大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pauline Pearson from CSV/大象传媒London on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with the author's permission.

I was born in Westminster Hospital opposite the Abbey. We lived in Glamorgan Street, Pimlico. I was evacuated with Warwick Junior School, Ranelagh Road to Maynards Green in Sussex when I was 9. When picking wild strawberries on the railway bank one day I slipped and cut my knee. It turned septic and I ended up in the local makeshift hospital. When I was discharged the school had moved to a mining village near Llanelli in Wales as Sussex was no longer considered safe. I joined them and stayed with an elderly couple - the husband had been brought out of retirement to mend miners' lamps. Although the house was clean I was covered with lice and impetigo (probably caught at school). Therefore I was sent to a hostel and while there informed that Daddy had died aged 49 (of natural causes). Two weeks later Mum came to visit me, took one look and said "You're coming home!". The packed train took hours to get to London as each time there was an air raid the train had to stop because the smoke could be seen. We made our way to my aunt in Kentish Town. We went outside and saw the East End fires which turned the whole sky red. Five of my Auntie Lou's children were bombed out that night and made their way to their mother's where thirty of us slept in one room for some time! From there we went to my elder sister's in Elland, Yorkshire but when my brother in law was sent to the Middle East we returned to London.

I can't say my evacuee days were happy ones but like many others, I just got on with it.

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