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A couple of days before war was declared I was evacuated at the age of almost 12 years, my elder sister Nancy was 14 years of age and my younger sister Rosemary not quite 10 years of age. On the day of the evacuation, we arrived at school in our school uniforms and carrying our raincoats, a small case with a change of clothes, a small haversack with our packed lunch and a drink (this would have been a bottle as we did not have canned drinks or cartons) and last but not least our gas masks in a strong cardboard box with a cord to go over our shoulders. Everything we carried had a label with the name of our school, our names and home addresses and our identity number, everyone had an identity card with their details on and they were kept in our gas mask case.

We marched to the station, which was a long way and our mothers had been told not to come to see us off. Needless to say some did which made a lot of children cry and some of the mothers. We were not the only school assembled and some of the other children were quite young and didn’t have school uniforms. In some cases the mothers were going with them. We all had labels tied unto us, just like our luggage. We had no idea where we were going or how long it would take and our headmistress had told us not to drink anything if we could possibly help it as the train wasn’t a corridor train and therefore didn’t have toilets and we did not know how long the journey would be.
Some time later we arrived at a town called Redhill in Surrey and had to walk quite a long way to the Odeon cinema which was already quite full of children. As we went in we were given a brown paper carrier bag (no plastic in those days) which contained an orange, chocolate, biscuits, corned beef and a tin of condensed milk. Much to our disgust, we were also lined up in front of some nurses who were going through everyone’s heads looking for nits and lice.

By that time we were very tired. I suppose we ate our sandwiches but I just can’t remember. We weren’t shown any films or cartoons and we all wondered what would happen to us. It seemed hours since we had left home. Then school-by-school, we left the cinema and went by bus to a small village called Leigh and taken to a small infants school. By that time of course the children were split up, but sisters were kept together. I don’t remember if we were given any thing at the school but it wasn’t long before the villagers came to collect us and take us to their homes. By that time my younger sister Rosemary was crying. She was much younger than any of the other children and was too young to have started at our school. We were taken by a very nice couple called Warrington. They didn’t have any children of their own and had quite a small house, but they were very kind as were all the villagers. Mr Warrington worked as a chauffeur at the lovely Manor House which had a real moat around it. There was a very pretty village church and the organ had to be pumped by the vicar’s son. There was a small shop run by a very old lady who wore skirts right down to the ground. I don’t think she liked us very much and although I can’t remember just how many children from our school were billeted at Leigh, it must have seemed an awful lot to this old lady when we crowded into her small shop. I can’t remember any village children apart from the vicar’s son, but there must have been. Everyone was kind to us, there was cricket every Saturday on the village green and the ladies did the teas and we all helped with the washing up. Another lady had a big orchard and told us we could go in any time and pick up the windfalls but not to pick from the trees. We also helped with the haymaking in the long summer evenings, staying up much later than we would have been allowed to at home. It was like a lovely holiday as the weather was so good.

Even after war was declared, we all assembled at the WI hall to listen to the announcement. We got over our initial fear and carried on as usual. One hour after the announcement, the air raid sirens sounded which sent us scurrying back to our billets, but not for long. I think that we were in Leigh for about 2 weeks, no school and no real news about the war. Then we were told to get all our things packed and assemble at the village school next day. We were then told that we were going to Dorking a few miles away, and when we were settled into our billets we would be starting school and sharing with Dorking County School.

We went by bus and were taken to the Council offices which were set up in a lovely old house called Pipbrook House, but by that time we were beginning to feel a bit homesick and frightened. We were kept outside the offices and the people who had offered to take in evacuees came along and chose us, a bit like a hiring fair. One lady said she would take me but our teacher said she would have to take Rosemary as well. She didn’t really want to but agreed in the end. The teacher then persuaded this woman’s next door neighbour to take Nancy. These people had lovely big houses and Rosemary and I were lucky as Mrs Travers had a very nice housekeeper who looked after us. I can’t remember seeing the husband and hardly ever saw Mrs Travers who still kept on about not wanting Rosemary. We played mostly in the big garden which had a summerhouse and tennis court, but were otherwise ignored. Nancy was not a bit happy next door as she was not allowed to eat with the family but had to eat in the kitchen with the maid. The daughter of the house who was the same age as Nancy wouldn’t even walk to school with her! Mother and Father came down to visit us and said that we would have to be moved, especially as Miss Turner would not have Rosemary at the school. She had done her duty by letting her come with us instead of going with her own infant school. Rosemary and I went to a lovely house called Little Shaw, owned by 2 elderly maiden ladies who very nice but very strict. They were a lot older than our parents and had lived in India for a long time as children. Nancy went some distance away to a very poor family but became very unhappy and actually packed her bag and got a train home. We were lucky that to start with Father had enough petrol to come and visit us every other week, but of course that soon stopped. Then mother came by train or bus or both according to the bombing and although we were only 25 miles away it sometimes took a very long time especially if there was a day time raid. We could see the red sky in the distance as London was bombed and every evening we heard the German bombers going over, wave after wave of them. The sound was never ending and is the most horrible sound that I know — coming back the sound was slightly different as they were now much lighter. The anti-aircraft guns kept up a constant barrage and the searchlights lit up the sky. Sometimes an odd bomb dropped on the outskirts of Dorking but nothing on the town itself. Rosemary went to the local church school just up the road but it had to close as it couldn’t get fuel for heating. She then went to a convent school. The 2 ladies went to stay with a cousin one year so that Mother could come and stay for 2 weeks with us — Nancy also came. Rosemary eventually stayed in Dorset where we had been on holiday to our favourite farm, Nancy came to Little Shaw and I went to a couple with another girl. This couple had a son in the RAF and we were given much more freedom and could get out for the day on our bikes.

The new school wasn’t nearly as nice as our old one, it just had playing fields and a few hard tennis courts compared to our lovely grounds and quadrangle. They didn’t have as many labs and their domestic science and art rooms were not nearly as good, neither was the gym. As the girls looked down on us at least we could be superior about our school. There were boys as well as girls and the boys seemed to like us. There were covered trenches in the playing fields and we all went there if the sirens went off, taking our gas masks. We kept Ovaltine and Horlicks tablets with our gas masks and chewed on them whilst we sat and shivered. If you needed to go to the toilet, there was a bucket at the end of the trench behind a sacking curtain.

The railway line from Dover ran past the school and when Dunkirk was evacuated, we were allowed to line up along the fence and wave and cheer when the very long troop trains came past. They were steam trains and the driver would blow his whistle. We collected pieces of shrapnel and pieces of planes that had been shot down.

As well as the school, a lovely old house had been taken over for us. It was about a mile or more away and had once been a mill. One day at lunchtime we were going back there after lunch when a plane swooped down low thinking it was one of ours we all stopped and waved before we noticed the Swastika on it and we were machine gunned. We raced for the path through the trees which would take us to Pixham Mill and luckily no one was hit but we were all very frightened. Next day we collected the spent cartridge cases and used them for tops for our pencils.

Food was rationed and we all grew lots of vegetables and preserved then in bottles or salt. We bottled fruit from the trees and wild blackberries and blueberries. There were no freezers in those days or even fridges. We had all learnt to knit by the age of 7 years and were now very good knitters. We knitted gloves and could knit a pair in 2 days. We knitted balaclavas for the merchant seamen and big long sea boot stockings with oiled wool. When Russia entered the war we knitted trigger mitts in oiled wool, they had a thumb and index finger. We could recognise all our own planes, did map reading and compass reading, a lot of first aid and even some gas detection. One of the gases smelt like pear drops but I can’t remember which one. We learnt to bring people out of smoke filled rooms and how to set up stretchers. Once we had settled into billets, they were always called that, we seemed to be quite happy. Some children never really settled down and sometimes a mother would come to live in Dorking if her husband had been called up or perhaps they had been bombed out. There was always a spitfire fund and coins were placed on the edge of the pavement from one end of the town to the other. None of it ever seemed to be pinched. A big thermometer outside the parish church showed the amount collected. When we had mock gas raids the ARP men ran around with loud rattles; woe betide anyone without their gas mask as the men threw tear gas around.

We had a famous composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, living in Dorking and he used to come to the school and play the violin to us. We loved his visits as it meant no classes. We couldn’t get sweets and the grownups couldn’t get cigarettes. Sometimes we queued up in a long line because someone said that there would be biscuits coming in, we were even happy to have broken ones. There weren’t any fat people about and of course we walked or cycled everywhere. In the winter we wore lots of clothes indoors as there wasn’t much coal. It was a good job we were such good knitters — all the old jumpers used to be un-picked and re-knitted, we had more scarves, hoods and gloves than we had space for. If we did any sewing we saved the tacking thread and re-used it. Everything was in such short supply.

We wrote a letter every week to our parents and they wrote letters to us.

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