大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website Maggie Nairn from Littlehampton Learning Shop and has been added to the website on behalf of Dorothy with her permission and they fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

After the bombing of Ford Aerodrome in September 2940 in which my father, a naval Officer, was stationed and in it at that time. Luckily he survived. My parents decided to send me to a safer place than Littlehampton.

I was evacuated to Blidworth near Mansfield, Notts. It seemed a very long journey by train and bus for a 9 year old in those days. I remember we had bangers and mash in a station caf茅 in London and were quickly ushered into a train as the sirens sounded for an air raid.

As we started off for our next stage of the journey I remember looking out of the train window and seeing the Barrage balloons in the sky. When we got to Nottingham we went by bus to the mining village of Bidworth where we were taken to a home chosen for us.

Having not long been out of the Lancing Heart home for Children, which was part of the London Heart Hospital where I had been for nearly 7 months it, was decided I should go to a quiet home. I was lucky in going to the Clarke household where Mr Clarke, a Methodist lay preacher, Mrs Clarke and Jean, their daughter, gave me a kind and loving home for three and a half years. Their son George was in the Somerset Light Infantry and I only remember him coming home on leave twice but he was a very nice person as was his wife Margery.

There was also Prince the dog and Monty the dark tortoiseshell cat who I thought were lovely, as the only pet I had at home was Joey the goldfish.

Our life in the Clarke family household revolved around the Methodist Church in which I remember having some very happy times.

In the winter sometimes the village would be cut off from one next owing to such deep snow.

In the gardens there would be vegetable and fruit growing where previously there had been flowers and grass.

Mrs Clarke made the most lovely bread and jams. In her younger days she had been cook at the well-known Newsted Abbey. My mother came to visit me one day when she had brought some evacuees near us and I saw her walking up the street looking for our house. I ran down the path calling out to her. It was so lovely to see her. I cannot remember how long she stayed but a short time after she returned home I ran down the same path to meet the postwoman who gave me a letter from my sister who is 9 years older than me, saying I must be very brave because Mummy had died.

I realised as I got older how lucky I was to have been placed with the Clarke family at that sad time.

Near the end of the war my sister visited me and when she was about to return to Littlehampton a telegram arrived from my father asking her to bring me back home as he felt it was safe enough at that time.

Remember when the war ended there being a party in Queen Street, Littlehampton, which everyone enjoyed.

Dorothy

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