大象传媒

Born in London
Evacuated to Puckley, Kent
A few weeks prior to war starting children were sent to Canada and Australia in ships but news came through that a ship full of children had sunk. Peggy鈥檚 mother made the decision for her to go to Kent.
The Darling Buds of May was made in Puckley
Went to public school in Puckley
There were 3 classes 鈥� juniors, Infants and seniors
The toilet was out the back. There was no toilet inside.
The church was opposite school
Only a few children in school, 15 in seniors, fewer in infants and 15 in juniors.
Peggy has photos of the whole village.

Q. When you were evacuated who was with you?
A. My Mother. My father was a stoker at _____________ power station in London. That was essential war work so he couldn鈥檛 come with us. We got to see him once every 9 weekends from Friday night to Sunday night.
The cottage we lived in was 5 shillings.
There was a field at the side we rented out for horses.
There was no water indoors everything was outside.
The toilet was a hole in the field; we dug over every 3 days.
We grew our own vegetables.
The headmaster was a Captain Quinn from the First World War.

Peggy shows us a mental arithmetic 鈥榗hart鈥� which Captain Quinn used to teach maths (photo of this table). He would say 鈥淚 want the total of everything, e.g. North and South of a 6, East or West of an 8. We called it 鈥楾iny Tots鈥�.

We would go to the butchers for our meat and rations.

Q. Did you have a fridge?
A. No, we had a cold marble slab in the larder and it was always facing North so
it was always cold.
There were no bananas or oranges.

Peggy shows a copy of the rations (photo taken).
Peggy also has an ID card, when I got married we moved back to London, everyone had an ID card.

Peggy got married in 1950.

Q. How old were you when war started?
A. War started on 3rd September 1939 and Peggy was 11 years old on 7th Sept.
Q. Do you remember anything about the day war was declared?
A. Strangest day of my life when I think back. My mum used to get very hysterical and my brother was 6 months old. We were living in a house, my mother said 鈥淭hey are going to start bombing London. She gets a friend of her to get a van, we all pile into the van and I don鈥檛 know how many cats and dogs we ran over but it was a lot. We went to my Grandmothers 鈥� that鈥檚 my Dads mother, they had a shelter. Grandmother said 鈥渄on鈥檛 be so stupid go back home, they are not going to start bombing yet鈥�. Everyone turned their lights off so you could not see where you were driving.

That night my mother was getting fed up, we were getting 鈥楧og fights鈥�, we were near the Kent coast. She said lets go back home to London for a holiday, so we went back for one week. Mum was running this little flat upstairs in the house, you could see all that was going on from this flat.

Q. Do you remember the 鈥楧og fights鈥�?
A. The English and German used to fight in the air.

Q. Was your house ever bombed?
A. No, my grandmothers was fire bombed with incendiary bombs and we lost a
lot of things we had from school when we were kids.

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