´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Maleen Saeed a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Nellie Garrat and has been added to the site with her permission. Nellie Garrat fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was twelve, and in my first year at Erdington Grammar school for girls. We all knew that war was threatening and my father had dug a makeshift air raid shelter in the garden of our council house. It was Friday September 1939 and I was about to set out on a great adventure. My school was to be sent on a 'trial ' evacuation to Ashby - de - la - Zouche in Leicestershire just for a weekend we were told. My mother packed a small case with a change of clothes, and attached a brown luggage label with my name and address to the label of my school coat. My father took me to the bus stop to get the bus from Kingstanding to Endington, where I walked to my friend Margaret Bailey’s house in Spring Lane. I remember being surprised by the fact that her father cried when he said goodbye to us.

We walked from Margaret’s house to school where we were organised into crocodiles and walked to Gravelly Hill Staton. There we waited for what seemed ages for a steam train to arrive. Our spirits rose a little when we realised that one half of the train was already occupied by a boy’s grammar school heading for the same town. On arrival in Ashby we were led to the hall of the local Girls Grammar school- where we were met by members of the W.1 ( or WVS) who plied us with glasses of milk and biscuits from nearby Meredilk and Drew factory. Each of us was given a brown paper carrier bag containing our ‘iron rations’ a tin of corned beef, condensed milk, biscuits etc.. Then we sat and waited to be claimed by our hosts for what we still thought was to be a weekend stay. I was paired with a girl that I didn’t know who was almost a year younger than me and we were claimed by a woman who I think would have been in her early fifties. We went to her house and were fed and eventually went to bed. I don’t remember much about the Saturday but on the Sunday morning we were sitting around the house while we were sitting around the house while our hostess prepared the lunch. The radio was switched and the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain started to speak — I can still here him say ‘The country is at war’. We were all shocked and realised that our stay in Ashby would be longer then we thought. Our hostess told us that we would have to move to a new billet because she would not be required to do ‘war work’.

Next day we were transferred to the home of a young newly married couple which was nearer the centre of town. The only way we had of letting our parents know what was happening to us was by the post, since very few people had telephones in those days. Our new hostess a pretty school teacher was very house proud and there were many rules. I can remember causing annoyance by sitting and fidgeting in the evenings because I was afraid to go outside to the only lavatory it was cold and dark and we had a lavatory in the bathroom of our council house at home. The man of the house was a carpenter I think but I remember him best for his hobby which was painting biblical scenes in oils- I was very impressed. They were members of the Church of England and we were taken to services on Sundays. The vicar was ‘high church’ and I remember the pomp and elaborate vestments of the harvest festival.

We didn’t stay at this billet very long because our hostess became pregnant- much to her annoyance I think. Then we were separated and I moved to the home of an older more motherly woman called Mrs Poynton — she had two grown up daughters and a son. This was a council house on a small estate near a railway line and when the siren sounded we would be bundled out of bed to take shelter under a railway arch near the house — looking back I don’t know if it was a good idea. I remember watching the flashes of anti aircraft fire and falling bombs in the far distance.

Mrs Poynton was a primitive Methodist and I was taken to Sunday services in the local chapel where local people would be moved to stand and testify their belief at intervals during the service. The son of the house married a Roman catholic and I was taken to the wedding service which involved incense and holy water which I thought was sprinkled by pastry brushes. I had a wealth of religious experiences in a few months. I was the oldest of four children at this time and my parents were very poor so were unable to visit me, and could not send much in the way of pocket money. Letters were few and far between.

Mrs Poynton was very good to me and treated me like one of her own family. I was very well fed and she provided me with clothes.

The two daughters were from different husbands (both now dead) the older one was dark and brooding. On my first evening in the house she sat and stared at me without blinking whilst dipping bread in a saucer of vinegar, salt and pepper and eating it, she worked in a knitwear factory in Coalville with her sister very rarely left home except to go to work and at weekends spent most of her time in bed. Her younger sister was fair and pretty and lively and they didn’t agree at all. There was constant animosity. I remember her throwing a bucket of water over her sister one Saturday morning.

There were two boys from the evacuated boy’s school billeted next door to me and we spent an idyllic few months exploring the countryside. We fished for newts in a small pond walked in nearby woods in the wind and generally enjoyed country living which we had not experienced before.

I did go home for a visit once travelling by bus to Birmingham. I remember the return journey best because on the way we passed a hunt in full flight across the fields we saw the fox and I remember the grace of the horses and the red and black of the huntsmen clothing.

We travelled through villages with romantic names like Appleby Magna and Appleby Parva. In 1940 the government decided that parents must pay for the keep of their evacuated children. My parents budget was so small that a regular payment would have been very difficult so I returned to Birmingham to continue my education at the grammar school to live through the blitz and to meet my new brother who had been born three months beforehand.

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