mind, put his foot down and we kept going. The shell in fact had fallen in the road that we had just come over. He stopped the bus at the terminus and I got off, and I don鈥檛 think I鈥檝e ever run so fast in my life to get home. My parents were very glad to see me home.

So for the last few school holidays I used to come home, at first my father would come to London to meet me. My aunt would put me on the train at Dumfries, and she usually gave the guard a tip to keep an eye on me I think. Even at 14 and 15 I would come down on my own and get a taxi across London from Euston to Victoria. My first experience of Doodlebugs was sitting at Victoria station and this horrendous noise came. All of a sudden there was silence as the engine cut out. Everybody got down on the floor of the train, except me because I didn鈥檛 understand. Somebody grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me down and everybody was covering their heads. There was this enormous explosion and everybody got up again. The Doodlebugs had fallen not very far away: that was my first experience, but I saw many during my holidays when I was at home. All round Dover it was absolutely bristling with guns and many Doodlebugs were brought down by 鈥渁ck-ack鈥� fire.

Another experience I remember was when my mother, my sister and I had some friends who were farmers walked to try and get half a dozen eggs. While we were on the way back a Doodlebug appeared and we hid behind a haystack. There was a tremendous noise of gunfire but I don鈥檛 think they got the Doodlebug. Anyway once things calmed down a bit we came out from behind this haystack only to find that on the other side of the haystack had been an 鈥渁ck-ack鈥� gun and this was the tremendous noise.

I do remember looking up into the sky when our forces crossed the Rhine and wherever you looked there were planes, it was just black with planes, gliders and all sorts.

In March 鈥�45 I had just sat my Scottish Higher Certificate when the Rector, (the headmaster was called a Rector), who was a very imposing figure sent a message asking me to go to his room. I can remember fear and trembling, wondering whatever I鈥檇 done. He told me I was going to go home for good. Of course I was overjoyed when I came home and I burst out crying as I came through the front door through sheer happiness.

On VE Day I can remember my sister and I and one or 2 other friends went into Dover. The Mayor came out on the town hall steps and of course the people who had stayed in Dover all the time had had a pretty horrendous time and everybody was just overjoyed. All the flags came out. I went back to my old school into the 6th form and had a year at home, which was lovely, but we never lived as a family again.

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