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Both my parents came from large poor families living near the Royal docks in East London. Both grandfathers had been dockers with no regular work, so life was quite tough, and they both died in the 1920s/30s so their widows were left to look after families as best they could. My father was the oldest son and determined to make a better life for himself and later his wife and family.

My parents married in 1930 and eventually saved enough for a deposit on a new small terraced house in East Ham into which they moved in 1937. The house had 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, with a flush toilet attached to the house at the back, 2 downstairs living rooms, kitchen and a garden. My father was a keen gardener and my mother very house proud and we children (3 girls) were loved and well cared for.

I say all this to dispel the myth perpetuated as much now as then, that all East End evacuees were dirty, had lice in their hair and lived in slums.

When war was declared and the great Evacuations scheme put into action, Jeanette my elder sister was 6 years old, I was 2 ½ years and Carol, our youngest sister not yet born.

Some of the details told here are therefore either just remembered or from what my parents told me.

My father was not ‘called up’ to serve in the forces, partly because he had had pleurisy as a young man and when X-rayed it was discovered had a shadow on his lungs and partly because he was in a reserved occupation working in an office in the Royal Docks. So he stayed in East Ham during the war and became an Air Raid Warden in his spare time.

I don’t remember exactly when we were evacuated to Slough, but as I was under school age my mother was able to come with us. It seems evacuees and those mothers that came were gathered at a central reception area. The billeting officer was given a list of residents willing to be hosts and the group of families were trailed round the streets to the participating houses. My mother said, in a few instances, as the ‘convoy’ approached, net curtains could be seen to move but the front door not answered.

Eventually we were found accommodation with a married working couple with no children. My mother was expected to bring them breakfast in bed every morning, do the housework and as she left in the morning to take my sister to school, with me in the push chair, the door was shut behind her and we were not allowed back in the house until they returned from work. My mother and I sat in the park all day long or walked the streets.

I do remember the occasion though. I went into the bathroom one morning when the husband was shaving. The wife came in and said ‘I don’t suppose you have nice bathroom like this, have you?’ to which I replied ‘Yes we have and ours is nicer. We have tiles all the way round’ Later my mother told me she could have hugged me!

We only stayed a few weeks as my mother was so unhappy and my father so concerned that we went back home.

Both my sister and I recalled a place called Chesham where there were large water cress beds. Whether we were evacuated there or whether it was in fact, Slough, we can’t remember.

It must have been around autumn 1940 that we set off for Warminster, together with a small group of other children from East Ham. My mother was now pregnant with sister Carol.

We were housed in a small end terrace old cottage — two up and two down, no bathroom or running hot water. We bathed in a tin bath in the kitchen and the toilet was an earth closet at the end of the garden — not an inviting place to go in the dark or cold.

Again we were housed with a married couple with no children, although they already had a small evacuee girl called Sylvia. We were encouraged to call them Auntie and Uncle Wheeler. Uncle Wheeler was a kindly farm worker. He showed us how to make patterns in our porridge with syrup — which Auntie Wheeler didn’t approve of. Neither did she approve of him taking us by horse and cart to the market or to the farm at Crockerton. Auntie Wheeler was a miserly person. She insisted on taking my mother’s family allowance (as well as the allowance for taking in evacuees) when Mr Wheeler objected and said it was my mother’s money for the children she replied it was her house and we were eating her food, using extra coal etc.

On one visit she told my father that we were wearing out her stair carpet and asked him to buy a new one. There was little money to spare from my father’s salary after paying out for rail fares to visit us, as well as housekeeping for himself and my mother. At this time people were encouraged to save for War Bonds and the Post Office provided strong red metal money boxes in the shape of a book. The Post Office kept the key, so only they could open the boxes and the money was saved to help the war effort through them. As no other money was available, my father broke into this money box to find money for the stair carpet. It upset both my parents to have to do this — they felt quite guilty and thought they would get into trouble if the Post Office found out.

Needless to say, Auntie Wheeler didn’t like having children around all day, so the three of us (including Sylvia) and Mum were sent to school — in my case a sort of nursery every day and twice a day on Sundays to church. It was quite a long way down to town, down hill, then up another and down again. I can remember going down the hill from the cottage in thick snow, being terrified of slipping and trying to hold on to the hedge at the side of the road for support.

Just before Christmas 1940, my mother went into labour. Civilian volunteers were recruited into ambulance service and my mother set off in a private car driven by one of the local shopkeepers. However, they didn’t make Trowbridge Hospital in time and sister Carol was born on December 24th in the back of the car.

My father naturally wanted to see his wife and the new baby and set off from London on Christmas Eve. Arriving at the station, he found no buses to take him to the hospital so began the long walk. Of course there were no street lights and the road signs had been taken away. So walking the roads, in the dark, carrying a suitcase, it was not long before the local police caught up with him. Suspecting him of being an enemy spy, probably just dropped from an enemy plane, he was taken to the police station and put in a cell over night while his identity was checked. They released him on Christmas morning to visit us all. No Father Christmas for us that year!

Returning to Warminster from hospital my mother then had 3 little girls (including Sylvia) and a baby to look after, whilst still being expected to do most of the housework, despite the fact that she developed mastitis.

Sometime in 1941 we returned to East Ham to be together as a family. But then after heavy bombing in London, my father thought it safer for us to go away again.

This time we rented a semi-detached house in Leicester. We must have been there some time as I remembered it being summer time, red rambling roses growing on the garden fence. My sister remembers Christmas there and I was presented with a Bible for Good Attendance at Northfield Hall Church dated 1943, which I still have.

My father, still working in London, visited often and I can remember Sunday morning walks with him in the nearby disused quarries covered in rosebay willow herb and picking blackberries.

Across the road the path was made up of a kind of clinker — possibly the spoil from local industry. The boys used to collect small balls of lead from it and melt them over candles. The molten lead was then poured into moulds cut into the earth to make crosses. We were forbidden to join in, but couldn’t resist it.

It was in Leicester that I had my first experience of being in hospital. Playing ‘chase’ with the neighbours’ children, a button came off my coat and I put it into my mouth for safety. I swallowed it and was taken to hospital where I had X rays, but they were unable to locate the missing button. So I had to stay there until it ‘passed through’. I remember lying in bed all day with little to do, while the boy in the corner bed seemed to have daily parcels to open. Visitors - not even parents — were not allowed. They could look through the door windows but I was never told they were there. I was about 5 or 6 years old.

I stayed in hospital for about a week and finally discharged. My mother asked if I had enjoyed the parcels she had brought for me, including some tomatoes, of which, apparently I was particularly fond. After being told I hadn’t received any, my mother discovered that all the parcels received for the ward were given to the boy in the corner, because he would be staying in the hospital a very long time. My mother was assured the contents were then shared out amongst all the children. I didn’t remember — and the button was never found!

Again in Leicester there was discrimination. My older sister, Jeanette, was bullied at school. Occasionally my mother would hear that the corner shop, where we were registered for our food rations, had sweets — a rarity in those days. She would rush over with her ration books to buy a treat for her children, only to discover that they had sold out or she had been misinformed.

In the next road was a pig farm which sold jellied pig trotters on Saturday evenings — not on ration of course. If my father were with us, he would send one of us children with a dish to buy some. I expect they would have sold out if he or my mother had been round.

So in late 1943 or early 1944 we were back home in East Ham for good. A bomb had fallen across the road from us, destroying three or four houses, the roof of our house had been damaged and glass blown out, so until it was all repaired, we stayed with our maternal grandmother for several weeks in Beckton.

By this time an Andersen shelter had been built in our garden — housing five bunk beds. At first we only went there when the siren sounded, but later when the V1 doodle bugs and V2s, came over we spent every night there. My father went out on Air raid duty most nights, together with our next door neighbour. Dad hung a bell between out two houses, so the first to hear the sirens could alert the others by ringing the bell.

One day we came home from school and discovered a convoy of army trucks parked in our road. We lived in a long fairly straight road, near to the A13 to London and about 2 miles from the docks. The soldiers were all very friendly and we were told not to worry they’d be gone by the morning. However they weren’t and stayed another night — when we looked out of the window on the second morning the road was completely empty. I now realise they must have been preparing for the D Day landings in Normandy, as I learned years later that the operation was delayed by 24 hours due to adverse weather conditions. I wish I had wished them luck!

On the other side of the A13 a prisoner of war camp was built. It housed Italian POWs and I remember hearing them shouting and cheering when German bombers went over!

Of course it wasn’t only at night that enemy planes attacked. One Saturday morning, my mother, with younger sister Carol in the push chair, went down the road to the shops. An enormous bang was heard about half an hour later, coming from the direction my mother had gone. My father jumped on his bicycle and raced down the road. He was very relieved to find the bomb had actually fallen beyond where my mother was and they were safe. Another time, she had been to the shops to buy some rolls for lunch — a bomb had fallen in the direction of our house and she ran home to see if we were all safe — dropping the rolls on the way.

If my father heard a bomb explode when he was at work, he looked to see if the smoke was between him and East Ham Town Hall. If it was he’d leave his office in the docks and cycle home as quickly as he could. Few people had telephones in those days.

At last came VE day — what euphoria! No more bombing, no more fighting abroad, and loved ones would soon be home. Such a celebration. A bonfire was lit in the middle of the road — anything that could burn, (including an effigy of Hitler hurriedly made) was thrown on the fire. I took my chair out and we sat round the fire. There was singing and dancing: food was prepared and shared out. We party-ed long into the night. Peace at last.

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