大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Annie Keane of the 大象传媒 on behalf of Peter Harman and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Bombed in South London
I was 6 when the war started and we were living in Camberwell. Our house got bombed and we moved to Downham and that got bombed as well.

I was evacuated at the time. I think my mother and father used to go to the air raid shelters. We didn鈥檛 suffer any casualties, I can remember my mother saying that one of the women who lived opposite us was killed and there were tufts of her hair amongst the debris. When people saw that somebody kicked some rubbish over it to cover it up.

I remember my parents telling me that when their house was bombed that people went in to try and steal things. There was locked cabinet and someone had taken a hand axe to the door to see what was inside. Not everybody was considerate during the war and I鈥檓 sure we weren鈥檛 the only ones who suffered.

The evacuee from hell
I stayed in Westfield on the South Coast until France fell and then Burry Port in Wales. I was an evacuee from hell, I had no respect for people. I remember an old man there and he said I had to be in bed by 7.30, I used to like to go to the pictures so I did that I didn鈥檛 care what he said. I wasn鈥檛 conscious of being disrespectful. I just didn鈥檛 care, I was cheeky. My brother was much nicer than me. Westfield was really rural and I remember the taste of the milk there which was really nice. In Wales I was in a bigger town of 20,000 inhabitants.

People who took on evacuees didn鈥檛 know what they were letting themselves in for, the first family I was only there for 3 days but I don鈥檛 remember being naughty or disruptive but I don鈥檛 think they realised what an extra burden it was. I was moved to a house near by for a few months and then to the house next door.

My parents used to visit every 3 months. My father was a bus driver and had one day off a week, but every so often he鈥檇 get two days off together. Some kids weren鈥檛 visited by their parents at all in four years. When they came to collect them at the end of the war they didn鈥檛 know them. One girl stayed there after the war with people she鈥檇 been billeted with. One time my mum came to stay with us after the house had been bombed, she had a job checking that evacuees were ok.

We didn鈥檛 think ourselves lucky that our mother was there, we just took it for granted, we just thought that that was the way things were and just got on with it.

I still exchange Christmas Cards with one man there, who is still in the same house that his parents lived in.

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