大象传媒

This story was contributed to the peoples war site by a volunteer from Swavesey Village College on behalf of Margaret Logan/Heppel by Sean Terry and has been added to the site with her permission Margaret fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I was evacuated to Middleton- St George in 1939, I was only eight at the time, and I lived in the east end of Newcastle next to the big, which were always a target for bombing.
We went to large hall in Newcastle to be told where we were being evacuated to, when I saw that we and my younger Brother Walter were going to be sent to different places I kicked up such a fuss the soon enough we were both being sent to Middleton.
So we both boarded the train together and when we got there we were both sent to stay with an old lady who lived on her own.
I loved the countryside because of the fresh air but Walter didn't like it as much as I did probably because he was younger than me and missed mum and dad more than I did.
We went to the village school just like all the other evacuees, two of the teachers from our school in Newcastle were even evacuated with us. This was probably because they were concerned that we would not know any adults in the village.
Everyone who was an evacuee every Saturday would go on walks around the village exploring the countryside which most of us had never seen before.
The longer I stayed in Middleton the more I grew to know people better. There was one girl who was the granddaughter of the old lady that I was staying with, she was only a little older than I was and we became quite good friends while I lived there.
There was a vicarage down a big hill from the old lady's house and the vicar's wife used to let us pick apples from her orchard every day, we would go down and pick the apples and walk back up the hill back to the house.
One day we were just getting back to the house when we were told that because of the new aerodrome that was being built near the village our father had decided that we may as well be at home because the aerodrome would be a target for bombs.
So we packed our bags and boarded the Middleton-St George to Newcastle train and said our goodbyes to everyone new we had met while we had stayed there, we had been there for just over one and a half years and I felt sad to be leaving, but I also felt happy yet nervous that I was going to see my family again.

We returned to Newcastle in 1931 and it was very strange, I had never felt short of food when I had been in Middleton even though we were always on rations but I did when I went back to Newcastle maybe because I expected to get more food when I was there.
When we were at the house there used to be terrible air raids quite regularly and we would go down into the Anderson shelter which was cold and horrible and we would just listen to the bombs come down. Houses along our street were actually demolished overnight. There was one night when we slept night through a big raid because we were so tired we woke up the next morning, went to school and everyone was talking about how bad it was.
One night we were down in the Anderson shelter with our ear plugs on me, Walter my
Mother and father and we heard this bomb whistle past overhead and the next
Morning we went outside and the house next door was completely destroyed and we
all felt so lucky that it hadn't been our house that had been hit.
Then me and Walter went and collected the shrapnel from the crash and took them to
school to trade with friends as everyone used to do it, that day I came home from
school and found that there was a policeman at my door and that I was in big trouble.

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