大象传媒

In July 1939 my sister and I returned home after two weeks holiday in the country. (These holidays were arranged by a charity called Country Holiday Fund, for school children who had saved a few pennies each week towards the cost). When our mother met us she said that
we might be going away again soon, but nothing was said about the reason for this news.

Sometime in August, our family - Mum, Dad and four girls - went to the Battersea Town Hall
to collect our gas masks. The smell of the rubber was horrible, it reminded me of the gas at
the dentist, I felt unable to breath so I pulled the mask off very quickly. Months later I would discover that this had not been a good idea.

I do not remember any discussions about the impending war or having any thoughts about the future when, on Friday 1st September, my three sisters and I waved goodbye to our mother as we walked off down the road to our school. Maureen nearly 6, Rita nearly 7, Joan almost 10 and I was 11 years old. Mum was about six months pregnant at the time so goodness knows how she felt watching her four daughters going away and not knowing when she might see us again. Dad was at work so could not help us on our way. I don't remember carrying any luggage, only our gas masks in their cardboard boxes. We must have had some cases somewhere.

In the school playground we lined up with all the other children ready to walk to the railway
station. (The station is a short distance from Battersea Dog's Home, which has become quite well known through TV programmes). Our destination was Hove, next to Brighton, on the
south coast. Of course, we thought this was lovely, a holiday at the seaside!!

On arrival we went to a large hall where each of us was given a carrier bag containing a few food items. The only thing I remember clearly was a tin of condensed milk. We left the hall in small groups escorted by a lady with a list of addresses where we were to be 鈥渄eposited鈥�.

No-one was willing or able to take four girls together, so Maureen was placed with me and Joan and Rita went to a house a few doors further down the road. Their hostess was a blind lady who lived with her husband and a daughter who was about 17 years old. Joan and Rita were well treated and happy there for all the time that we were in Hove. Maureen and I did not fare so well.

On Sunday morning, two days after our arrival, I was looking after a group of children in the park when the sirens started. It was 3rd September and war had been declared. We started to walk back to our billets and were met by two men carrying all our gas masks. I suppose they thought we were in for an immediate attack. Of course, after that we always had to carry our gas masks everywhere.

Because the primary school had organised our evacuation to keep we four girls together, there was a problem about finding a secondary school for me. I had passed the Junior County Scholarship exam and should have started at a school in Chelsea after the summer holidays. Eventually the Hove County Girls School decided to accept me as a pupil. One day we had a gas mask drill. I discovered then why I couldn't breath in mine when they were issued. It was too small!!!

At the end of November 1939 Mum visited us in Hove to show us our new baby brother, a boy at last after four girls. During her visit she arranged for us to have our photos taken.

Time passed without incident until one day Maureen was sitting on a table having her hands and face washed ready for tea. She asked for some sweets that Mum had sent to us. When she was told that she couldn't have any at that time she used a very naughty swear word to our hostess who was very shocked and I was petrified. I insisted that my Mum and Dad did not swear at home so she must have heard it at school. Unfortunately our young hostess was not prepared to keep a child like that in her home, so it was not long before we were moved on.

At the next home there was a young boy who took great delight in biting Maureen. When she decided to bite him back his mother objected, so we were on the move again. During our stay in this home I wanted to go out to a lantern-slide showing of 鈥淭he Pilgrim's Progress鈥�.
There was a competition to write an essay on it afterwards. I had to take Maureen with me and of course, part way through the show she wanted to go to the toilet. Fortunately a kind lady offered to take her so that I didn't miss any of the show and today I still have the hymn book and New Testament I received as first prize for the essay.

My memory of our next home is a bit vague. We were with other children in a large room on the top floor of a big house. I think the ground floor might have been a doctor's surgery. I don't remember anything about any adults there, but someone brought our meals up to the room. A bed settee was part of the seating arrangements and this was opened up at night for two of us and there were other beds in the corners of the room.

About this time, a girl's grammar school arrived from London to share the boy's school in Hove and it was decided that I should move from the Hove school to the London one.
Sharing the school facilities meant that we usually attended afternoons only. To get there I had a long walk through a large area of allotments and rarely met anyone on the way.

Once more Maureen and I had to move. I don't remember any reason for this move, but I think I can say it was not my sister's fault this time.

In our next home the family had a parrot which occupied a large cage in the corner of a basement room where we sat with all the family round a large table for our meals. The main memory from those occasions was breakfast of porridge with black treacle. On Saturday afternoons I used to go to the sweetshop to spend the pocket money that Mum had sent to us.
Then I would sit with Maureen in our bedroom and look at books and eat our sweets until it was time for her to go to bed. She was 6 years old by this time and we were quite happy there, but it was not long before we had to move again. This time it was because of the way the war was progressing. ( Dunkirk evacuation etc.)

In June 1940 it was decided that a south coast town was not the safest place for evacuees.
The school I was attending agreed to include my three sisters in their arrangements for the move from Hove so that we would finish up together in the next place of safety. So, after
ten months at the seaside we were on our way to Chertsey in Surrey. Not all that far from London - about 22 miles I think.

Once more I was placed with Maureen. This was with a fairly young couple again, living in a bungalow. We slept on a mattress on the floor under a single bed. This was supposed to protect us from flying glass and debris if we were bombed. All the windows were criss-crossed with sticky tape.

Joan and Rita were living in a house near the river which was quite a distance from where Maureen and I were living. By this time Dad was in the army. He was 38 when the war started and I never knew whether he volunteered or was called up. Then our mother was evacuated with our brother and was living in another house in Chertsey so we were able to visit her from time to time.

One Sunday morning our hostess had washed Maureen's hair and decided to do it up in rag curlers. This wasn't really necessary because her hair was naturally curly. We set off to visit mother who was not exactly pleased to see Maureen sent out on a Sunday morning in rag curlers. She decided that we were not being looked after properly and promptly set about finding us a new billet. So Maureen and I were on the move again.

In our new host family there were two daughters and a son. One of the daughters went to work driving a horse and cart to deliver milk. I don't remember much about the son but he remembered us about 50 years later. Our brother lives in Dorset now and this man saw our unusual surname in the telephone directory. He rang to ask my brother if he was related to the girls who had lived with his family during the war.

My mother's action in changing our lodgings got me into trouble at school. Now aged 13, I was summoned to the headmistress's office and advised that my mother was wrong to move us without the permission of the billetting officer. However, we were allowed to stay put.
BUT more trouble was afoot!!

Joan and Rita were unhappy in their billet and decided to run away. Unfortunately they had decided to take Maureen with them and keep it all secret from me. Dad arrived in army uniform. He was resident in Botleys Park Hospital (now called St.Peters) which was used for ill or wounded soldiers. This hospital was not very far from where we were living in Chertsey so he was contacted to help find the girls. I don't know how or where they were
found, Dad must have sorted things out because Maureen came back with me again. Joan and Rita had to move because their hostess was not prepared to have them back.

In their next billet they had obviously gone from the frying pan into the fire. The rooms were above a greengrocer's shop. They were always hungry, their clothes were shared with the woman's children and they were never given anything sent by our mother(who was now back in London). After some months of this treatment Joan decided to run away and try to get home to London. Joan had no money so decided to walk and was missing for a couple of days. I recently heard exactly what happened. She managed to walk to Hampton Court and decided to ask a man how to get to Clapham Junction. He started to tell her about trains and buses but she said that she had to walk because she had no money. She was very fortunate in her choice of helper. He took her home and she shared a bedroom with his three year old son. The following morning he took her to the station and bought her a ticket and put her on the train to Clapham Junction. From there she had about a thirty minute walk to the flat in London, but it was not where we had been living before the war and she had never been there and could not remember the number of the road. Someone must have managed to get a message to our mother because as Joan walked along the road trying to find the right place she heard a shout from an upstairs window, it was Mum shouting 鈥漌here have you been, you little devil!鈥�. Dad was there, and when she told him what had been happening he left immediately to bring Rita home with what was left of their belongings.

Our lodgings in Chertsey were re-arranged once more. Rita and Maureen went to separate homes in the next town, Addlestone, to be nearer to the school they were attending. They were near enough for Joan and I to visit them, it was within walking distance but I wasn't always happy about walking through the large field of cows which was part of the journey.

Joan and I were now placed together in the home of a lady who wore a hat all day because she had no hair, we never knew why she lost her hair. There were two daughters, one of them went out to work. Washing facilities for six people in the house were not very adequate so we had to go on a 鈥渂ath rota鈥� at school. School was in a big old house called Pyrcroft House. It was supposed to have been the house mentioned in Oliver Twist where Oliver was made to climb in through the window of the butler's pantry to open the door for the burglar. When we were there the pantry was used as a sick room for pupils feeling unwell. The garages were made into cloakrooms. We had quite a good time in school. The kitchen garden was used to teach us to grow vegetables - digging for victory. A big greenhouse was used for some of the art classes, making clay models and plaster casts.

For housewifery lessons (as it was called in those days) we were divided into three groups, laundry, cleaning the bathrooms or cookery. You could take your own laundry to school or wash the school dusters and kitchen cloths. Cleaning the bathrooms was something I dreaded especially one where it was necessary to clank the cleaning equipment through a classroom.
There would be either a geography or art class going on and once in the bathroom there was the possibility of the headmistress coming through the other connecting door which led to her office. I suppose it had been an en-suite bathroom between two bedrooms in the old days.
I found a note in my old diary on 8th June 1943 to say that I had cleaned the school silver.
Perhaps I thought that was an honour!

The kitchen had enough space for eight girls to have cookery lessons. We often prepared something for the staff lunches. I have memories of labouriously pushing stewed vegetables
through a hair sieve to make soup. A pancake - making lesson was quite an experience. We had mixed the batter and we were left to do the frying while the teacher went away to check on the girls doing laundry etc. One girl's pancake was a complete disaster, so she gathered up the remnants and put them in her apron pocket. Teacher returned to inspect our efforts, 鈥淲here's yours?鈥� she asked the girl, who tried to pretend that she hadn't cooked one yet. But the teacher spotted the tell-tale crumbs in the pan, so she had to produce the mess from her pocket.

At midday we had a long walk to the Masonic Hall, where we were given our dinner. I suppose they did their best with the rations, but the stew was so thin we called it 鈥渂one and lymph鈥� stew. Potatoes were always cooked in their skins. If you left the skins on your plate, the teacher on duty made you eat them. We quickly learned that it was better to eat them with the potato. Nothing was to be left on the plate.

One day the meat was tripe, just plain, no fancy flavourings! There were about six or seven girls seated at a table with one girl as monitor to keep order. Only one girl at our table liked tripe and there was a limit to how much she was able to eat. With the 'nothing left on the plate' rule, a few of us had a problem of how to get rid of the tripe, so it was pocketed in the hope of finding somewhere to dispose of it on the way back to afternoon school. That afternoon our lessons were at the Abbey Barn. Dancing and singing classes were held there and the tennis courts and grounds provided space for sports lessons. There was an orchard and we were allowed to have the windfalls. Many a tree was 'accidentally' shaken to get an apple or pear. Anyway, back to the problem with the tripe. The route to the barn took us along a path with a stream running beside it. This seemed a convenient place to lose the unwanted tripe. Unfortunately a rather conscientious school prefect spotted it flying through the air and we were reported for our crime. She was unable to identify which individual had thrown it, so we all stood before the headmistress at school the next day. No-one owned up and our classmates did not give anyone away. The punishment was to attend school on Saturday morning for detention. This was often in the form of weeding the gardens. Many years later at a school re-union I was talking to the deputy headmistress who said 鈥滻 seem to remember you did quite a lot of weeding鈥�. I'm sure she must have mistaken me for someone else!!!

Copyright 漏 2004 Gladys Williams

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