大象传媒

In September 1939 I was evacuated with my brother Fred from our home in Brockley South London. It was organised by the school we were attending in Brockley. We travelled to Horley in Surrey with other school friends and teachers by train.
When we arrived at Horley we were taken to a Church Hall where we had our hair inspected for lice and were given a bag containing food items which included a tin of corned beef, condensed milk and a bar of chocolate. We were then transported by cars to our billets. My brother and I were taken to a beautiful house in Domewood, Copthorne, Surrey. It was a far cry from a council house in Brockley. The house was called Enjoder and our guardians were called Mr & Mrs Savage.
The house was built in a wood and I remember there was a quarry in the wood. Mrs Savage would take us through the wood for chestnuts, mushrooms, we would pick bluebells and primroses, we had never seen such things in London. We all attended a school in Newchapel which was two and half miles from our homes.
We had to walk the five miles per day and were escorted by a man who would walk with us pushing his bike as the journey was down country lanes. One day a time bomb was dropped on the other side of the road to the school, so until it was made safe Mr & Mrs Savage allowed the lessons to take place in their house. I went round bragging that I only had to come downstairs in the morning and I was in school. Mr Savage was a Company Director and travelled to London each day. After we were there for a year Mr Savage became ill and my brother had to leave for another home. I stayed for awhile but when Mr Savage died I had to leave as well. I was heartbroken as I had become very attached to Mrs Savage as my own mother had only died a year
Before the war began, and as the Savages had no children of their own I began to look upon her as a substitute mother. I never saw or heard of her again and I have often wondered what happened to her. That was the end of another chapter in my life. Some years after the war was over my brother and I visited the house, we knocked on the door and when the lady of the house answered we told her that we had been evacuated there during the war. She invited us in and introduced us to her husband who turned out to be Norman Pett who was the creator of Jane of the Daily Mirror. They were very interested in our stories.
I then went on to another billet but wasn鈥檛 very happy and was allowed to go home. Soon as I arrived home the bombs started dropping on London and I wanted to return to the country. I returned to Surrey staying with Mrs Rayner and her two daughters who were from London and renting the gardeners cottage attached to the Grange, in Horne, Surrey.
I attended the local school, and when the Grange was taken over by Canadian soldiers we had the time of our lives as they gave us sweets and chewing gum.
The last school I attended was in Lingfield, Surrey and in February 9th 1943 bombs were dropped early in the morning on the local school killing two girls and two teachers, as my makeshift school in the Community Hall started 15 minutes later I narrowly missed the bombs. That particular morning I was later than usual getting to school as the lady I was staying with sent me to the shops to get cigarettes, thus a packet of cigarettes may very well have saved my life. When I arrived at the school my brother was running around frantically trying to find me as only one wall of the Community Hall was standing. In 2002 it was reported in the news that an unexploded bomb had been dug up in a garden in Lingfield. I immediately wondered if it was one of the same batch of bombs that had fallen on the schools in 1943. I wrote to the local Council telling them of my recollections and they wrote back to me to say that it was the same batch that had fallen during the war. They also very kindly sent me copies of the newspaper reports at the time of the bombings and also the up-to-date coverage of the recent find. It certainly brought back old memories,
I finally returned to London a year before the war ended, it was just as the Doodle Bugs started, followed by the V2 Rockets. We were living in Bermondsey by then and the area was badly bombed. I left Bermondsey in 1956 as I was getting married and moved on the edge of Epping Forest in Chingford, where I still live to this day.
The old houses where I lived in Bermondsey were eventually pulled down and the new Millwall Den Football Club is now on the site. I often wonder if my old bedroom is now the goalpost or maybe the changing room. Who knows!!

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