We lived in East London and I was the middle child of five - my sister Joan was 10 years older than me and already at work. My brother Leslie who was eight years older than me had left school a few months earlier in the summer of 1939 but had been allowed to go back to be evacuated with all the other children. I can clearly remember going to see him off from our local station. All the mums and dads etc. stood crying and waving until the train was out of sight. He was sent to Felixstow, Suffolk, and was very badly treated. Some months later our mother paid an unannounced visit to him. She was appalled to find that the small, cold looking, thin, grubby child walking towards her on a bitterly cold day, without an overcoat, hands in his pockets and miserably kicking a stone along the kerb, was her son. He, along with all the other children in the same home, was turned out of the house immediately after school, to walk the streets until dark. My mother turned him round, marched back to the house and told the woman what she thouht of her, collected all his belongings and brought him home. He stayed at home until being called up into the army as soon as he was old enough.
However, before that my two younger brothers and I had also been evacuated. Becuase of our ages, 7, 5 and 3, my parents would not let us go alone, so our mother was evacuated with us. We were sent to Diss in Norfolk, which seemed like the end of the world to us. It was still very rural then. I little thought then that I would one day retire to Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, which is not many miles from Diss.
We arrived in Diss tired, hungry and anxious. There were many other evacuees with us and we were all taken to a hall of some sort, to await being given billets. Unforutately, because not many poeple were able to house four extra bodies, we were the last to be left in the hall, feeling very forlorn, with my mother stoutly resisting all attempts to split us up. Eventually a place was found for us in a large old house. I can remember nothing about the rooms we had and we certainly never even saw the people who were housing us, but we were comfortable enough. The only problem was that the lavatory which was very primitive was at the end of the garden and I hated having to use it. There were always a lot of spiders there - ugh! I also hated the smell of the box shrubs that lined the pathway, although we now have many in our garden and I like the smell very much.
During the daytime my mother used to walk around the surrounding lanes with us, complete with a large pram for our youngest brother to use. One day we found ourselves confronted with a herd of cattle being driven home for milking, filling the lane ahead. Mother was appalled and quickly threw the three of us over a nearby gate and then clambered over after us. She was very upset to find that the cows, being naturally curious, had slobbered all over the pram when they had passed.
I think this was th final straw for her and she immediately wrote to my father - not many people had phones then - asking him to come and take us home; she was so unhappy. Our father went into immediate action and duly arrived some days later in a car driven by my sister's boyfriend. This in itself was a big excitement because I had never been in a car before. On top of the car was tied my father's bicycle. This was all very puzzling until we children were woken up in the middle of the night, smuggled into the car and driven home. My father stayed behind to explain what had happened and then took two days to cycle home.
I never discovered why we had been spirited away in the night - I can only imagine that my parents were afraid that someone would try to prevent us from going. We were all happy to be home, as was our old dog Bump, who had missed us so badly that he woulnd't eat. He quickly ate 5 bowls of food, one after the other, then settled down for a good long sleep.
How long had we been away from home? Two weeks. We spent the rest of the war, bombing and all, in East London.
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