大象传媒

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk on behalf of Victor Millard and has been added to the site with his permission. Victor Millard fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

Victor's War

I was 5.1/2 years old when I was evacuated with my middle brother as he was under school age. We were sent by train from Sandling Junction via London to Cardigan in Wales. We both thought that it was a great adventure. Our first shock when we arrived was having to line up in the school hall at St Dogmaels waiting to be selected by someone. The family that selected us firstly was a Mr and Mrs Phillips. Shortly afterwards my father joined the Royal Air Force and my mother came to Wales with my youngest brother. As there were then four of us we moved to stay with another family. We were all very pleased to be together again.

Whilst living there, when we went into some of the shops the people who were then speaking English would start speaking Welsh. This became no problem to us children as we soon learned enough of the language to make ourselves understood. We were co-opted into the chapel choir and we learned to take a bag of sweets with us to help us through the sermons. We used to go down to Poppit Sands by the River Teifi to play and lots of other local walks. School continued as usual as our teachers came with us.

We stayed there until 1941 when my parents decided that we should move back to Hythe, to the village of Palmarsh and we stayed there for the rest of the war. Our house was still standing and life continued as normal but for the fact that there were fewer children around. Life however was to become much more interesting as many of the forces personnel including Canadians were stationed along the Royal Military Canal which was just behind our house, waiting for the invasion to begin. The Americans joined the troops already there and we frequently visited their camp. They gave us ice cream, fruit and we saw film shows.

The Doodlebug raids then started. On the first raid, I woke up and went into my mothers room to ask her what was going on. We looked out of the window towards the Channel and saw the exhaust lights of the doodlebugs. The Royal Navy had all the anti aircraft guns on the seashore and on the rifle range firing suddenly there was a flash and one of the doodlebugs was hit. The hit must have upset the giro as it started climbing, stalled and dived into the ground and exploded just 200 yards from our house. When we went downstairs, mother noticed something under the sideboard. She got all of the family together and took us into a neighbours house and fetched one of the ARP Wardens and told them about it. They went into the house and investigated and discovered that it was a curtain that had been thrown there when the bone curtains rings holding the curtains had been shattered by the blast!

Our house was sandwiched between naval guns on the coast, army tanks in front of the house and Canadian and Army artillery behind waiting for the invasion as well as fighters stationed at Lympne air field with anti-aircraft guns protecting them, when they all opened up I could ready by the light of the tracers and enjoyed somewhat strange firework displays.

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