大象传媒

When WW2 started I was just turned 12, my sister was 6, and we lived with our Mother and policeman Father in Peckham, South London ("Del-Boy" country!). I was immediately evacuated with my school to a village in Sussex but returned home after only a few weeks as things were quiet in London. However, when the bombing really started I was evacuated again (this time with my sister) to Bideford in North Devon. After all these years I can clearly remember how we left the train and "crocodiled" across the bridge (labelled and hung with our gas masks) to the church hall where we stood in line waiting for the would-be foster parents to "select" us. My sister and I were chosen by two elderly ex missionary ladies - very kind and well-meaning but quite incapable of coping with two rather boisterous children who really didn't want to be there. After a couple of months we were re-billeted - I went to a very nice couple with a son 3 years younger than I, and my sister to a pair of wealthy newly-weds who spoilt and cosseted her, dressed her in beautiful clothes and enrolled her in a private Convent school.
Some 6 months later as things got so bad in London my Father insisted that Mum should move to safety with us; he had been assigned to Balham Police Station which provided living accommodation and a canteen, so he told Mum he would close up the house and move into the station. Reluctantly, she took rooms in a guest house and although happy to be near us she obviously hated being separated from my Father. It wasn't too long, however, before she received word that the police station had received a direct hit and many officers were killed. In shock, she travelled to London, walked into the house and found my Father sitting on the stairs having a cup of tea! It turned out that, two days earlier, a neighbour phoned him to say our house had been badly damaged so he got permission to go home and sort things out. This saved his life! Needless to say, Mum refused to leave him alone again.
I returned to London, much against my will, as soon as I reached 14, to further my planned music studies, but my sister stayed on till the end of the war. After all that time being completely spoilt she came home a proper little madam and had to be taken down a peg or two!
I kept in touch with a boy I met at Bideford Grammar School, through his Army call-up and service in Malaya - and when he was demobbed he spent a couple of weeks with my family. We eventually went our separate ways but I've often wondered if he remembered the early war years when all those London kids descended on his quiet little town and set the residents by their ears!
PhyllisBond (Phyllis Bond Inglis)

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