- Contributed byÌý
- West Sussex Library Service
- People in story:Ìý
- Gordon Scott
- Location of story:Ìý
- Woolwich, Welling (Kent), Cleckeaton (Yorkshire)
- Background to story:Ìý
- Civilian
- Article ID:Ìý
- A2875692
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 29 July 2004
Written on behalf of Gordon Scott by Bognor Library.
I was 12 years old in 1944. My birthday was 4th July. The weekend before Dday, my friends abd I had been out on our bikes. We lived in Welling, Kent and all the country lanes were full of army vehicles. We worked out that D-Day was imminent. We talked to the soldiers, but they didn’t seem to know what was happening or when.
The following week, I played hookey from school and I went down to Woolwich to have a look at the King George V docks because I knew that the invasion fleet would be moored there. I went on the Woolwich free ferry across to the Docks, but the ferry was stopped for some large tugs towing what looked like a large concrete block – about 4 or 5 storeys high. Everybody on the ferry had different ideas what is was – I was listening to the other people – was it a fort to be put in the middle of the Thames? Nobody really had a clue! It wasn’t until a few days after D-Day that I realised what I had seen was part of Mulberry Harbour – probably from a newsreel in the cinema. Possibly the pier head that had been built at Deptford.
About a month later I was evacuated Yorkshire because the doodle bug attacks intensified after D-Day. We were put on a train at King’s Cross with no idea of where we were going. I ended up in Cleckheaton – a small mill town. I was asked if I had any preference where I wanted to go – I asked to go to a farm. There was only 1 farm on the list, but the farmer wanted a girl! When we arrived at the door, Mrs Crossland the farmers wife, said to the WRVS that she really wanted a young girl – but the WRVS ladies said that I was all they had left – rather like the last cake on the shelf!
I did enjoy my time there (11 months in all), but I didn’t like potato picking! Many of the evacuees ran away and tried to make their way back home after a few weeks, but I stayed and returned for a visit about 5 years ago. The farm house was still there, but the fields have been turned into a very upmarket estate of houses.
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