大象传媒

When W.W.II broke out in September 1939 I was 12 years old and living with my parents and sister in Brighton, E Sussex. My sister and I were pupils at Whitehawk senior school. Soon after the declaration of war many Londoners were being evacuated to safer areas, with quite large numbers coming to Brighton.

One day at school our headmistress, Miss Taylor, told us that a girls' school was being evacuated to our town and needed a suitable building where they could continue their schooling - and at that time nowhere suitable was available, so our school premises had been offered to them as a temporary solution until other arrangements could be made. This meant that we could be attending school for half days only and the evacuee girls would use our school for the other half days. This went on until the end of term when school broke up for Christmas holidays.

The young ladies from London invited us local girls to attend a party in the school hall as a thank you for letting them share our school premises. We had music and dancing and it was the first time that most of us local girls had ever done ballroom dancing, but our partners did a good job of guiding us, the London girls were very friendly and polite and we thought it was very kind of them to show their appreciation. We didn鈥檛 see them any more after that because presumably they were moved on to somewhere more suitable.

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