大象传媒

WW2 Memories
of Josephine Jukes

I was 11 years old and was evacuated to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, from Erdington Grammar School to join other pupils at the Ashby County Grammar School at the beginning of the War (1940-1941).
My mother took me on the Midland Red bus and we to meet the billeting officer, by name - Charles Starkey - in a dreary green-painted room in Market Street. My billet was with a couple who had two small children, Pat and Maureen, two and three years old. They lived in a house in Meredith and Drews Biscuit Yard, right alongside the railway-line and I lay terrified in bed while the house shook when the trains thundered past, and lights flashed across my bedroom window. My Host and Hostess, Mr and Mrs Slater, moved their belongings on a hand-cart to a three storey house nearby, with an outside toilet, a tiled yard (no garden). Mr Slater was ann ambulance man at the nearby mine. Mrs Slater had a boney face, black hair and beady eyes, I thought she looked like a witch. If the children were naughty she would say: 鈥淒on鈥檛 be mardy鈥� - I didn鈥檛 know what the word meant.
The pupils at the Ashby County Grammar School had nothing to do with us, I think they resented our being there. We had our own teachers and it was so cold in the classroom I had chilblains. I was very homesick and missed my younger sister and parents. Life was very boring, church on Sundays and walks in the local woods at Willesley nearby. I was there for six months and glad to come home to my family and the bombing wasn鈥檛 quite so bad at that time.
I made friends with another girl, Pat Smith, and she ran away back to Birmingham. Her mother was furious when Pat鈥檚 Hostess, supplied vests and underwear for Pat, thinking she had come from the slums of Birmingham.
One bomb dropped in Ashby(but not the town) whilst I was there and crowds of people came to look at the crater, as no one had seen one before.
The only excitement we had was exploring the underground tunnels of Ashby Castle but we didn鈥檛 do any damage.
It was many years before I could bring myself to Ashby, but we had a school reunion there and found it wasn鈥檛 such a bad place for a one day visit!

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