大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygather, on behalf of Beryl Grautstuck nee Donson. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

I was 9 at the outbreak of the war and lived in Bristol. At the beginning of 1941 I was evacuated to Bucklawren, near Looe, to stay with the Drown family.
I had been taken by charabanc from my school to the station, then by train to Liskeard and then to Bucklawren, where Mrs Drown picked me out.
Next morning Mrs Drown made us write a letter to our parents so they knew where we were.

We were very well looked after. I was with another evacuee, called Yvonne, and the family had two boys and a girl so we all had lots of fun.
I loved my time with the family and, later, was joined by my sister Barbara.
We girls all slept in the attic and we used to get out the window to go and play in the woods.
We also used to go to the nearby farm to get milk and it was strange to us from the city.
Once we went to play in the pigsty and got covered in fleas so Mrs Drown stripped us off and all our clothes were put into a bucket of paraffin. We got a cold water wash under the water pump to get rid of the fleas.

I was there for about two years. Mrs Drown used to have an American serviceman to dinner on Sundays and he used to bring tins of peaches etc which were a real treat.

One day I went, with the other girls, to the beach at Millendreath and we wanted to get around to Looe. We had to get through water up to our necks and none of us could swim. We took off all our clothes and managed to get through without drowning!

We had to go to school in nearby Great Tree. The teacher we had couldn鈥檛 control any of the children and people complained about the noise so she left and was replaced by a stricter teacher. Then we went to the rectory for teaching by Miss Entwhistle, who we called Ernie after a comic book character. We did at least learn something from her.

We used to pick apples from someone鈥檚 garden and they set the geese on us so we put the apples down our knickers so we could run better. Then we sat down and ate them.

I wouldn鈥檛 have missed it all for the world.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.