大象传媒

I lived with my mother and father, and two sisters Gwen and Lin in a private flat on the top of Brixton Hill, south London. My father was a policeman attached to Brixton police station. My mother was vacuuming the flat one morning when her friend from the flat upstairs rushed in and said: 鈥淚 have just heard on the radio that we are war with Germany鈥�. At four and a half years old I immediately thought, for some reason, that everywhere would go red. To this day I don鈥檛 know why.

My parents thought the best thing would be for us girls to be sent to Devon as the local school had arranged for schoolchildren to go to north Devon almost immediately accompanied by our headmistress from New Park Road School, Miss Williams, and other teachers.
We embarked from the railway station with labels on our coats and gas masks, which I hated, and a large satchel with our packed lunch for the journey. On the way there I missed my parents and wanted to go home but it was too late. When we arrived in Devon we went to a large school hall outside Exeter where we stood in groups.
People who lived there came in and walked around inspecting us and then picked out the children they would like to have billeted with them. We waited what seemed like a long time and then a lady with her hair in a severe bun walked up to us and said: 鈥淭hese be my three maids鈥�.
I did not realize then that Devon people referred to girls as maids and got quite worried. We were driven by a friend of Mrs Stacey, as our foster mother was called, quite a long way to the village of Bradford near the town of Holesworth. The farm was called East Hole on Hole Moor.
Our flat in London was very modern and had electric lighting so it was a shock to go into the cottage and candlelight, which was not romantic at that time in our lives. We were introduced to the farmer, Mr Stacey, who was sitting by the coal range, who just nodded. We were shown upstairs to our bedroom which was next door to the attic where we could hear the rats running about quite often. There was one other bedroom, which belonged to Mr and Mrs Stacey.

We attended the local village school, where our headmistress Miss Williams replaced the local headmistress, which did not go down too well with the locals. The villagers were not very welcoming at first and referred to us as the 鈥淟ononers鈥� but as there were plenty of evacuees we had plenty of friends at school.

We also had to get used to a very basic diet at the farm, nothing like the food we ate at home, where my mother was a very good cook and we used to always have lots of fruit and a wide variety of food.
Every day in Devon we would have shredded wheat for breakfast and some kind of pasty and apple tart and custard for dinner. The filling in the pasties would either be meat and potato or parsley, which we hated. Sometimes we would have rhubarb in the tart instead of apple, but our diet did not change very often.
When we had been at the farm for a couple of weeks Lin went to stay at another billet with a lady called Mrs Oak because we were sharing a bed and Mrs Stacey decided she did not have room for all three of us. We rarely saw Lin after that. The cottage was very basic and did not have a bathroom or a toilet inside. The toilet was opposite the cottage in the yard and had to be emptied and cleaned out. This was another culture shock for us as we had a bathroom with a toilet at home in our flat. I got in a lot of trouble with Mrs Stacey as I could not stop wetting the bed. The trouble was partly because I was sent to bed before Gwen and I used to get frightened in the bedroom as I could hear the rats running around next door. I used to talk quietly to myself and imagine that Mum and Dad were with me and could conduct a conversation, until Gwen came to bed and we could have a very whispered chat.

We soon learned that we were at the farm for another purpose. We were almost like the farm labourers and had to work every day after school and any days we were not at school. My main task was to go down to the bottom of the farm by the river and bring up large piles of logs to the shed by the cottage. We would come home from school and get changed out of school clothes every day and get on with our work until we had supper. If we had a bad cold or were so ill with something else that we could not work we had to stay in bed. Our other tasks were to stay in the loft to guard baby chickens from the rats, clean the cow sheds, and Gwen had to actually clean the toilet. Our saving was being able to go to church on Sundays and Sunday school in the afternoon. Gwen and I won a prize for the best attendance.
One day at school Mrs Stacey was called in to hear me read in front of the whole school. I don鈥檛 remember learning how to read, it just seemed to come naturally. We had a huge bookcase at home right across our living room wall with a wide variety of books. If I ever had the opportunity I was always reading so I felt quite proud. Some time after that Mrs Stacey came up to the school and the whole class was told that I used to wet my bed, not every night but quite often. This was devastating as some of my friends were quite cool and I was left to my own devices for a while and did not get asked to the other evacuees鈥� billets for tea. Some of my friends stayed in really lovely places and were treated decently.

After a while I became ill with dreadful spots which became inflamed and full of pus so it was decided I should go to the hostel, which was a cross between a hospital and a children鈥檚 home, It was a large country house in a village called Whitstone which belonged to a local squire who allowed the authorities to use it for evacuees. We had to have medication every day and had to cross a huge ballroom to get to the treatment room. After I had been at the hostel for a while my sister Gwen joined me as she had also caught the spots. In all I went to the hostel and stayed three times. The second time I went back to Mrs Stacey鈥檚 I had trouble blowing my nose properly, according to her, so I was told to walk around the garden practising blowing my nose until I could do it to Mrs Stacey鈥檚 satisfaction. I was very upset because I had to spend the whole morning in the garden blowing my nose. I missed morning church, which we always looked forward to as it was a break from farm work and being perpetually told by Mrs Stacey how lovely her niece and nephew were, how they always did everything right and never got dirty.

One Sunday we were told to get dressed in our good clothes as our father was coming to see us. We were over the moon as we had not seen Dad for a long time. When he arrived he had to duck inside the cottage as he was so tall. Mrs Stacey told us to go and sit in the parlour and in front of Dad actually called us 鈥淢y Dears鈥�, which gave Dad the wrong impression. We never got the chance to be alone with him so we could not tell him anything. Whenever Dad came he always brought loads of food like tinned fruit and bags of sugar which we never saw. When we left he gave Gwen and I an autograph book and wrote a poem in each. I do not remember the whole poem but know the first line was 鈥淚 walk this way but once鈥�. We took this literally and thought we would not see him again.

Shortly after this we were told to pack as we were going to a new billet. We went to a lovely farm further back from East Hole. It was called Lash Brook Farm and the farmer and his wife were called Mr and Mrs Sluggett. They were wonderful people and unbelievably kind to us. They had two grown up children called Dick and Mary who also spent time with us when they had the time. I had a lovely room of my own and never had any more accidents at night. Mrs Sluggett told me when I first met not to worry if I did, so I stopped being nervous and everything was fine. We had a marvellous time there playing in the farmyard or in the old farmhouse, which we thought was haunted. We even had a friend to play with us. Every evening Mr and Mrs Sluggett would play board games with us, but when we asked if we could help around the farm or pick the fruit for them they would not let us do any work, although we would have done anything as they were so good to us.
Unfortunately I had to go back into the hostel as I got ill again and shortly after Gwen also got ill so we were back together again. Each time we went to the hostel the beds got better. We had proper single beds in our dormitory but the first time we had camp beds. We used to despair because we never received news from home. We did hear the post office in London had got bombed. One day we were called into nurse鈥檚 office and could not believe our eyes. Our father was there and had come to take us home, as well as Lin who had also joined us in the hostel. At first the nurse refused to let us go as we had not been discharged from the clinic but Dad said we were his daughters and we were going home with him, and we did. When we arrived at good old Paddington station there were people sleeping all across the platform with their night clothes on and with bird cages and radios. I was convinced they were gypsies but Dad explained they had to sleep there because of the air raids, which we had not yet experienced.
For the rest of the war we gladly stayed at home with our parents apart from holidays with our grandparents in Wales and friends in Reading.

Although a lot of the time being evacuated was miserable there were some bright times, like the time we stayed with the Sluggetts. On the way home from school to East Hole Farm there was a long lane leading to the farm cottage with a very thick hedge which was stuffed with wild flowers like foxgloves, primroses and wild strawberries which I could pick and eat. There was also a field behind the dairy which used to be covered with violets in the spring. I have never seen them anywhere else. Once I went to tea at the vicarage with my friend Rose Smith who was evacuated there with Mr Edwards, the vicar, and his wife. The grounds of the vicarage were quite large and had beautiful rhododendrons growing there en masse. Mrs Edwards always wore large hats to church, one of them had huge bunches of cherries all over it.
In the parlour at East Hole farm there were hooks on the wall where we had to hang our school blazers. One day I went to get my blazer and I saw our money box where Gwen and I kept our pocket money we had been given by our parents鈥� friends when they knew we were coming away. As we never had the opportunity to spend it the tin was quite full. One day I managed to a get a three penny piece out and on the way to school went into the village shop and managed to get two packets of wine gums without any coupons. I was so pleased with my treasure and when I met up with Gwen I gave her one packet as we had not seen any sweets for a long time. When I got home I was severely scolded because the grocer, Mr Cod, had told Mrs Stacey what I鈥檇 done.
Mrs Stacey had another occasional lodger at the farm who did not come very often. I believe he did some sort of secret work as he did not wear a uniform and carried a huge rucksack everywhere with him. When he came we were again treated much more kindly and also had stew instead of pasty for supper. The man did the most wonderful sketches and would sit smoking his pipe, which always reminded me of my father.
Gwen鈥檚 friend Betty White, who also lived in our block of flats at home, was staying with a family called King, who were also farmers and very kind. Mr King used to come up to the school and bring huge baskets of cherries which we could all share.

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