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I lived with my parents and my brother on Louisville Road in the Upper Tooting area of London and, my father being a transport engineer, I was around eleven years of age in March to April 1940. Although we lived in London’s urban sprawl, I did have some experience of the country given my summer visits to my Mother’s family in the Norfolk countryside.

Along with thousands of other parents at the time, mine were advised to have me evacuated from endangered London to a safer area. Thus, one day I and many other children (who all must have been around ten to twelve years old) assembled in our school. I had been promised that, although inevitably being sent far from home, wherever I went I would be placed with Vilma, my friend with whom I would often walk to school. Next we were all put on to a coach that took us to Paddington Station, where we were then hoarded on to a train to Holsworthy, in Devon. The train was simply full of children! As most of them had never left the bricked confines of London, the prospect of a stay in the country and, indeed, the journey itself must have seemed a superb adventure! Having stepped out on to the platform at Holsworthy, a WVS lady counted the children and had us assigned to different households in the area. In those days, it was made mandatory that homes with no children accept an evacuee. I was stationed with just such a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Stacey, who managed the huge and arduous Lutson farm. Vilma was put somewhere else, as was every other child with whom I’d journeyed, and so I was left all alone. There being a universal sentiment in those parts that all children from the city must be unclean and lice-ridden, on my arriving at the farm I recall being subjected to a hair wash beneath a large outside pump! Until the late summer (when my father came to take me away) I was worked hard, being often engaged in plucking chickens, milking cows and the like. The chores were not the cruellest part, though. Worst of all for me was the fact I had never had any friends of my own age to play with.

I was miserable when we all assembled at the school before our departure – I was loth to leave, but I did what I was told. At least (so I then thought) I would be with a friend wherever I was going. However, when I learned that Vilma and I were to be separated and I was to live by myself with Mr. and Mrs. Stacey, I became unutterably miserable and was so for the next few months as I plied away at my chores. The day I arrived in Devon in the Spring of 1940 was undeniably the saddest day of my life.

This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Toby Farmiloe, of Heathfield Community College, on behalf of Grace Richardson, and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs. Richardson fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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