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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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1939-45 early memories as an evacuee

by A_Arber

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Archive List > Childhood and Evacuation

Contributed by听
A_Arber
People in story:听
Annie Betty Arber (Nee Parish), Aunt Lou & Uncle Ernie Ward
Location of story:听
Bicester Oxfordshire
Background to story:听
Civilian
Article ID:听
A8850855
Contributed on:听
26 January 2006

I was born just before the war (30/3/39) and lived with my mum and sister in Custom House London near the docks, my dad was in the army. My sister Ada, who is nearly 6 years older than me, was evacuated to Twickenham with a cousin for a while. As the war went on, I can remember living in Bicester with my sister. We both slept on a single bed and shared a room with Monda, the daughter of the house. At the time I must have been aged about 3. The people that took us in was very nice we called them Aunt Lou and Uncle Erne. We used to eat rabbit a lot as Uncle Erne used to take his gun and a ferret that he kept in a shed at the bottom of the garden. We had fruit pies and on Sundays, we had trifles and cakes.
I don鈥檛 know why we came home to London perhaps we missed our mum. My mum then worked at the Lampsom Paragon. When a bomb fell in the next road, we woke up to find a manhole cover at the foot of the bed in the bedroom. Now we had nowhere to live and together with my aunt and her two children, we all went to Abergavenny in Wales. We were put into a large house overlooking the cattle market. We had the back bedroom, it has 2 single beds, a gas cooker and a table and chairs and a big pile of blankets that was used for curtains, carpets and table cloths.
We didn鈥檛 stay very long in Wales. The toilet was outside, the bathroom was downstairs and they kept coal in the bath. When our aunt鈥檚 house was repaired, we came back to London to live with her. It was very cramped as all our furniture was stored in her large bedroom. My aunt and her two children slept in the back bedroom and we had the box room and the bed filled the room.
I can remember going to the VE street party in my aunt鈥檚 road - Churchill Road Custom House. Then shortly after that we moved back into our own house that had been repaired and my dad came out of the army. I鈥檝e since learnt that while we was at Bicester with Aunt Lou that when there was a lull in the bombing my mum would take us home for a while until the bombing started up again then back we would go to Bicester. It was during one of those breaks when our house got bomb damaged.

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