大象传媒

This is the story of one of my worst memories of the war (I have lots of others, but none as bad as this).
At the end of 1944 the rockets were falling on London (Anyone remember them)?
I already had one little boy called Frank (Frankie) who was 2 years old in March 1945, and I was expecting my second baby in February of that year.
Late in 1944 the local hospitals decided expectant mums had to be evacuated four weeks before their due date. No place for my lovely son to go with me, and I couldn't (for lots of reasons) leave him in London.
So the local authorities said he would be evacuated too, and I wouldn't know where until he was settled.
Two days before my leaving I was taken by the WVS with my son to Lewisham (at this time we lived in Kensington) where I had to leave him in a large school hall all by himself, and go home. Up to that time nothing as awful had ever happened to me. I shall never forget how that was, no one will ever know.
The next morning I was taken by the WVS to meet a group of other expectant mums at Paddington station and off we went. We ended up in Bradford on Avon and were sent to various houses. It was four weeks and two days before I had my new baby son on the
9th February 1944.
After about a week my husband Frank, who was in the Fleet Air Arm managed to find out what had happened and where we both were, and let me know where my Frankie had been taken. He was in a nursery at St.Albans run by one of the big London Hospitals. Eventually we all got in touch, thank God.
When I got home of course the first thing I did was to try to get little Frankie home, but they wouldn't let me because he'd got a bad cough. Anyway they did let me go to visit. When I got there he was asleep, but at least I could see him. I said I would come back the next week and that I would definitely take him home.
In the two months he was away he had forgotten me and we had quite a difficult time for a couple of weeks. Strange thing was when he saw two sailors on the train in their uniform he insisted they were his Dad!
Anyway, it all ended happily with him no worse for his experience, though I must admit it took me longer to get over having to leave him.
There must have been hundreds of mums in the same circumstances, but I've never spoken to one to find out how they felt.
This experience was truly one of the worst of my, and my husband's life. None of the bombing, and we lived through plenty, came anywhere near it.
Luckily my son can't remember any of it, so all's well that ends well!

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