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From Dover to Wales – an evacuee’s memories.

I had just started elementary (primary) school when war broke out. At some point after that the schools in Dover were all closed down and mine was evacuated to a small town in South Wales. (Does anyone have an exact date as to when the evacuation from Dover took place? I was too young to know exactly how old I was when it all happened.) When my mother told me I would have to go away, I feared I would go to live with a witch in a dirty shed with broken panes of glass and cobwebs everywhere and I would have to sweep and dust – a picture I still see in my mind’s eye today. My parents had a small business and could not leave – equally they could not contemplate depriving me of schooling for an indefinite period. The second most vivid picture is standing on the platform of Dover Priory railway station, heaving with sobbing children and anxious parents who had no idea whether they would ever see their children again. I clutched my Donald Duck, a small knitted soft toy in red and yellow and blue and another toy – I think it was a Jack in the box. My mother suggested I give one to a little girl nearby who was crying but I was too wrapped up in my own misery to have compassion for another. With my cardboard box containing my gas mask and a luggage label with my name tied round a button, so began the long journey by train to Wales in the care of our teachers. I seem to remember ours was a white-haired lady called Miss Scott.

My next clear memory was standing at one end of a village hall while kindly Welsh people picked out the children they wanted. I was only a few months with the first family as the wife became pregnant and I was passed on to a head teacher and his wife who had one daughter seven years older than me. They lived in a simple two up two down little house with a monkey puzzle tree in the front tiny patch of garden and in the back garden a privy with a wooden seat and newspaper squares on a string. No indoor lavatory – that was a shock – and a potty under the bed. If there was an indoor bathroom, I don’t recall it. I do recall sitting in a tin tub in front of the fire for my weekly bath on a Friday night. I also remember holding thick slices of bread to toast on a long fork in front of the fire. The front room was only used when visitors came. There were china cabinets with pretty little things in it including a posy of roses made from bread dough that fascinated me as my father was a baker. I recall the Sunday morning ritual of chapel every week… Auntie and Uncle, as I called them, were good, kindly folk who gave me affection, security and a stability in a volatile world. Their daughter, remote in the early days, tolerated my intrusion into her little world with good humour and later on we became friends as time narrowed the distance between us. At Christmas time the parcel from my parents was eagerly awaited as it contained butter, sugar and jam to supplement our meagre rations. I remember one Christmas when Auntie and Uncle had tried everywhere to buy a chicken for Christmas Day – that would have been a real treat. Only on Christmas Eve did Uncle manage to find one somewhere so that our festive Christmas dinner was assured. Such excitement over one chicken!

I had long walks to school by myself and I recoiled in disgust at the filthy toilets – could hardly bring myself to use them. I think I must have changed schools at least twice. At another we were made to drink our bottle of milk that was provided. However, as the crates stood out in the sun and the dogs came and cocked their legs on them, I soon went off the taste of milk and gave mine away. When America entered the war we were taught to sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and various traditional folk songs. In due course the American troops actually arrived in South Wales and as I rushed to greet Uncle walking home up the hill, there he was talking with Americans passing in a convoy. One soldier offered me, unprompted, a tube of sweets. Extra sweets in wartime! That did make an impression on a child, my first and happily not my last experience of American generosity.

My parents came to see us, singly on account of the business, each once during the war but somehow my brother, who was billeted in a different village, and I returned to Dover for the summer holidays. How did we do that long journey? Certainly we were put in the care of the guard at Newport on the train to Paddington. Did he also put us in a taxi to Charing Cross or did my brother, a few years older, manage it? I don’t recall our parents meeting us in London though that was a possibility. There were no other children in Dover, it seemed. We got used to the sound of the air-raid warning and had some idea of how our parents coped. Dad did all the baking and some of the delivery work while Mum did the rest as all fit young men were fighting. My parents had two country rounds and one town round and it is a matter of pride that not once did they fail to deliver bread to their customers. If shelling was taking place in the area where Dad used to start his round, then he simply began at the end and by the time he reached the beginning, the shelling had moved on. As children, we took it in turns to go out with Mum or Dad on the country rounds, the van warm with the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread and with delicious crusty bits we would break off and eat. Best of all, in some parts where the track lay between open fields, we would stand on the running board of the van, holding tight to the vehicle through the open window and feeling the warm air rush over our bodies and through our hair!

The work ethic was instilled into me in those days – you had a job to do and you did it. Dad had one fear, of being buried alive under the hot bricks of his old oven, the same oven which made those delicious crunchy loaves. His worst scare was when the gasometer two or three hundred yards (metres) away was hit and blew up but my parents survived. We returned home in 1944 (I think) and we stayed in touch with the kind Welsh family who had befriended me for many years. After five years away, there was quite an adjustment upon returning as my parents’ routine was very different from Auntie and Uncle’s. Also we had to get used to a new baby sister and she to us. But that is another story.

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