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My name is Derek Springett. At the outbreak of war I was 9 years old. I was evacuated in September 1939 with an older brother and a younger sister to Hassocks in Sussex. I had come from a family of eight living in Stepney in London. My mother died in childbirth early in 1939 and the baby sister Mary had gone to live with relatives on the Isle of Dogs. Along with my brother I had several unhappy experiences at my first billet. My younger sister was separated from us on the first day. Our school ran on a part time basis due to a shortage of teachers and accommodation so a lot of us boys ran completely wild and did more or less what we wanted. In about autumn time of 1941 I heard that my baby sister Mary had been killed in an air raid and most of the family on the Isle of Dogs had been wiped out. I was very unhappy, my brother had moved to a farm so I was on my own in another billet that also wasn’t very nice. Along with some other boys who I’d made friends with, we decided to try and run away.

We tried hitch hiking, we tried walking but we got nowhere. One day somebody suggested we tried going by rail. We only had a small amount of pocket money so the only way we thought we could do it was to buy a platform ticket for a penny then get on the train. So one Sunday a group of about five or six of us got together bought platform tickets and easily got onto the platform because they were used to us going on and meeting relatives who came to visit us. When no one was looking we crossed over onto the down line going to London Bridge and got onto the first train to London. We decided when we were on the train that what we would do when we got off was rush the ticket barrier, so getting out and getting as far away from the station as possible and then home. When we arrived at London Bridge we followed the main crowd to the ticket barrier and then when we were ready we rushed. It was quite confusing but I got through and got quite a long way away. The others were collared at various places, either at the barrier or somewhere else. I thought I’d made it and got away when a man stopped me and asked me why I was running and what I was running from. By then the police had caught up with me and I was picked up. We were all rounded up together and taken to a police station that seemed to be underground, under London Bridge station. There we were questioned, asked our names and addresses, which we had agreed we would not give. One boy cracked though so once he had given his name and address we all did. I watched with some fear as parents came to collect their boys. They all seemed to come in, give their boys a clip and then take them home. My father come in and just shook his head sadly at me and said ‘well you know that I can’t take you home.’ Thinking about it I suppose he couldn’t. He was on his own, there were bombing raids in London, he was either on fire duty or home guard when he wasn’t at work. So, I remember I went back to the billet on my own but in the care of a guard. When I got back to Hassocks it was getting dark, I walked back to the billet and hid behind the door for a while. When I finally went in there was a very frosty reception, as I had expected. A little while after that I was moved to another billet at Burgess Hill and another school. This new billet was lovely, really smashing and the school was good too so after everything that had happened I finished up doing very well there.

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