Early in 1942 (aged 8) I was living in Hanwell, West London, where my parents ran a fish and chip shop. We were ‘bombed out’ one night and whilst sleeping in our Anderson shelter in the back garden a hurricane lamp which hung on the entrance door, was broken with most of the broken glass landing on my face. My mother told me afterwards that she felt it was a miracle that I did not have one cut on my face. On coming out of the shelter to the front of the house we saw that a gas main had caught fire and to my young eyes the flames looked at least 100ft high.
It was as a direct result of that, that they decided to evacuate me. My first experience was to Teignmouth, Devon. I can remember vividly standing in the school hall and being the last evacuee to be selected. I do know that my time spent there was pretty horrid. The lady of the house used to beat us regularly with a cane on the back of the legs as we were going upstairs practically every night. It became so bad that I wrote home to my parents a five page letter just saying ‘I want to come home’. I think they got the message because they decided to come and visit the next weekend. Fortunately for me Teignmouth had its first air-raid that night and we all spent the night huddled under the dining table. I heard afterwards that the bombs that were dropped that night were being ‘unloaded’ by a bomber that had lost it’s way. My parents decided that it was no safer there than in London and took me back with them.
On my return they immediately decided that I should go again and this time I finished up in Wakefield, Yorkshire. This was a much happier time as far as I was concerned except that it was a mining town with thousands of pit props stacked outside the mines. We were able to remove some of the stacked props from the middle sections to make runs and little ‘caves’ in which to hide. The lady of the house was not really interested in cooking and our staple diet was chips with chips. After about a year my parents took me away as they felt London was now safer but I returned from Yorkshire with Gastro-enteritis and head lice!
Michael Searle
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