大象传媒

Name: Mr James Nash

Location of Story: Swinford

Title: A tale of my small minimal war contribution

I was situated in London with my dad and mum. I was evacuated to the country side with many other children. I took the train from Euston to Rugby; the government had paid for my journey fare. I had a few personal belongings with me which was my small parcel with a few clothes and gasmask, small name tag. My sister and I were separated and she had 5 children living with her. I left the hostel at 11 years old to live with my sister which was about 5 doors down from where I was currently living.
At a young age of 12 I was working on small job collecting wood, paper, old saucepans, and anything else used for recycling. I was still 12 when I left my sister who then went to live with a farmer. I had lived with a woman who managed a pub until I was 39 years old. The food rationings came about in 1940, before the rationings we had no limit to all kinds of delicious sweet and other foods (dripping, bread, soup, liquorish etc). If we had seen any apples or berries on the trees or bush we would eat them straight away or save them.
The kind of entertainment that was around was mostly comic books e.g. Beano, Dandy, Picture Post. We created are own entertainment mostly which was picnics, stage shows. When I was living with the woman at the pub, myself and the lady and another evacuee were doing a stage show which we had charge people at the price of tupence.
When I was old enough I went to work on the farm doing sheaves of corn and stacking. I was sticking to farm work all through the war, and I had some part-time work in the pub cleaning the drains, collecting bottles, sweeping the yard. I would also sometimes top and tail gooseberries for jam making. All in all I was doing something to help myself and help my country which I was oblige to do.

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