大象传媒

I was thirteen the week war broke out.

Earlier in the summer parents were asked if they wished their children to be evacuated. Those of us who wished to be evacuated were told to go to school on Saturday 2 September with a rucksack of essential clothes and our gas mask. At school we were each given lunch and a carrier bag full of food and then we walked to the nearest station, Acton on the Great Western line. We had no idea where we were going but our Head Mistress had a sealed envelope which contained the name of our destination.After the school left the station the messsage was passed along that we were goiung to Dorchester on Dorset. On arrival there we were taken to a church hall where we were given tea and told each school year would go to a different village outside Dorchester. My year went to Cerne Abbas where a giant is carved out of the chalk hillside. We were to stay in a Youth Hostel. The next morning we went to the village church and as the service began at 11 o'clock the vicar said "This country is now at war". Every night each dormitory in the Youth Hostel prayed for the safety of our parents still in London.

It was impossible to run a secondary school with each year and some teachers in different villages so after a fortnight we moved into Dorchester where we were billeted with families. We shared Dorchester Girls Grammar School. They had lesson in the morning and we had a long afternoon of lessons and masses of homework to make up for our shorter time in school.

Whenever possible our parents would come and visit us and take us to the coast at Weymouth. Nothing was happening in London, it was called "the phoney war" so in the Spring of 1940 the school moved back to Acton and so were there for the blitz in Autumn 1940.

During the summer term we were out in the playground when a great mist came over. Later I found out it was all my father's fault as he was with the army blowing up oil installations along the coast of France to prevent the Germans using them. The smoke crossed the channel and South East England and reached London.

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