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The day war broke out on the 3rd of September 1939 saw the children of Mr John and Mrs Violet Meiklejohn walking down Pelham Road in a crocodile with all the girls of the Gravesend Grammar School. We were on our way to be evacuated. Everybody had to go with the oldest child in the family, my brother was at the Galton School and I was at the Boy’s Grammar School we had to join in the girls Grammar School party with my sister Joan.

It was about 5am we had our baggage with the cardboard box with our gas masks in. We boarded the Royal Daffodil, which of course was a pleasure steamer going up and down the Thames and down the north Kent coast. We got out into the North Sea and we had a destroyer escort and after a long long time — it was about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, we got up to Lowestoft where we were disembarked. In the same crocodile we found our way to the Odeon cinema, where we slept for 2 nights on the straw. This was whilst arrangements were being made for our billeting.

We went to the Norfolk town of Diss and there we were split up into 3 different houses, Joan was quite happy in hers, Peter was not so lucky, but I was quite happy with the family of a Post Office Engineer. I spent quite a lot of the time going around the lanes in a Post Office van with a sloping glass panel in the roof in the front, watching the wires to see if any were twisted over. We had a long pole to use to untwist the wires.

Schooling was on a part time basis, the local Boy’s and Girl’s Grammar Schools had to accommodate us all. I was at the Grammar school full time but Joan my sister was only part time at the Girls School. I got on all right at the Grammar school, academically there was no problem, in sports but I had to give up my rugby and play football and I remember scoring a goal in a house match! Life went on and I quite enjoyed myself. However at Christmas Peter was not too happy and so Mum decided to have him at home but Joan stayed on and did her School Certificate and stayed in Diss until 1941. I got fed up with Diss and I wanted to be with my school, I found out that they were in North Suffolk in the Waverney Valley, in a place called Ship Meadow between Becles and Bungay — 3 miles from each place. I put pressure on and at Christmas found that I was to go back to my own school in this old workhouse, which they had commandeered in the wilds of north Suffolk.

Fortunately for me I was billeted in a farm in Ship Meadow with a Mr and Mrs Gowers who had 2 daughters and a son — Chubby — who was about 18 years old. Mr Gowers was the bailiff on this small farm and the owner was a Mr Cook who owned a fish shop in Lowestoft. I arrived there and that was heaven to me. The first winter of the war was really snowy and eventually after Christmas the snows really came and school was abandoned for 5 or 6 weeks in the spring of 1940. We just couldn’t go - there were 15 to 20 foot snowdrifts that were frozen on top.

I was in my element on the farm. There was another boy on the there called Bill Millington, and one other boy in the village, Ron, who lived at the village shop a few hundred yards up the road. It was a very small village, with a very nice old church and Mr Gowers was church warden and of courses he made sure all his workers and the children attended church in fact we had the job of pumping the organ and swinging the incense around and dinging little bells for the Canon who was about 84 years old who should’ve retired but he took the services. We were press ganged into service in the church.

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Diana Wilkinson of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester and has been added to the site with Mr John Meiklejohn’s permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

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