大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Janet Kowalska and has been added to the website on behalf of Pamela Drummond with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I cannot recall the exact date we went off on our first evacuation. It was probably 1st September 1939 as were in Sittingbourne, rather than at home in Chatham, the day war was declared.

I was still at St John's Infants School and, as I was seven and a half years old, was due to go up to the Big Girls' School at the start of that autumn term, but because of the upheaval, that did not occur.

Hazel Strong, my cousin, who was then aged ten and a quarter and myself were marched, crocodile fashion, from school down to Chatham railway station and transported to Sittingbourne. The real problems soon started as, carrying our meagre belongings, we began traipsing around the various streets with our teachers, continuing until late in the afternoon, trying to find billets for us all. Eventually, we were deposited at a house in Spring Street and taken in by a woman who to me, as a child of seven, was the epitome of a witch. Hazel and I entered a very small, gloomy living room and the first thing I noticed was a table covered by a green baize cloth and an array of playing cards arranged on its surface; however, what fascinated me most was the semi-circle of tobacco ash on the floor. The old woman had been smoking a pipe and had just sat knowcking the ash out on the floor around her whilst she sat playing a game of patience! In one corner on the wall was a small cupboard into which she hurriedly put all our emergency rations (sugar, corned beef and butter. When my eyes focused, I could also see a big black range on which were two big black saucepans (cauldrons?!) which were spitting and hissing liquid onto the stove. Beneath the range was the ubiquitous black cat, curled up on rag rug; the picture was complete.

Fortunately, we only stayed one night with this woman. The teacher could see that the billet was completely unsuitable but it had to do for one night. It was just as well because, apart from being bitten alive by fleas, we were given no food at all and when we asked for some breakfast the following morning, we were given a ha'penny and told to get some chewing gum from the machine up the road. In desperation, we remembered our leftover sandwiches from the journey; the only trouble was they had been banana and had not improved by residing in a hot haversack overnight! The old woman also wouldn't part with our emergency rations.

We were taken later that second day, to another billet. We did not present a very pretty picture being rather unkempt as we had not been able to wash and I was by now covered in daubs of 'blue-bag', put on to relieve the flea bites. The next billet was clean but the toilet was a shared one situated down the garden. We could only attend Milton Regis School for half-days, but were not allowed to return to the house until 4.30 each afternoon, whatever the weather, so we spent hours wandering along the High Street on our own. We were fed and watered by this second lady, but certainly not shown any affection. In fact, if she encountered us while we were out, she would completely ignore us.

Some time in the following June (9 months later and then aged 8 and a half years) I developed measles and was sent to a big house on the hill above Sittingbourne, especially kept for evacuees. Whilst I was there, my cousin Hazel was evacuated again, but a bit farther afield - to Cardiff in South Wales. Eventually, I too found myself on anotgher train full of children, all on our way to Wales. I thought I was to be reunited with Hazel but, on reaching Cardiff, I was not allowed off the train. I can remember crying and fighting because I was sure I had been told Hazel would be there to meet me and she was not. Finally we arrived, very hot and very tired, in Neath and then boarded a charabanc to our final destination, Pontardawe, and the poem below describes this event.

My time in Pontardawe was a vast contrast to Sittingbourne and my new 'Auntie Mabel' was a very kind lady. She was rather strict as I was not allowed out to play with other children but I still felt reasonably content. Her husband, 'Uncle Willie', was a cosy man and bought me the Beano comic. The following Christmas (1940) Hazel was allowed to visit me. She was so very sad, so terribly unhappy as her mother had been killed by a land mine (her father was already dead too) that Auntie Mabel very kindly let Hazel stay, taking her under her wing too, and I was overjoyed. We both had a very good home in Pontardawe despite us both causing various problems: my eyes were playing up and I needed to be prescribed spectacles; then my milk teeth had to be removed by the dentist to allow the new teeth to grow down and, finally, my tonsils had to be taken out which entailed a visit to Swansea Hospital amidst a very scary air-raid. I will always remember Auntie Mabel taking me all the way back home in a taxi and giving me barley sugar to suck. Poor Hazel scalded her leg badly and also fell down a metal spiral staircase at Uncle Willie's shop, so Auntie had her hands full with the pair of us. She was so very good and kind despite, as I later realised, being no spring chicken by then.

We returned to Chatham as the V1s started in 1942 as all the English teachers (who had come with us to Wales ) were re-called and our only other option was to remain in Wales, but be taught in Welsh! My memory of education in Wales was of the nature rambles we had on the moutainside and of Wednesday and Friday afternoons when our beloved teacher, Mrs Tasker, would read a chapter of T'The Wind in the Willows' - sheer bliss.

WARTIME JOURNEY

A blank page sits before me, I know not what to write
Will it be of yesteryear or what happened t'other night?
My mind goes back recalling, like lots of little girls,
How those of us with short straight hair, wanted Shirley Temple curls;
How when we were Evacuees and bundled on the train
We wished and wished to awful hard to go back home again.
That journey was a nightmare, it took forever and a day,
None of us knew what to do, or think or even pray.
Eventually we were herded into the Welsh school's hall
Surrounded by bustling folk, some fat, some short, some tall.
I sat down in a corner, alone and feeling sad,
'Cos all the rest were pairing off, I guessed I must be bad,
I wasn't very pretty, I was plain and only eight,
And I hadn't got a clue what was going to be my fate.
No one came to claim me, no one told me why,
Tears were welling up, but I did my utmost not to cry.
The room was now quite empty and I was all alone
When a lady came and said that she would take me home.
She'd spotted me right at the first and picked me out you see,
Because I was a little girl and without a family.
She took me back and popped me in a wondrous great big bath
Then tried to scrub my birthmark off, oh how we did later laugh.
I stayed with them a long time, nearly three whole years
But I will never, ever forget my panic and my fears
On that long trip away from home
Evacuated, all alone.

Pam Drummon

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