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This story has been written to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Coralie, on behalf of Reginald Thurston. The story has been added to the site with his permission, and Reginald fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

My father was born in Lambeth Walk, London, one of 13 boys, and was a friend of Charlie Chaplin. My mother and father ran a public house in Lambeth and I was the middle one of five brothers. I had two older brothers who had been called up into the Army just prior to war. Antony, 22, was in the Royal Engineers and went abroad during the war. George, 19, was stationed in Coventry during the bombing and helped dig out survivors, as he was in the Military Police. After the war he was part of the forces that helped to secure Belsen until the investigators arrived. He never recovered from what he saw there and, until the day he died, nothing seemed to help the horrific nightmares he had of being buried by bodies falling on top of him.

The three younger boys were Albert who was eldest at 12, then me at 10 and the youngest, Donald who was 3. On September 2nd 1939, the day before war broke out, we three younger boys were evacuated with St George the Martyr School, Southwark. Our parents couldn't leave London, of course, as they had to run the pub. We were taken to the station by our grandmother, as our mother couldn't bear to see us off as she was so upset at our going. We all walked 'crocodile fashion' to Waterloo Station, with one change of clothes in a bag and a cardboard gas-mask case round our necks. Our teachers went with us — I remember my teacher was called Miss Venables.

We all three attended St George the Martyr School although, of course, Donald was in the Infants, I was in the Juniors and Albert in the Seniors. This caused a problem as the Junior and Senior sections of the school were evacuated to Ilfracombe, but the Infants went to Exmouth. Because Donald was so young at 3, Albert and I had to accompany him to Exmouth and not go with our own parts of the school to Ilfracombe. The problem was that Albert had passed his 11+ and would have gone to Grammar School, but because the paperwork had gone to Ilfracombe and was never found, he was unable to go. He was clever, and if he had gone to Grammar School he would have gone on until 16, and possibly 18, and could have ended up going to University. Also, as we were in Exmouth with the infants, I missed taking my 11+ altogether. Albert was going to be 13 that November and, of course, at that time school-leaving age was 14. There wasn't really facility for us evacuees as well as the local children, so the school was held in the Church Hall at Withycombe. The older children didn't go to school for about 3 months after arriving, and then when we started it was only mornings. There were hardly any books either, so we only did the most basic classes. Along with the other young children, Donald was mostly taken to the seafront or to the park so they could play. We also missed school if help was needed, for instance, helping to pick potatoes in the fields. As a result of being in Exmouth, we got hardly any formal education.

When we arrived in Exmouth, local people assembled in the hall for the initial selection of children to be billeted with them. Plenty of people wanted Donald as he was 3, or Albert, as was big enough and old enough to work, but I had no appeal at 10, so no-one wanted to take me as well. Our parents had given specific instructions that we were to be billeted together and not become separated, so we got left after the selection had taken place. For the next week the Billeting Officer, Mr Evans, took us round every day, in his Austin 7, to try to find a billet where we could stay together, or I refused for us all as we had been instructed. Each evening, when no billet had been found, we were returned to the hall, where we slept until a billet was found. Eventually, the vicar of Withycombe took us all and we stayed in 2, Featherbed Lane, Exmouth for a fortnight until, unfortunately, his wife fell down stairs and broke her hip, so we were on the move again with Mr Evans. In the end he found us a billet at 30 Bicton St, with Aunt Nell (in her late 60s) and Uncle Fred Holman (in his early 60s), a brother and sister. Mr Evans and the three of us boys arrived on their doorstep, and he said to Nell, who he knew quite well, that she must take some evacuees. She said that he knew she already had a bedridden, invalid mother of 82, 2 maiden aunts (Gina and Lou) and Fred, her brother who was a coal-merchant, to look after. 'I'm not taking any', she said. 'You've got 6 bedrooms', said Mr Evans and Nell replied, 'No, only 4', which he countered with 'You've got 2 attics'. She was adamant she couldn't take all three of us, so he asked her to take 2 of us. Of course, being our spokesman, as I was more forceful than Albert, as instructed I said 'No, only all of us together'. However, a compromise was reached when Mrs Denford, from across the street, said she would take one of us, so Albert went with Mrs Denford, and Donald and I stayed with Aunt Nell and Uncle Fred.

They were very kind and we eat very well, as Fred had a smallholding with 500 chickens, ducks and geese, and would barter coal for anything else we wanted including sweets, cream, butter, cheese etc. He also had 2 farrowing sows plus their intermittent litters, but a certain number of each litter of piglets were claimed by the Ministry of Agriculture. Uncle Fred got round this by only declaring some of the piglets, and hiding a few of each litter in another field, and fattening them for our own use. At killing time the local Doctor came to check that the pigs were free from TB and then the local butcher 'butchered' them: this should have been done by the Ministry vet, of course. The local policeman would also guard the bottom of the lane to the field, in order to sound the alarm if anyone appeared. They all benefited as they would get a cut of the pigs for their efforts. This was no doubt a common practise in country areas.

There was mayhem in the our house, as Aunt Nell and Uncle Fred were not used to children at all and did not really know how to deal with us. Donald, at 3, was not happy being away from our parents and would not go to bed on his own. Our father was a very loving parent who always read bedtime stories and sang songs to us, even if he was running the bar in the pub. To get Donald to go to bed, I had to do the same as my father did, to make him feel secure, and then had to go to bed with him at 7pm, even though other boys my age were staying up later. If I could I would creep downstairs once he was asleep, but if Donald woke up later all hell was let loose. He was terrified of the dark and there were no lights at all in the attics.

As Albert and I were in different households, we didn't see each other all the time. As we couldn't communicate easily, and as the houses were opposite each other across the narrow street, we made a talking device with two tin cans and a long string, which was pulled taut across the road at attic level. This meant that we were able to speak to each other, mostly at night: one of us could talk into their can and the other could listen by putting their can up to their ear, so we had to take turns. We could hear quite clearly and would chat about lots of things including what we had each had for our meals that day. We could get each other's attention, as by rubbing the string it made a noise rather like a chicken, which could be heard in the room and then you could answer. It was annoying if there was no reply, as you couldn't see into the opposite window to see if anyone was in the room, because of the blackout.

After living in London, Exmouth seemed like paradise to us boys, with all the countryside and the sea, which we had never seen before going to Devon. We had a lot of incidents with the local children who didn’t accept us easily, and I always fought all the battles for all three of us, Albert being a much gentler and more sensitive character. However, we did all sorts of new things, one of which for me was riding my bike to take flasks of tea to sustain Uncle Fred, and his brothers Uncle Bill and Uncle Frank, amongst others, all of whom were in the Home Guard, manning 2 big naval guns at Orcombe Point and Queen's Drive. They had no weapons with them at all if anything had happened.

We saw all sorts of sights from Exmouth, and one day Messersmidts flew in to bomb Exeter Airport, where the Spitfires were based, and we saw an air-fight over the estuary after they had dropped their extra bombs on Exmouth. We were on the seafront at the time and saw a plane come down. We didn't know which nation's plane had been hit, but the lifeboat went out and we saw them bring back the body of a dead German pilot.

We were there for 6 years, and tragically only saw our parents one more time, when Dad came to take us home to see Mum, who was in Dagenham Sanatorium with TB. She was in a very long ward divided by glass cubicles. I rushed down the ward to see her, but couldn't recognise anyone as my Mum. I hurried back to tell Dad that she wasn't there. Dad said that Mum was there, and to look as she was waving to us. She had held up her hand to wave, with the light of the window behind it, and you could see through it, like an X-ray. I didn't want to know and ran out of the ward, which greatly upset my Mum: as far as I was concerned it was not my Mum.

Before she was ill, my parents had been bombed out of the Lambeth pub and had needed rescuing. They then moved to another pub in Ilford Broadway and were bombed out again. They were trapped in the cellars of both pubs and had to be dug out. My mother died of her TB in March 1940, aged 42, and it turned out that Aunt Nell knew for a long time, but didn't know how to tell us. Sadly, my father, then 46, died in January 1941, of cancer. We had no replies from our letters home and wondered why not, and in the end when, unbeknown to us, my Dad was ill, Aunt Nell told us that our Mum had died. Eventually she did tell us when Dad died too.

Anthony, being the eldest, was asked by Nell and Fred if they could adopt Donald and, as Donald was too young to be asked if he agreed, and thinking it was for the best for Donald's security, as Anthony and George could both have been killed in the war, he gave his permission. However, when I was asked if I wanted to be adopted, and when I asked what it would entail and was told I would have to change my name, I declined on the grounds that my father wouldn't have liked it.

Albert was called up near the end of the war, and was in the Medical Corps on a hospital ship which went into Japan to pick up survivors of the atomic bomb and I stayed in Exmouth until I was called up at the age of 18.

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