大象传媒

When I was a little girl about twelve years old, something happened in my life that was so special, that even though it happened over sixty years ago, I can still remember it quite clearly.
Do you know what an evacuee is? I was an evacuee. In the dictionary it says "An evacuee is someone who is sent from a dangerous place to a place of safety" That is what happened to me and thousands of other children in 1939.
For a long time we had been hearing about a man called Adolf Hitler, who ruled Germany and was making war against other countries. Nobody in England wanted a war, but we had to stop Hitler from invading any more countries so in September 1939 the English government declared war on Germany.
It was a very scary time. We all expected the German planes to fly over and drop bombs on our cities. Because of this a big plan was made to send as many children out of the big cities to quiet country areas, where they would be safe from air-raids. It meant that many children would have to leave their homes and parents and go and live with kind people in the country, who would look after them instead of their mums and dads.
This big plan was called the evacuation and the children were called the evacuees. I was one of them. Can you imagine how you would feel if it happened to you?
I can still remember how I felt- sad, scared and even a little bit excited at the idea of going to the country. I was a city child and had always lived in London.
Our school had been rehearsing how we would march to the railway station, so when the day came we all knew what to do. We walked in lines to the railway station(rather like you do when you go swimming with your school!) We had our gas-masks in little boxes on our shoulders, small cases with our clothes in, and labels with our names, addresses and the name of our school fastened to our coats. Our parents came to the school to wave goodbye and you can be sure there were lots of tears from the children and the mums and dads.
One of the nice things I remember is that we were all given a little bag of "goodies" to eat on the journey - fruit, chocolate and some other nice things for our foster parents.
We got on the train, the whistle blew,and the guard waved his flag and we were off! They were steam trains in those days, like the trains that you see on the North Norfolk Railway. Soon we were in the countryside passing green fields, cows, sheep and horses in them. Some children had never seen them before.
After what seemed like a long time we reached the country town we were going to call home. I went to place called Bishops Stortford, which isn't really very far from London. Although at the time I thought it was far, far away.
We were taken to a village hall where the people who were going to look after us chose us. I was really lucky and had a really nice foster-mother and father. My school friend Lily Parish was with me and although we were very homesick at first and spent many nights crying into our pillows, we soon got used to living with our foster parents in the country.
The bombs did fall on London and the big cities, after a while we worried a lot about our mums and dads who were still living there. Our parents must have loved us very much to make sure we were safe even though they were sad to be parted from us.
The war lasted a long time, almost six years. But of course our parents were able to visit us now and then. Just before the war ended when I was nearly seventeen, I went back to London and worked in a big newspaper office. There were flying bombs then - called "doodlebugs"!
Then in 1945, the war ended. There was a big victory parade and everybody was happy. It was lovely to be home with our parents again. But we never forgot the kind people who took us into their homes and cared for the 'evacuees1.

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