大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Serene from Dover Road C.P. School and has been added to the website on behalf of Mrs Phyllis Stableford with her permission and she fully understands the site鈥檚 term and conditions.

I was 9 years old when the war started and I had 2 sisters, Alma who was 8 and Margaret who was 4 she went to the nursery school and there were lots of talks about the war and it was decided that the children should be evacuated to keep them safe. Our mother wasn鈥檛 happy about this but as she was taken ill and died it was decided the best thing for the family that we were evacuated. At school we had practised putting on gas masks, which were kept in cardboard boxes on a string and in needle work class we made cases for them and we practised marches to the station so we were ready to go. We were sent to a village to Essex called Wothenho with Alma, Margaret went to Brentwood with her nursery school we were there for 9 months but it was to near London. In one of the raids in London our house got a direct hit and a neighbour next door was killed and her son. So if we hadn鈥檛 been evacuated I wouldn鈥檛 be here now. Alma and I went by train to a village called Letton in Herefordshire and billeted with a Mr and Mrs Skyrme, who had 4 children older than us the youngest one had a strange name Mytton, we lived on a small holding with cows, pigs and chickens, and went to school 1 and a half miles away across fields, there was an aerodrome 11 miles away in Credenhill and we heard bombers going over head trying to find it, but the nearest bomb drop was 4 miles away in Hay and 4 sheep were killed. We were there for 5 years and in those days we left school at 14 years old and I had been doing at 10 years old the same work as the 14 years old in Letton, so to keep me busy the headmistress sent for old exams papers for me to work on and I also ran the village library, which sounds grand but was large cupboard for the villages to come and change books, there were about 15 children in our class and 10 in the infants class and if the infants teacher was away I would look after that class. When I reached the age of 14 the bombing in London was to heavy, so the local vicar and headmistress found me a place as nanny help with lord and lady Brocket, who lived in Kinnersley castle and I was with them for the last year of the war. I went with them to Scotland for the shooting the big house was taken over by the army, so we lived in a small cottage, at night you could hear stages roar up on the hills. As things were quieter now in London I went home, as there were not so much bombing but missiles called Doodle Bugs were being used. One day I was walking along a man pulled me into a door way said silly girl take cover and there was a loud explosion in the next road a doodle bug had been dropped, so as I had been evacuated I was unaware of the danger.

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