大象传媒

Evacuation to Cornwall

My family were living in Worcester Park and I can remember hearing the planes dropping bombs near to our house and we would go down the shelter which was in the garden and was always very damp and smelt musty and cold, not condusive to sleep. In the mornings we would go and see where the bombs had landed and look for pieces of shrapnel.

It was in 1943 and I was just 8 years old and I remember going on a train leaving from Stoneleigh Station with my brother and looking out of the window and seeing my mother and Auntie waving goodbye. They had already said goodbye to my sister who because she was at a different school was evacuated up to Lancashire and we were en route for Cornwall.

I do not remember arriving at any station, I presume now it was Bodmin but my next recollection was of sitting in a church hail waiting for someone to claim me and take me to their home. I was sitting with my gas mask, small case and with label round my neck and was nearly the last one to be chosen.

I was to live with a family in the village who already had a little girl older than me and therefore was separated from my brother who was 11 years old. The boys were taken very quickly by farmers who wanted help on their farms.

I can鈥檛 remember how long I stayed with the family but I was unhappy and so my mother managed to organise for me to join my brother on the farm which he was on and then I was indeed very happy. Farm life was wonderful. In war times, to have fresh eggs which I used to collect with the farmer 鈥榮 daughter and to have fresh milk and cream and to be able to feed the farm animals was a completely different life o the one I had left behind. We were able to play in the fields and at harvest time I used to take the Cornish pasties to the men working in the fields and used to love it when the harvester got to the middle of the field and out would run all the rabbits. The fields were ploughed by horse and plough, not tractors.

We used to have to walk nearly 3 miles to the village school every day, which was along small lanes and in the spring the hedgerows were covered in primroses. The school was not big and I remember in the playtimes being in the playground singing 鈥渇armers in the den鈥�. All this was a change to what we had left behind, which was sitting in the air-raid shelters singing 鈥淭en green bottles鈥� and reciting our tables. At home we used to have to walk to school even in the school holidays to be able to take advantage of drinking the third of a pint of milk every day.

My mother used to cycle from Worcester Park to Claygate to work for the NAAFI and my father worked in Kingston at the Hawker aircraft factory. My father worked two allotments and my mother kept chickens and rabbits in the back garden. I still remember the smell of potato peelings being cooked in a pan in the kitchen to feed the chickens. My mother used to kill the rabbits to eat and then dry the skins to make fur mittens for us. My parents worked very hard to keep us three children fed with the meagre war time rations. Also my father used to buy rubber soles to stick on our shoes when they got holes in them.

I was very sorry to leave the wonderful farmer and his wife to come back to Worcester Park but the farmer gave us a present of some young ducklings! He could not imagine us just having a back garden and not huge fields so my father dug out the lawn and made a pond for the ducks.

We still keep in touch with the farmer鈥檚 daughter who lives in Bodmin. She is now a widow but did marry a Canadian forester. I have asked her what she remembers of my brother and being in their house but she does not remember much. We used to have to take a candle up the stairs to go to bed and used a tin bath in front of the fire in the kitchen.

I have two children and just cannot imagine at the ages l and my brother and sister were in the war to send them away to strange families for safety.

Mrs Jo Thomas

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