大象传媒

My sister Dori (almost 15) and I (nearly 6), were evacuated from Tottenham to the outskirts of Northampton in October 1940, our family having been 鈥淏ombed Out鈥�. Houses nearby alongside the railway line were flattened by the bombs. There was an Anderson shelter in our back garden, but as it was so wet and horrible in there, that night we were all sleeping on mattresses in the living room. The windows were blown out so we had to go the public underground shelter on The Green. I can remember my eldest brother carrying me and cutting his foot on the broken glass.

Our first billet was with an older couple. We had to wash down in a bowl in the kitchen as the chicken food was kept in the bath. Dori and I shared a double bed; one morning, after she had got up we found that a mouse had been flattened in the bed! When one of the couple鈥檚 grandchildren visited, she slept with us and used to pinch me hard! We had to leave when their relatives from London arrived to stay.

The second billet was dreadful. We were given camp beds to sleep on, no mattress and only one blanket each. It was a bitterly cold and snowy winter, and we kept our clothes on at night and squeezed together in one camp bed for warmth. We had very little food; I can remember tapioca every day. My sister said that the money for our keep went to buy the woman鈥檚 baby a new pram. When our mother visited we had a proper dinner and jelly too.

Our mother took us back to London in about May 1941. Dori visited our elder sister, who was living in Blackpool to be near her air force husband. I stayed in London, in requisitioned housing, with my mother and my brother when he returned from evacuation in Baldock.

By 1942, my sisters had returned to the family home. We had a Morrison Shelter in the back room downstairs; we used to sleep top-to-toe.

We had a street party to celebrate the end of the war, and the children all wore fancy dress.

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