大象传媒

鈥淎nd what would you like to have in your new home?鈥�, I was asked.
鈥淎 cat and a piano, please.鈥� At 10 years old, I knew exactly.

This was at Wellesley College, Boston in August 1940.
We had survived enemy U-boats and arrived safely in Canada. I had insisted on a top bunk on The Duchess of Atholl but fallen out during a game of 鈥榞hosts鈥� so was not looking my best with a sore lip.
At Wellesley, charming senior girls played with us introduced us to hot dogs and corn on the cob. We were allowed to use the lifts by ourselves and to type letters to our parents in the library.
We played croquet happily in front of the College aware that we were being watched. Eventually we were chosen.
How did this begin ? Here is my evacuees chronology:-

1935. My father, a country doctor joins the territorial army.
1939. He is called up.
1940. My brother,John,12, is at a Catholic boarding school in Ware - which
he does not like ! Clare, 10, is a weekly boarder at a small
convent in Beccles, Suffolk. There are problems for my mother in
keeping the (medical) practice going. My mother reads in the Daily
Telegraph of a scheme to evacuate children to America run by the
Boston Transcript (a now defunct newspaper).
June 1940. We are interviewed in Grosvenor House hotel in London and have
a medical.
August 14th. A final family photograph after which my mother tells me she
is expecting a baby. That was something I had longed for but the suitcases are packed and I have to go.
August 15th. We drive to London under the barrage balloons and leave our
parents at Grosvenor House. My mother is weeping. We have eight days
at sea on the Duchess of Atholl. A month later, the ship we were booked
on the City of Benares was torpedoed with great loss of life,
august 23rd. We arrive in Canada and take a train to Boston. After a
week or two at Wellesley College. We meet our foster parents. The
family consists of Hugh Cabot jr, an Episcopalian business man; his
wife, Louise, a Roman Catholic, a specialist nurse and lecturer;
and their three children, Terry,10, Judy,6 and Richard, 18 months.
our new home is at 74 Bubier Road, Marblehead, Massachusetts. Judy
and I go to the St Cretianne French convent school as day girls.
John goes to Marblehead high school in short trousers and is put
with boys of 16 as he is so advanced compared to American children.
Terry is dyslexic and goes to a junior school.
January 30th 1941. Great news, I have a baby brother, Adrian.
but he will be four years old before i see him.
Summer 1941 & 42. Hillsboro Camp, New Hampshire. I was taken free as a
refugee. 12 weeks each year of bliss and freedom and learning to
swim and ride.
Summer 1942. My father arrives in New York on board a troopship and comes
to see us.
Autumn 1942. I leave the convent and go to Marblehead High School which
I do not like. Terry & John are sent to a boarding school in
Vermont run by a German family connected to Gordonstoun in
Scotland. I stay with Aunt Louise and the younger children. We
have a bad winter with an oil shortage, staff leaving for war-work
and illness.
Spring 1943. We pack up 74 Bubier Road and move to the Palmer Cottage,
Manchester, Vermont. Hugh Cabot is away most of the time. I enjoy
the little village school and being with Aunt Louise and the two
younger children.
Spring 1944. The Cabots are together and decide to make a new start in
California. They decide to drive across the country seeing as much
as possible. It took a whole month.
July 1944. My brother is unable to join us and has to return to UK. I
have 9 months at Los Gatos High School not far from San Francisco.
July 1945. I say goodbye to the Cabots and take trains to New York,
returning to Liverpool on the Samaria. I take a train to Edinburgh
and meet my mother and little brother.

MEMORIES.

There were four real highlights during my time in America as an evacuee. two were the summer camps at Hillsboro鈥� NH. We were taken free as British evacuees and had such a carefree time, swimming, canoeing and living in glorious wooden cabins.
The next was when my father (serving on troopships) came to visit us whilst his ship was in New York. He stepped out of the train at Marblehead in his uniform. I can鈥檛 describe how wonderful it was to see him again. He and my foster mother got on very well. Apparently I woke him up early on his first morning and insisted on taking him down to Eaton鈥檚 drugstore for an American chocolate sundae.
The final highlight was driving right across America as the family had decided to relocate near Los Angeles. I expect that I was the only British evacuee to have had this unique experience. We left Marblehead and visited the Mesa Verde national park where I learnt about the early American Indians who lived in cliff dwellings. The Painted Desert, The petrified Forest and The Carlsbad Caverns were other highlight stopovers. Santa Fe had old Spanish missions to visit and we stayed at a ranch in Texas covering 25,000 acres. Finally we landed at Los Gatos where I went to the high school for a year.
The war ended and the hardest part of the story was now to come. I traveled back on Samaria. I didn't recognise my mother and had a new brother aged 4 who had broken most of my favourite toys ! I was packed off to a Catholic boarding school in Oxford and managed to pass my school certificate quite well. The girls seemed horribly immature and used to hold hobbyhorse gymkhanas with no bras. After Los Gatos High I felt a prisoner and my American accent was mocked.

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