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This story was submitted by Alison Tebbutt, Derby CSV Action Desk, on behalf of Joyce Wood. The author has given her permission and understands the site's terms and conditions.

A mass evacuation of children aged five-fourteen years, plus mothers and babies, took place from the South Coast and other vulnerable cities as an invasion was anticipated and also the Germans were bombing cities and other targets.

The then Rural District of Belper was allocated to receive children from Southend on Sea and district. The village of Smalley, where I lived, received quite a large number of these. They travelled by train from Southend to Belper was gas masks, sandwiches and drinks and postcards already addressed to parents with instructions to send them back as soon as they were ‘billeted’ as parents had no idea where the children were going owing to ‘National Security.’

On the Saturday they arrived at Belper station and came by bus to Smalley. The villagers had been previously asked to take an evacuee in if possible. The Headmaster of the village school, Mr Herbert H Dix, was the Billeting Officer and in charge of the operation. Several teachers accompanied the children, and found accommodation in various homes.

I was twenty years of age at the time and lived with my father in a cottage with a large garden but without electricity or gas and with an outside toilet. We used oil lamps for lighting. We had decided we would take an evacuee and help the war effort. The children who stayed with us were twin girls aged seven whose parents naturally did not want them to be separated so we took the two.

Classes were arranged in the Baptist Chapel at first with their own teachers. Later they attended Smalley Girls’ School and integrated with the village children. Our cottage was next to a farm, so they were able to see the animals, take part in haymaking and watch the cows being milked. We had a very happy time really, although occasional visits from their parents unsettled the girls. Their names were Kathleen and Margaret Wright. Their brother Brian aged twelve was billeted in Belper and attended Herbert Strutt School, sometimes cycling over to Smalley on Saturdays when we all had a picnic or in winter a meal in the cottage.

I remember Dad and I received two flannelette double sheets and a weekly allowance for food-how much I have forgotten but very small by today’s standards. The parents sent clothes as they out-grew them, and their mother made very pretty outfits for the wedding in Harrogate. During their two year stay with us I took them by train from Derby to my cousin’s wedding in Harrogate. The memory I keep is of the table decorations of sweet peas at the reception being given to the two little girls who had their photographs with them. People in general were so kind. They left us eventually as I was marrying an airman and we needed their room.

They sent a bread board and knife as a wedding present for us, together with a Greetings Telegram from ‘the twins’ which I still have.

We lost touch for a while-they went back to their parents who lived for a while in Ipswich, then moved to Newark. However, some time later both had married and came back to Smalley to show their husbands and families where they lived during this part of the war.

Then on the 50th Anniversary of the outbreak of war they arrived on my doorstep with flowers which was a moving experience and surprise for me. Last year both sisters visited again after sixty years. We visited Smalley Church and they talked of happy memories and some funny ones! They took me out for lunch and promised to come again when they could arrange it. One now lives in Essex, the other in Surrey and both are now grandparents.

I think this story and memory is worth recording as many experiences were not so happy and remembered in a different light.

When the Germans started to bomb targets in the North of England we heard air raid warning from Mapperley Colliery during the night, and as the bombers passed overhead on their way to bomb Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, etc, we rigged up a mattress and chairs under the stairs and slept as well as we could. Bombs were jettisoned but we were lucky. We also heard loud gunfire from the ack-ack positioned on Derby Racecourse. We were alleged to be in a safe area!

Another memory was of lorries full of Italian Prisoners of War going through Smalley from the Army Camp there to work at a depot at West Hallam. I did was work after the twins left, working in a disused factory in Heanor packing spare parts for tanks and heavy vehicles for the Japanese War which never happened after the Nagasaki bomb. There were local women working in very cold conditions in a depot run by the Royal Ordnance factory at Chilwell.

Part Two of this story can be found at bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/a5702825

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