大象传媒

This story was submitted to the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by ^{About links} on behalf of Kathleen Whitelock and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Immediately war broke out my father started worrying about getting me evacuated out of Ealing in west London. I was twelve years old and an only child. I鈥檇 finished my first year at Drayton Manor school who was not going to evacuate their pupils, so I was quickly moved to Ealing County School for Girls who were.

I was very excited on the day we left. Children from all over the borough went in a fleet of buses. No-one was supposed to know where we were going but my Dad worked on the buses and had a quiet word with one of the drivers who told him, 鈥淚f your girl likes ducks, she鈥檒l be happy!鈥� So off went our bus full of Ealing County girls and some of our teachers to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

When we got there we were packed into the church hall and told to eat our packed lunches while the billeting officer sorted us out. She was a formidable lady. When she got to me, she said, 鈥淵ou sit there and wait,鈥� which I did till she took me home with her. She was actually very nice, so was her husband who was a monumental mason and their son who was a bit older than me. I had my own room complete with feather bed, but the best bit was they had a dog called Patch, just like my own dog at home.

After a few weeks I was moved on - people had complained that the billeting officer shouldn鈥檛 be benefiting from the evacuees鈥� allowance which others might need more than her. Again, I was lucky; I was lucky all the way. The Pike family were also very kind and had a toddler named Graham. Again I had my own room.

Those first few weeks lessons were a bit chaotic. We sat on the church hall floor to begin with and had to reuse the envelopes from our parents鈥� letters to write on. After a bit, we were all moved on again to High Wycombe. This time we shared the school buildings with the girls from High Wycombe School so we鈥檇 be in proper school classrooms at least a couple of days a week.

Again I moved home, first to a family out in the country in West Wycombe who had an outside loo full of spiders! But I loved it there, I loved being in the country and we walked miles. I remember collecting huge bags of acorns for the pigs. The husband was a signalman and I enjoyed taking his lunch up to him in the box. But after a few months I was moved yet again to a family in High Wycombe itself where I stayed very happily until I went home in 1943.

For me those four years as an evacuee were quite a happy time. I was with friends from school with teachers I knew and my parents came down to see me every couple of months or so. We鈥檇 go back to Ealing for visits during school holidays but every time I did we seemed to get an air raid and my father wouldn鈥檛 hear of me staying. So, back I went to High Wycombe until 1943 when I was approaching my matriculation exams and I finally went back to live at home. I remember vividly 鈥� we did our exams in the air raid shelter. It was very cramped and coats bulged off hooks all round the walls and there was no air raid so we could have done them in school after all!

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