大象传媒

The story was submitted to the People's War site by Claire Broughton of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Julia Linnell and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understans the site's terms and condidtions.

Julia Linnell was known as Doris Julia Hunter at this time. She was evacuated from Birmingham to Ellistown when she was eight and a half years old. She came by train and bus and remembers this being a great adventure. She came with other pupils frm St. John's school, along with her older sister and two brothers. Her youngest brother remained in Birmingham with their mother.
On arriving at Ellistown school, Doris remained close to her sister ( as instructed by her mother) and they were chosen as a pair to go with Mr and Mrs Hemsley. Doris remembers feeling a little scared as she walked into a room where Mr. Hemsley was standing with his back to the fire. He placed his hands around both the girls' heads and produced two coins out of their ears. Mr Hemsley was a "Magician". This broke the ice and made Doris and her sister feel very welcome.
Doris says, "Mr and Mrs Hemsley were a wonderful couple who looked after us really well and set us many good values which have taken us forward through life."
As no bombing was taking place in Birmingham, she returned for a while and remembers sitting on a fence watching the planes at the start of the Blitz. with no fear. Later the family had to spend two days in a shelter and Doris remembers an ARP warden handing down bowls of rice pudding to eat which she said were "delicious". As the house was bombed she moved back to Coalville and to the Hemsley's. Her mother moved to Coalville and she lived with her for a little while before she again went to stay with the Hemsley's.
Doris remembers the children's own playground war. The country children thought the town children scruffy and the town children thought the country children "yokels."
Doris will always remember the great kindness shown by her evacuee family and still thinks of them with much warmth.

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