大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥� War by a volunteer from The Chepstow Society on behalf of peter jackson and has been added to the site with his permission. He fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My wife Jean (b. 1932) is one of the three eldest of a family of five children that was evacuated 31.08.1939 together from Rae Street School, Balsall Heath, Birmingham by coach to Chepstow, seeing on the way for the first time sheep, cows, in the fields.

Evelyn (b. 1928) and Jean initially settled at Bulwark, whilst brother Dennis to what is now Church Row, Chepstow, living with a family of Mr & Mrs Court, at that time Mr Court was a saddler, working locally.

Both Jean and Evelyn recall walking across fields and through a wooded area picking and eating beech nuts whilst on their way to school in Chepstow.

After a while, and in due course, subsequent to a visit from Birmingham by their widowed mother, Evelyn and Jean were moved closer to their brother Dennis in Chepstow. Evelyn to Hope Cottage in Church Row, living with Mr & Mrs Stan Court, being the son and daughter-in-law of the same Mr & Mrs Court that Dennis lived with, and Jean to No. 11 Church Road, being the home of Mr & Mrs Williams, at that time Mr. Williams worked locally, as or with the undertaker, and was also attached to some uniformed force.

Evelyn attended Chepstow Board School. Jean attended the Infants鈥� at the Church School, where schooling alternated weekly, with evacuees attending mornings and local children attending afternoons for a week, and the other way round the following week.

After their lesson of the day, they played with others in and around the castle, playing all the usual children鈥檚 games, all evacuees and locals alike, there being at the time as a big and very old walnut tree stood propped up in the castle grounds, later to be propped and chained, and eventually to fall!

When living in Bulwark they were taken to church in a car, which was quite something in those days as only 鈥渨ell to do鈥� had a car.

As children they used to buy 鈥渟peckled鈥� apples for 1/2d and 1d from a wooden box in a greengrocers sited in what is now Upper Church Street.

Jean recalls seeing the sky alight some nights subsequent to distant air-raiding. Although a war was on and rationing in place they never went without much and ate well. They were well looked after in Chepstow.

Jean has a memory of going with Mrs Williams across the River Wye bridge, going up a narrow path up a steep hill to visit friends in two beautiful cottages on the right hand side of the path. Retracing these steps recently, some 60 years later, we located the same two cottages exactly as Jean remembers them.

Expecting a visit from their mother on Easter Sunday 1941 they played and waited at the coach station (same place as it is now) for the arrival of the Birmingham coach. Although a coach came their mother wasn鈥檛 on it. The following Saturday Jean recalls while watching a white wedding at the church a man came and returned with her back to Mr & Mrs Williams鈥� house where Jean was informed that during a heavy air raid in Birmingham on the night of April 9-10 her mother and youngest sister Elizabeth (b. 1938) had been bombed and killed together by a direct hit of a high explosive bomb, coinciding at the same time as their mother left an air raid shelter to get and give a glass of milk to their youngest sister.

After this devastating news both Evelyn and Jean returned to their paternal grandparents in Birmingham. Dennis remained in Chepstow and eventually adopted by Mr & Mrs Court (consequently changing from Dennis Thomas Francis to DennisThomas Court) who brought him up as their son, subsequently going on to marry a local girl, and worked at Newport, eventually moving to Caerleon where he is now in retirement.

From this time in 1941 having gone their separate ways, contact was made and all met for the first time in 50 years, they(we) now see each other very often and united our families.

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