大象传媒

Colleen Saunders, My life as an evacuee

鈥淲hat on earth have you brought me such little dots for?鈥� These were the first words uttered when we met Miss Hedges, at Yew Tree Farm in Padbury, Bucks. I was five years old; my sister Maureen was six. We were evacuated in the first wave of children to leave our hoes in Manor Par, E12 at the end of 1939. We were too young to fully understand what was going on, but we were in awe as we stood there while our future was being discussed. Yew tree Farm was the biggest house we had ever seen. It was surrounded by green fields, which I had never seen before. We had left a one bedroom flat in Manor Park with rows of houses, no green grass only front and back yards and there we were sitting in a house with five bedrooms, two reception rooms, a huge back kitchen, a small living room and a massive diary. It was decided that we could stay the night as it was getting late but that one night turned into nearly six years as we stayed with Miss Hedges until the war ended. The diary became our playroom with our prams and our rocking horse, which I still have today.

As far as Maureen and I remember we seemed to settle in very quickly. It was strange living in a house without electricity, no water in the taps and a toilet, which was in an outhouse at the back behind a spinney of trees. We would never go round there alone and we used a chamber pot in the night, as it was inky dark. There was a door, when opened it housed a bucket with a wooden board and it was emptied everyday into a compost heap for the garden.

Mrs Weinstein, a darling lady from Whitechapel in the East End, was also billeted there; she was the one who actually looked after us. She was the one who lugged the hip bath into bathe us in front of the grate. She was the one who put our bricks in the oven in the winter to keep our feet warm in bed. Each evening we were taken to bed by Auntie, who Miss Hedges had said we could call her, with her carrying a paraffin lamp, and in the winter the long handled warming pan with the dying embers from the grate to warm the cold sheets of the bed.

Auntie always looked the same. She wore a tweed skirt and a jumper in both winter and summer; she also wore a beret in and out of doors. We were given chores to do once we had started school; it was our job to pump up the water in the back kitchen from the well. This was an enormous room with just a sink and the black paraffin range in. We fed the chickens most of which had the run of the back kitchen. There were also the pigs to feed and we had seven geese who scared off everyone. We named Auntie鈥檚 cat Growler, she wouldn鈥檛 let us with an inch of Auntie if she was on her lap, and we never touched her or stroked her the whole time we were there.

So our gentle life continued, the years passed by much the same as each other. At Christmas we used to go in Auntie鈥檚 car to Stukely another village near Leighton Buzzard, this we loved, they were all farmers, the Faulkner鈥檚 and apart from one girl, Jane, we were the only children. We used to act our little show coming from behind the deep red curtains singing and dancing to 鈥楽ay Little Hen鈥� every year but the seemed to love it. We would then have our presents, which were usually an apple, an orange and some little gift from Mum and Dad.

Being on the farm we had all we needed in food. Auntie grew all the vegetables and we had chicken eggs, pork and rabbit. We never went without and Auntie did the most amazing dinners on this old paraffin stove in the summer and the grate range in the winter. Even today I can smell and taste her bacon and an onion roly-poly steam pudding.

Our parents came to see us when they could. They both worked in the ammunition factory at the underground station in Gants Hill, Redbridge. When they did come they were all so very tired and sometimes trying to get through London used to take them hours. Once or twice a year we went with them to Wigston in Leicestershire where my younger sister Evelyn was staying with her paternal grandparents. How I hated this, Maureen was in her element being with the Smith family in this tiny house, pea picking with them as well, but I longed for the big house and the fields of Padbury. Mum used to write to us occasionally but I don鈥檛 think we wrote well enough to write back in those days. So we stayed until the war in Europe was over and we came home in 1945. I cried and played my parents up until in despair they nearly took me back, but no, back to the small ugly flat in Manor Park we went and was later joined by Evelyn.

I always kept in touch with Auntie more so than Maureen did. She met my boyfriend, who eventually became my husband, although she declined the invite to the wedding, she had never been to London. Her health deteriorated and she moved to Stukely to be near her sister and family. She died in the 70s, I am not sure how old. I still had contact with the family through her niece Bess until she died in the 80s. I went to the memorial service and met once again with the Faulkner鈥檚, they took me back to the big house and I explained I lived there during the war to the gentleman who answered the door. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e Colleen鈥� he said, 鈥淚 knew you would say hello one day, your name is on every tree!鈥�

My pipe dream if ever I were able to would be to end my days living in my big house in Padbury.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.