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EVACUATION
Our parents¡¯ experiences in the First World War; our father in the Royal Naval Division and our brother Harry being born on May 20th 1918 during the last air raid on London; convinced them it was advisable to send us to a place of safety.
My sister May, aged twelve, went to Catford Central School for Girls. I was seven and went to Sandhurst Road Junior Mixed School. Both schools were in the same building. I was to be evacuated with my sister.
On Friday September 1939,we walked to Hither Green Station, travelled to Charing in Kent and then by bus to different villages.
Our bus arrived at Bethersden in Kent and we went into the village hall to await collection by the villagers. As the numbers dwindled we wondered where we would sleep that night.
Suddenly, the door opened and a man wearing a chauffeur¡¯s uniform arrived. A few of us were told to go with him in an enormous car. May and I had only ridden in a car once before and that was an Austin Seven.
Off we went along country lanes stopping to drop children off at various houses.
Eventually, the car turned in at a farm gate and we pulled up by a large Victorian farmhouse. This was Fridd Farm. The two fifteen year old girls got out and went inside.
May and I were driven through a second farm gate, setting the two farm dogs barking. The car turned round and stopped outside another old, sprawling building. This was the original Tudor farm house now converted into three cottages.
The chauffeur knocked at one door where we were to stay, but there was no answer. He peered through the window only to find the house was empty.
He knocked next door and an elderly lady dressed in black and wearing black plimsolls opened the door. It transpired that the neighbours had done a ¡®moonlight¡¯ flit the previous week-end.
This lady, Mrs Marden, very kindly agreed to take us in even though her two bedrooms were occupied. Her son had to move into his parent¡¯s room so we could use his. During the night the tape holding his iron bedstead together gave way and deposited him on the floor. So began our nine months experience of evacuation. How different our life was to be.
The water supply was rain from the roof draining into an underground tank which was pumped into a low sided sink in the corner of the kitchen. The pump was rather rusty. The water was a peculiar colour with bits in it. I drank some and my legs developed boils. May and I walked over a mile to the village shop to buy Germoline ointment, cotton wool, gauze and bandages. Once back in our bedroom May treated my legs until the boils healed.
The toilet was housed in a brick shed outside with a wooden seat with a hole and a bucket underneath. Mr Marden emptied it occasionally and the stench was sickening. The toilet paper was the Sunday Pictorial torn into squares strung together hanging on a nail. May and I became very constipated and we took to using the nearby woods when necessary.
The water for our occasion baths was heated in saucepans on the range in the living room. Mrs Marden carried the water upstairs to our bedroom. We used a hip bath sharing the same water.
On Saturday mornings Mrs Marden scrubbed the red brick kitchen floor. Silver fish appeared in the cracks between the bricks.
The day after we arrived Mr and Mrs Mardens¡¯ daughter arrived from her job as a nanny in Kensington. Her employers decided to evacuate themselves and sent her home.
We did not hear Mr. Chamberlain¡¯s broadcast on the Sunday morning as there wasn¡¯t
A radio in the house. Dora came running down the lane calling out, The war has started. May and I promptly ran upstairs and put on our gas masks. We sat on the bed for a time. As we were sitting close together, when we looked at each other our masks clashed and we started to giggle. Everything was quiet so we removed our masks, wiped away the condensation and replaced them in their boxes and came downstairs.
The following week we started school. May in the village hall and we younger ones outside on chairs. Writing on our wasn¡¯t easy. Fortunately, the weather was fine. In the afternoons we trailed across the fields on nature walks.
As Fridd Farm grew hops, we stayed away from school and went hop picking which we thoroughly enjoyed. Then a man called at the cottage and we had to go back to school.
There was a big party in the oast house when hopping finished. Before the party I watched the cider being made. All the unwashed apples including the mouldy ones went into the wooden press.At the party I was given a glass of this cider. It tasted lovely, but I had a terrible headache the following morning.
After the hop picking I went back to the village school. The building was quite new and had two rooms and cloakrooms.
The smaller room housed the five to seven year olds. The very big room was divided into three classrooms by wood and glass partitions. The ages ranged from eight to fourteen years.
After morning registration these partitions were pushed back for morning assembly taken by the Headmaster. Very occasionally, weather permitting, we had P.T. and games in the playground. At home, P.T. and games, country dancing and singing were a regular part of the weekly timetable.
The first morning I was taken to the Infants class. The teacher handed me a shoebox containing cards filled with sums graded as to difficulty. At home I was near the bottom of the class for Arithmetic. As I had completed the box full of sums correctly by dinner time, I was taken to the next class in the afternoon to Mrs. Buss.
The snow in the winter of 1939-1940 was so heavy we had to keep a shovel inside the back door to dig ourselves out every morning. We spent the evenings sitting in the ingle nook fire place by the stove on which Mrs Marden did her cooking.
Mrs Marden took in washing and during that winter the sheets froze on the line. She would take a kettle of boiling water and pour it over the pegs to release the pegs from their icy bondage. How the sheets cracked as she folded them. They were then draped over the big clothes horse in front of the stove to finish drying. After the snow ploughs had cleared the lane to Pluckley, I remember walking between two walls of snow which I couldn¡¯t see over to deliver the sheets to their owners.
We had great times sliding on the pond in sixteen acre field. Mr Batt, the farmer, tried to teach his wife to skate using a kitchen chair.
I stopped believing in Father Christmas on December 24th 1939. At home, our parents always waited for us to go to sleep before they brought up our stockings. Mrs Marden came in as soon as we were in bed and so my childish fantasy was shattered.
Mum wrote to us every week enclosing a Postal Order for us. The Catford Central Boys School were evacuated to Ashford. The boys¡¯ parents organised regular coach trips and my mother¡¯s friend, Mrs Smith, got a ticket for our mother when she visited her two sons. Mum had to get the Tenderden bus to Bethersden and we walked to meet her She couldn¡¯t stay long, but we loved to see her.
In the spring the woods were carpeted with primroses. We would line a cardboard cake box with moss and fill it with primroses which we took to the village Post Office. When they arrived, however mangled, Mum would put them in a small, glass vase on the mantelpiece.
We came home at Easter and were so homesick when we returned, we walked home from school the long way across the fields crying our eyes out. When we reached the pond we bathed our swollen because we didn¡¯t want to upset Mrs Marden as she was kind to us.
In May 1940 when invasion seemed imminent, our father considered London would be more strongly defended than a small village in Kent.
As we walked towards the lane we were confronted by Grandfather Batt who demanded to know why my mother was taking us back to a dirty place like London away from the fresh air and beautiful countryside. My mother put down our case, drew herself up to her full height and told him,¡¯In London we have water we can drink from a tap and an indoor lavatory with a chain that pulls not a bucket in a shed¡¯.
As she spoke she raised her arm and pulled an imaginary chain. Picking up the case, she stalked down the drive with us following in her wake leaving Grandfather Batt opened mouthed and speechless.
We returned to school in Catford on a part-time basis. As more children returned from evacuation full time schooling resumed.
At the end of September 1940 the daylight raids started. Lessons continued in the shelters.
Later that year the bombing switched to night time and we started sleeping in the Anderson shelter in the garden. On bitterly cold nights we slept under the dining room table.
Our evacuation experience made us self reliant and made us appreciate the love and care our parents gave .


TRAGIC WEDNESDAY

My friend, Alma Bird, called for me as usual on January 20th 1943, to go to school. We were 11 years of age and were in our last year at Sandhurst Road Junior Mixed School.
Mrs. Smith worked us hard as we were to sit for the Junior County Scholarship on March 3rd.
At 12-10 pm the bell rang for the dinner break. Alma went downstairs to the bottom hall for school dinner and I dashed home because I had to go to the fish shop for the cat¡¯s dinner.
When I arrived home, my mother told me that Mrs Smith, our neighbour, had bought the fish already. I decided to change my book at the library. As I reached the front door I remembered that since Christmas the library closed at 12pm on Wednesdays.
I took off my coat and sat down near the dining room window to read ¡®The War Ilustrated¡¯.
Suddenly, I heard the deafening noise of an aircraft engine. I thought it was crashing. Taking shelter under the table I watched our cat dash back and forth in front of the fire in terror. As the sound of the engine died away, the siren started wailing. My mother called out from the kitchen, It¡¯s a bit late for that now. Let¡¯s get to the shelter in case any more of them are about¡¯ She had looked up from the back door and seen the square wing and the black cross of the dive bomber flying just above the roof.
We ran down the path to our Anderson shelter. There was an eerie silence until we heard someone screaming at the same time as our front door knocker was being banged very hard.
Climbing out of the shelter we saw our neighbour from next door but one. She was comforting a teen age girl who was crying hysterically. She was grey from head to foot with blood oozing from a wound on her head. Our neighbour called across,¡¯She says the school¡¯s been bombed.¡¯ We hadn¡¯t heard any explosion. My mother excused us as someone was still hammering on our front door.
Opening the door, we found my Uncle George standing there. He collected money from the pre-payment gas meters and was working in our area that week. Heaving a sigh of relief, he exclaimed,¡¯Thank God, she,s safe, her school¡¯s been bombed.¡¯ He dashed off because he had left the money cart unattended.
Mum and I looked at each other in horror and then I remembered Alma. We put on our coats and set off for the school to find her as her mother worked in London.
As we neared the library, we saw a lorry parked with one of our infants propped up like a broken doll in the cabin. She had blond curly hair and wore a red jumper and red plaid skirt,but now the colours were hidden. She was caked in grey dust with a wound on her head dripping blood onto her chest. I couldn¡¯t bear the sight so Mum sent me to Mrs Smith¡¯s house while she turned the corner in the opposite direction.
Mrs Smith and I sat in her front room watching the ambulances pass back and forth. Later on my sister, May, arrived home from work. She broke down in tears when she found our house empty. Our next door neighbour told her where I was.
We went back home over the back garden fence. Later in the evening my mother came home with her coat dusty and spotted with blood. Motorists were the first to arrive on the scene of devastation and had taken injured children to Lewisham Hospital. One had asked Mum to help him. She stayed at the hospital until all the injured children had their parents with them.
After Dad came home after his late shift, Alma¡¯s mother called to tell us that Alma had been queuing for her dinner and the bomb blast had flung her into the fire place and she had sustained terrible burns to her face and head.
I wasn¡¯t allowed to visit her and when she was ready to leave hospital, her father, who was in the army, took her and her mother back to Bournemouth where he was stationed.
Six children in my class were among the 38 children and 6 teachers who were killed.
The following Wednesday, a mass funeral for most of the children and one teacher, Miss Langdon, was held at St. Andrew¡¯s Church Catford, before the burial in a mass grave in Hither Green Cemetery.
We were transferred to Brownhill Road School. Those of us who were left were kept together and Mrs Smith still taught us. We sat for our scholarship in March as planned.
After Easter, we were mixed with the Brownhill Road scholarship class. Mrs Smith was still my teacher until we left in the July and transferred to our new schools in September 1943.

THE EXTENDED SUMMER HOLIDAY

A few days after D-Day in June 1944, my mother and I were chatting over the fence with our neighbour, Mrs Smith, while my father was pumping the water out of the Anderson shelter.
My mother remarked he was wasting his time as the war would soon be over and we wouldn¡¯t be using it any more. Dad answered, Don¡¯t be too sure, Hitler¡¯s still got some nasty tricks up his sleeve¡¯.
Soon after, the siren sounded in the early hours of the morning. My father wasn¡¯t on night shift and he was first out of bed. This was odd as usually he stayed in bed and covered his head with the pillow while Mum my sister and I went to the shelter in the garden.
He put on his clothes, telling Mum to be quick and banged on our bedroom doors. As soon as we were dressed he hustled us out to the shelter.
Then the gun barrage started and the shrapnel began to zing down. We heard an aircraft engine which sounded peculiar. The guns seemed to be going mad. Suddenly the guns fell silent and after a second there was an explosion.
After a short interval the same thing happened. My mother observed that the guns were doing well shooting the planes down but they seemed to be coming over one at a time. Dad then told us the planes didn¡¯t have pilots. We were horrified.
Towards dawn the all-clear sounded. We climbed out of the shelter and that night we resumed sleeping in the shelter.
Soon after, my class was sitting in our shelter at school which was the shower cloakroom between the gym and the main cloakroom. Miss Hough, our history teacher, was entertaining us with monologues. We heard a flying bomb approaching and the engine cut out before it reached us. We held our breathe as we heard the swish of air passing over it¡¯s wings as it glided down.
As the bomb exploded on the vicarage next to the church at the end of Devonshire Drive, Greenwich, the door between the gym and shower cloakroom and the door into the main cloakroom crashed back on their hinges.
As we looked across the gym we saw the windows of the dining room next to the gym shatter and fall down behind the wall bars. Seconds later the blast swished back and both doors slammed shut.
Soon after a prefect came to tell us to fetch our coats and go home. The Headmistress would send a letter telling us when to return.
A few of us went upstairs to retrieve our satchels from our form room, but we were stopped. A large sheet of wired glass was swinging from the glazed area of the library roof. Rain was coming in and the Staff and Sixth Form had formed a chain and were taking the books from the shelves. We were sent home without our satchels.
As the Higher School Certificate and General School Certificate examinations were due to start, the candidates had to do the exams in the school shelters.
My mother decided to send me to stay with my Aunt Nell and Uncle Jack near Ringwood in Hampshire.
The Government decided that the barrage balloons and guns should be moved to ring the coast. Some fighters patrolled over the Channel and others over Kent and Surrey to destroy as many ¡®Doodlebugs¡¯ as possible before they reached London. At least the danger of being injured or killed by shrapnel was over.
It was late September when the letter arrived and I had to return to Catford. The house looked rather different. A flying bomb had landed two roads away and all the windows and frames in the front of the house had been blown out. Soldiers who were too old for active service came round and nailed the window frames back in place and replaced the glazed area with grey roofing felt for the lower panes and thin, white gauze material for the upper ones to let in light and air. The rooms were gloomy and very cold in the winter and the gauze flapped noisily in very windy weather.
At school, our first lesson was in the physics lab. Which was one of the school shelters. On the blackboard was written the name of the exam., the time it started and the time it finished. Next to this time were the figures + 2 +2 +2. This meant that three flying bombs had gone over during the exam, and the candidates had to take shelter under the benches until they had passed over. The extra time allowed was 2 minutes each bomb.
Earlier in the year our biology teacher, Miss Beer, had taken my form for gardening. We had small areas of garden at the end of the Lower Playground which we planted with blue lobelia, white allysom and multi-coloured candy tuft and clarkia. The seeds were just beginning to show when the raids started. I decided to visit the gardens during the lunch hour. I was stunned. Against the background of the gutted church and the damaged houses, the gardens were a blaze of colour.Thus started my life long love of gardening.
The flying bomb attacks gradually petered out, but in October the V2 rocket attacks started. These were indeed a terror weapon as they were silent until they hit the ground. We could hear the thud of those falling north of the Thames. There was no defence.
The worst part of the day was morning registration. If a desk was empty and we knew there had been an incident in that girl¡¯s district, we waited anxiously for news.
One of my friends, Doreen Tostevin, had escaped with her mother from Guernsey. They had to leave her father behind as he was terminally ill with cancer. One morning she was not at school and we had to get on with our lessons. Suddenly, the door opened and Tossy appeared with a dressing on her head. The rocket had fallen in the next road soon after she had got home from school. Apiece of ceiling had struck her on the head. The next morning she had to have the dressing changed at the First Aid Post and then she came straight to school.
The following week during the night another rocket fell and damaged their house badly. The bedroom ceiling fell on her mother¡¯s bed. Her foot was badly injured. She lost some toes and part of her foot and was taken to hospital. Again, Tossy was missing from registration. She went back to live with her grandmother in Greenwich and the next day she was back at school on time. Her daily routine was to come to school, visit her mother in St. Alphege¡¯s Hospital and then go to her grandmother¡¯s house. Even when her mother developed tetanus and was seriously ill she did not miss a day¡¯s schooling and her homework was done on time.
It was a point of honour not to let Hitler get you down.

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