大象传媒

I grew up in London. My four younger sisters were evacuated to Wadham in Buckinghamshire. I was working for the National Amalgamated Approved Society. It was a health insurance company: those days men paid 1s 2d per week, women 10d. The offices were on the corner of Euston Square, a building that鈥檚 now a Social Security office.

Because of all the records, they decided to evacuate the London and Manchester offices. We were evacuated in the first week of the war, in September. We went down to Wolverton in coaches. It was only 7 miles from my sisters. My friend and I stayed with a husband and wife. We used to visit my younger sisters on our bikes. We were there till April 1940.

The other six offices of the company had been evacuated to Eastbourne, and they decided to sent us there too. We were billeted in hotels. I was 18 by then. I had nice time there. There were lots of sailors and airmen!

About seven of us got scabies and ended up in hospital. We were given baths with green soap.

I used to cycle to work from the hotel. It was about half a mile from the seafront. One day, I鈥檇 been home for lunch, and I was going back to the office. I could a German aircraft coming over, ever so low. I crouched down with my bike. He was so near I could actually see the pilot, with his black helmet & black goggles.

I don鈥檛 remember being frightened though. The only time was the day the war was declared. I鈥檇 washed my hair, and was combing it in front of the mirror. I heard Chamberlain鈥檚 speech, and about a minute after that crackly speech on the radio, the air-raid siren sounded.

I was conscripted into the army in 1942 and stayed there until I was married. I was working for a vehicle depot at Feltham in Middlesex, marking the vehicles that went out.

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