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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Kathy Woollett from Hastings Library on behalf of Mrs M Garner Smith, and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Garner Smith fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was evacuated twice in the war. I was living in Ashford, Middlesex at the time, with my mother and father, and a baby brother, so I would have been six. My father worked at Lloyds shipping, in Leadenhall Street in London, and because his was a reserved occupation he was required to do fire fighting at night on the buildings, so he had to stay in London. The bombing was very noisy, even out as far as Ashford; we knew there were relatives living in Wiltshire, so we decided to share their house with them, just to see how things were going. Meanwhile a family from Europe (a lot of people came over) were looking for somewhere to live, so they were going to live in our house to keep an eye on it I suppose.

It wasn’t easy because my brother was at the age where he was in my mother and my bedroom at night, and he would cry; we were too close, I remember that sound of baby’s crying, it was horrific. In the end, instead of having a lounge and a bedroom we lived and slept in the bedroom, and Ron had a small bedroom to himself, when of course he did sleep through the night. The interesting part about this particular evacuation was my schooling. Remember I was six. I walked a mile to school, this was in Melksham, and I think there must have been a lot of other children who had come in for the same reason, so we were taken to some sort of church hall. What amazed me was that these children were on their eight times table, now that was more advanced than I was, but I did better in that period of time than I had before. It was the most wonderful education, we just had the one teacher; when she went to the loo, we just put our hands on our heads, that was what we did when she was out of the room. The best part of it was the walks we had, nature walks; it was very rural, with the smell of cows, it was lovely. We used to walk as a class down these country lanes, picking wild flowers, and then we would take them back, press them — sit on them in newspaper — and get on with the other subjects, whatever they were. Then, when they were pressed, we would put them in a book with those old sticky brown pieces of tape, and would write descriptions of them. I remember I took her on a wild goose chase one day because I went to look for red campion, and of course it wasn’t there, we did find one, but trying to find that elusive flower got me really interested in wild flowers, after living in suburbia. Although Ashford was a sort of village in those days it really was suburban London. It was a very very good experience for me which I really appreciated. We must have been gone a year because I remember the winter, and the primus stove, which was very smelly; I remember reading Woman magazine, which must have been out then, and I thought, as a child, what a wonderful magazine this was. Eventually living in somebody’s house wasn’t the right thing; it was very difficult for everybody, especially my mother with a tiny baby, so eventually we did go back. I don’t know what happened to the other family in our house.

Then I went back to the same junior school I had left previously, where I got on much better. At that time a lot of mothers were working in the day, so they had volunteer parents to help with the teas and children stayed to the teas. I loved it when my mother was on duty, because they had done rock cakes, all prepared, and then the mothers would come in after school, and finish everything off. It was lovely and warm in the kitchens which was quite nice. Also, if I couldn’t go home for lunch, I would go to the British Restaurant. They would give you a ticket for your meal which was quite exciting too — you were allowed to go on your own. So that was interesting.

Well, my brother grew up a little bit, and towards the end of the war, the buzz bombs started, so the lady who’d been teaching me piano, who also ran a little nursery school to which my brother went, decided that it would be a good idea to take these children from the nursery to her mother in law, who lived outside Cambridge. So, she commandeered a furniture van, and all these little children went off in the furniture van, there must have been thirteen of them, with Mrs Custerson, and her mother Mrs Dallaston, to stay with Mrs Custerson, her mother in law, because her husband was at war. It was horrible to listen to these buzz bombs, because of the business of the silence when you were waiting for them to fall; that was awful, I remember hearing that, so my mother said "why don’t you go as well?". I think perhaps she might have been doing some part time secretarial work by then. So she took me down to London by train, and then to Cambridge. It was very interesting. I was the oldest, we stayed in a place called The Manse; no water, toilet down the end of the garden. So Norman, the next younger child to myself, and I, we had to do the jobs, and one job we had to do was to go to the pump at the end of the road, and pump all the water. When it was for a bath everybody bathed in that, and I was last in! This was quite an exiting period of time, it really was. One thing I remember, collecting rose hips, which we could earn money at, getting them for rosehip syrup, so we earnt a few pennies for doing that. We went on some devilish walks, on one we found a quarry with all these spent cartridges, children just did! That was in Great Eversden. The big treat of the week was the once a week bus to Cambridge; we’d go into Cambridge and buy a small tablet of Reeves paint. I remember I’d been good at some stage, so they bought me a little book with those spectacles which make it 3D. Now the exciting part was the entertainment. Now remember, we’d got a musical lady here, this was my piano teacher. What we did was to go to all the villages on a Saturday night on a horse and cart, it was marvellous, and we’d been taught to sing and dance, so we did that, while she did the piano playing. It was great fun, until the wheel came off the cart! Then I think we commandeered a little van from somewhere, this was valuable war work!

I was there until the buzz bombs died down, then I went back first to my mother, then the children all came back in the furniture van. Mrs Custerson didn’t come back with us, they said her husband had come home, and they walked home across the fields.

Those children, including my brother, who now lives in Kent, still keep in contact.

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