大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Amy Bennett-Newens, a volunteer from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Joyce Redfern and has been added to the site on her behalf. Joyce fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
September 1940-October 1942
The highlights of my stay at Pipewood - so many happy memories. I loved the dancing - ballroom in the dining room, and we dressed up as if it was fancy dress. And dancing in classes like Morris dancing as we often did demonstrations for visitors and then dancing amongst ourselves: tap, ballet, acrobat, with the ultimate result of concerts which we did for entertainment. Also the singing - school choir, church choir - we learned all the latest songs with words.
The camaraderie was good and we enjoyed indoor/outdoor sports, plenty of teams to play against. I remember just on time when we thought we were so good, it was decided the mistresses would play against us and they were so good and they won - shorts and all - an eye opener.
Benefits of Pipewood school life taught us so much like bed making, doing the laundry and ritual weekly counting and labelling. Hair washing Saturday morning, melted dirbach Soap and our hair shone (my mother said).
Three days before the outbreak of World War 2 I was 10 years old. The first time I'd ever been away from home and I had no idea where I was going or why, but my brother was with me. Into the country on a train, hundreds of us, we ended up at a school in Redditch. There we were 'sorted' and I arrived at a lovely house, a man and a lady and her mother welcomed me. My brother was taken to a house next door but one. We settled in and went to school. I became very friendly with Mr Foulkes. I remember he had a car and he took me to fetch his paper. There was a terribly bad winter that year - and I couldn't get to school. The local people made us welcome. But slowly the children returned home also my brother. I became homesick but I stayed 7 months.

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