大象传媒

I was born in 1933 and I can remember being evacuated, before war was declared, on the 1st September from Marylebone. We only went as far as a little village near Banbury. I remember the officials kept the mothers back and wouldn鈥檛 let them on to the platform. I had found out how to use the gas mask as my father had shown me how to put my chin into it. We had to have that with us and a pillowcase with our clothes in it. My mother made a bag out of black and white ticking, the material that was under the pillowcase, so that it would be different from other people鈥檚 and I would know it. I didn鈥檛 mind at all about being evacuated and I suppose I looked on it as being a holiday. I wasn鈥檛 at all nervous or upset. We went with our school and our teachers went with us, so I had lots of friends with me and adults who I knew well, and that probably made a difference. My billet was in a lady鈥檚 bungalow and there were two others with me. I stayed for about 2 years. My mother did come down and try to stay with me but then she was bombed out, living in Marylebone, and she moved to Wembley. My father worked for Guinness and he was injured at work in an air raid. He was in hospital and she went back to see what was going on and to look after him, and I stayed where I was. Then there was a lull in the war and I went to live with them in Wembley where I went to school for a while. I managed to pass the 11+ exam but then the doodlebugs started and my father was so nervous that he said I had to go away again, so I was evacuated that time to a little village in Suffolk. It was a beautiful summer, I remember, and the war wasn鈥檛 far off being finished by then. It was going to be a long journey for me to go to the nearest High School so my mother, back in London, was organising for me to go to a London school called Dame Alice Owen, which had been evacuated to Kettering, so I came back for a weekend and then went off there. I was billeted in a village near Kettering and the school, which I thought was marvellous, was used twice. We used it either end of the day and the local Kettering children used it in the middle of the day. We had to go to church halls and have lunch in the middle of the day. When I returned to London, my mother had arranged for me to go to a school in Paddington, Maida Vale High, so I didn鈥檛 really miss my schooling at all, which was marvellous.

My mother鈥檚 sister lived in Marylebone and during the lull time in the war we鈥檇 go down from Wembley to see how she was. The tube trains were still running and we would get the train at Edgware Road back to Wembley. There would be people all down the stairs and crowded on to the platforms who were going to sleep there. It was quiet down there once the trains had stopped running and people couldn鈥檛 hear the war going on outside, so they could sleep. I didn鈥檛 see any people on the tracks but I suppose after the trains stopped running the power would have been turned off and there would then have been more room for others. I remember my father saying that the authorities at first said that people weren鈥檛 allowed to sleep there but then they not only had to allow it, but also provide bunk-beds and, I suppose, toilet facilities. So the people got their own way! I think it must have been uncomfortable down there!

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