大象传媒

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Diana Bransby from the Haywards Heath Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Stanley Stevens with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions鈥�

At the beginning of the war, my mother Violet Florence Stevens, had ten surviving children. On the 1st September 1939 I and my sister Joan, and my brother Donald aged ten, twelve and five, respectively, were evacuated with Senrab School from Stepney, E. London to Haywards Heath. I remember seeing 鈥楪riffin鈥檚 Garage鈥� as soon as I stepped out of the station, it was white and spanking clean as was the car showroom further up in Queen鈥檚 Rd. We were all struck by how clean and tidy it was! We went into the garage where they gave each of us our rations for the week in a brown paper bag, then to the showroom where a bus took us to our first billet.

Seven of us, with our teacher, went to a big old house in Heath Road, where two spinsters, the Misses Griffin lived (a maid came in daily). It had a lovely long garden with fruit trees, and a gate that led straight out onto the recreation ground, (now known as Clair Park) it was heaven! We didn鈥檛 go to school because the new school couldn鈥檛 take us at first, so our teacher took us blackberry-picking for the school canteen, or collecting acorns for pig-food. We were there until November or December.

Then my sister, brother and me were billeted in Mayflower Road. We liked that too, the people were so nice. One night it rained all night long then froze. Icicles were hanging from the trees, they looked like chandeliers, when they wind blew they all tinkled. To us it was like a fairyland. The milkman put socks over his shoes to grip the ice whilst pulling the milk on a sleigh, and I learnt to ice-skate down New England Road!

Whilst there we went back to London, for one visit only, to my other sister Doris鈥檚 wedding. But the bombing began in the East End and London Docks, so back we came, except my little brother, mum kept him with her.

Next I went to another billet at the bottom of New England Road., my sister to a widow further up the road. During that time my mother and Donald were bombed out in London and came down to stay at Joan鈥檚 billet. I was there for about a year, then I went to a lovely lady in Allen Road. whose husband was in the tanks in Egypt. Afterwards my mum rented a house in the same road where we could all be together.

One more move took us back to New England Road. to a house where all the family could join us. We used to stand at the top of the road and watch the doodlebugs as they went across Ashdown Forest, knowing we were quite safe as we did so. At the end of the war our final move was to America Lane - our own house at last! We鈥檝e been in Haywards Heath ever since.

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