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Evacuated to Great Bedwin

My name was Sadie Miller at the start of the war in 1939. We lived in Hayes Middlesex. At the evacuation Daddy insisted that we went away and he found a good friend to have us, a young man who had taken the position of signalman in Great Bedwin Station. He had a lovely young wife who took my sister and I to stay with them during part of the war. It was very difficult to say goodbye to Mummy. Peggy was 9 and I was 11. We had a lot of sadness being parted.

When we got to Great Bedwin there were green fields and lovely valleys and a lovely group of children came out of the East End. So as we weren’t with them, we went to the village school and the children from London went to the chapel. We shared the chapel and the village school with those children for the four years that we were there.

Peggy and I had a very happy time with Stan and his lovely young wife. And we had some very sad times. I was there about a year and saw Mummy only once in that time and I started with tummy aches in the middle of the night. It was appendicitis and it was very dangerous for me. I remember I was afraid to tell my friends that I felt sick, so I hung out the window crying. I remember the tears weeping out of the window because I wanted Mummy and I had an awful pain. But in the morning she got the doctor, and I was rushed to hospital for an operation. I was very, very ill. But because it was the month when we were to see my Mummy, they kept me in the hospital. The staff in the hospital, one lovely nurse, I can’t think of her name, took me out for afternoon treats to Polly’s in Marlborough. It was a lovely street, and I remember her now and think, ‘What a lovely thing to do.’ But would she be allowed to do it now? No, but it was a lovely memory. Sad, but lovely.

When it came to finances, the London children, the council paid fifteen shillings a week and Daddy sent twenty shillings a week for Peggy and I, two pound ten shillings every week in a postal order and six pence for Peggy and I. A penny a day but not for Sundays - t was the Lords Day.

Cooking Sadie

Peggy and I joined the church choir and we sang. We preferred the music that was songs on the radio. Stanley got some chickens and the chicken laid it’s first egg on my birthday so she was called Sadie. And when we ate her, because there was a time when we cooked her, I cried so much. So it was quite a happy and a sad time. We were looked after well, I realize that now, but we still missed our Mummy and Daddy.

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