大象传媒

This story was given by Marion Pearse and is based in London High Wycombe and Sussex. She gave the story to a People's War volunteer and understands our terms and conditions.

I was 5 in the war when I was evacuated from London to High Wycombe and I started school. I lived with friends of my mums but I can remember always feeling like an outsider and different even though I鈥檇 been evacuated within our wider family circle. My mother married again and we went to live on a farm with her new husband in Sussex. People think you were alright in the countryside but when the German planes were flying back or being turned back they used to dump their bombs, their load, on the countryside on the way back over the Channel. Once one landed nearby and shook our house and the ceilings came down. Because of the shortages of material you were only allowed to have 2 ceilings repaired so we all had to sleep in one room which had it鈥檚 ceiling repaired until after the war.

I was 8 and walking to school and was walking home one day when I saw a man in his 50鈥檚 on a bike. He heard an aircraft and leapt of his bike, threw me in a ditch to protect me. Everyone knew everyone else in the villages and I was known as the Sheffield girl.

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