大象传媒

When war broke out I was 15 and my sister was 13. I was at Pitmans and she was still at school but our parents both wanted us to go away together. We went from Marylebone Staiton to Kettering, people did not come to pick us. My sister and I were the last two because we were big girls, we went to a poor terraced house. When we got there the woman wanted two little boys. We were so downcast because we were the last two so she took us in. We had to tell the father we were evacuees. The girls from Pitmans wnated to send us to Bedford, my sister did not want to go. My sister and I were split up.

Rhoda's foster parents moved from Kettering to Cambridge. My friends from Bedford used to go to Cambridge and until they died they were lifelong friends. We were not short on clothes and food, they supplemented food and clothes, we were never conscious of a shortage of food, she was wonderful. I went back to London when I was 18, I had to get a job or join the wartime forces and I did not want to go because the war was not over yet. I was right in the centre of the destruction, my office was just by Waterloo Bridge, we used to do fire watching. My parents were in business, they worked terribly long hours, my sister and I were brought up by maids, I have never experienced anything like this where she cut off the top of the boiled egg and cut the bread into soldiers. If I went out in the evening, she would stay up and asked what I had done. The daughter appreciated it because I was the first to get asked.

When my sister came home she worked for our parents, she joined St Johns Ambulance Parade, she had to go into the land army. My cousin came back as a doctor and asked if she wanted to work as his receptionist. My sister and I were evacuated together. We came back to London in 1942. My sister was a receptionist until the end of the war.

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