Evacuations

Evacuations

Hythe

It seems astonishing in view of my later experiences and the constant fear of invasion, that anyone could consider the Kent coast a good place to send children from London in 1939. However they did, and we had two sisters billeted on us. Their father ran a sweet shop, and visited us in a van loaded with sweets. They half-filled our parlour which became an Aladdin’s cave. People were calling it the ‘phoney war’, and the girls were soon taken home, and there were no more free sweets.

Dunkirk

In May 1940, my brother, who was a sapper with the ill-fated Expeditionary Force, arrived home from Dunkirk. There was a knock on the front door (why the front door, I wondered later? Weakness? A desire for Dramatic Effect?) and my mother opened it to find him standing there in his pyjamas! He had been evacuated from a field hospital. He’d received none of the parcels of food, clothes etc which we had sent him. Considering the danger of that evacuation, someone had been very selfless, rescuing hospital cases who could barely walk, let alone fight for a place on a rescue ship. My mother had no real appreciation of what it had been like on the beaches, and railed against the War Office for sending him home in his pyjamas. We never did quite find how he got home – some of the Hythe fishing boats went across as part of the flotilla of ‘liitle ships’. It was only a reprieve in the long run – he was killed later in the desert.

London

Thousands of children went through evacuation once or twice – I was evacuated three times. In 1940, aged 5, I was living on the south Kent coast and with Hitler just across the Channel it began to seem a foolish place to be. My mother decided to send me to Palmer’s Green in London to stay with my Auntie Vi.

My brother Harry, then aged 20 or 21 and a sapper, had been evacuated from Dunkirk (see below) and had recovered from his wounds, so when he went to rejoin his unit he took me to Auntie Vi’s on the train. The one-hour journey, alone with him, is really the happiest memory of my childhood. After he had delivered me to Auntie Vi, he went off to join his new unit, a Bomb Disposal Squad. He wore a red bomb insignia on the sleeve of his uniform. Though I had no real appreciation of the danger and heroism of bomb disposal work, I knew this was something rare and special and was immensely proud of it.

Like many late Victorian families, my mother’s was huge, with 12 children surviving to adulthood, so there was a plentiful supply of aunts – Auntie Ivy Kelly lived nearby too; she never married - she had been engaged to an American airman who was shot down. Unlike my mother, the aunts were rather grand – Auntie Vi had married Reg Rolls ( though they weren’t wealthy, he was part of the Rolls of Rolls Royce family; he drove a Rolls Royce!) But Auntie Vi had no children of her own, and very strict ideas about how nieces should behave, and what they should eat (liver – ugh!). To compensate for this, she had a cupboard full of shoes and hats, which I was allowed to try on. Happily, Auntie Mary Lowe, who lived very nearby, also had a cupboard, this time full of children’s books – all Biggles and William, nothing girlie. These belonged to her son Bertie, the same age as my brother and then a prisoner of war held in a Japanese camp. (He survived the war and came home with beri-beri.)

If I was at Auntie Mary’s house when the alert sounded, we went into her Anderson shelter in her little garden. This was very well appointed, and comfortable, and she always put her hat on before taking cover. I asked once why she did this. “If Hitler’s storm-troopers arrive, they will not find me improperly dressed!” She was the oldest of the family and a proper Victorian; war or no war, standards must not be allowed to slip!

Shropshire

With hindsight London was not the best choice of destination as almost immediately the Blitz started. When things got too hot, my aunt, on my mother’s strict instructions, fixed a label to my coat, asked the quard to keep an eye on me, and put me on a train (aged 6) to the safety of . . . Coventry. Near Coventry, anyway. My mother had moved there when my stepfather “Uncle Stan” was posted there – he was an army cook.

It is a good job Auntie Vi didn’t know at the time the kind of journey I was to have. As soon as she got home again she started writing furious letters to my mother about the appalling irresponsibility of putting a six-year-old on a train alone. She couldn’t take me herself and I suppose she thought my mother should have fetched me. I do not know if she ever found out that during the journey the train was strafed and we were halted for a long while. Fortunately no-one was hurt. I can’t have been very frightened as when I reached Shrewsbury station apparently I said “Are we here already?” and didn’t want to get off.

If I was unharmed, Auntie Vi was not mollified. It was probably the last straw in a series of inter-sibling rows, and she never spoke to my mother again.

From Shrewsbury station, we went to Oakengates, and then on to Donnington where we lodged with an old man called Fred Darn. I made friends with the local children, and Peter Hicks earned my undying devotion by letting me ride in his home-made go-cart. I even forgave him for giving me measles, so that I have to spend my birthday in bed with the curtains drawn to keep out the summer sunlight.

Some of the local habits came as a surprise. Tea was drunk out of small pudding basins, and if ‘Father’ had a cup and saucer, he poured the tea into the saucer and drank out of that. This was due, I assumed to us now being in Foreign Parts. Their words sounded strange, and they took me to ‘Chapel’ which I had never heard of. My big excitement was singing a solo at a chapel concert. I sang “What a friend we have in Jesus” wearing an-all pink outfit (including pink ankle socks bought specially for the occasion!) in which, with my white-blond hair, I must have looked like a stick of candy-floss.

The children were involved in their own ‘war effort’ schemes – I sold scented cards, and badges, for ‘War Weapons Week’ and there were many ‘Victory Drives’

My ‘Uncle Stan’ the army cook was stationed at a nearby camp. I often went to visit him in the kitchens, and was given little treats; ‘extras’ such as an egg, some bacon or a piece of cake – strictly forbidden of course. One day I was there when someone said “Quick, hop in here!” and bundled me into one of the large ovens. An officer was heading round on a tour of inspection and I had to stay silently in the oven till he had gone. Fortunately it was completely cold at the time!

Devon

When Coventry was bombed, I was taken to see the city ablaze from the hills overlooking it. My mother decided Kent might be best after all, as The Invasion hadn’t happened, and I went home. I had developed a West Midlands accent which was the source of amusement to my friends, and the weeds in our garden had grown taller then me.

Hit and run raiders bothered us constantly but things were otherwise relatively quiet until the ‘doodlebugs’ began to arrive. Anti aircraft batteries on the hills behind our house did their best to shoot them down, often succeeding. One ‘hit’ landed uncomfortably close by in a neighbour’s garden, making an impressive hole and shocking a neighbour’s little Scottie dog into giving birth to her puppies! So once again I was put on train and sent to ‘peaceful’ Devon, conveniently close to Plymouth, where I was more than usually miserable.

Once again, this evacuation was a private arrangement, not like the organised evacuations you see in films of the time. The year before, we had had two soldiers billeted on us in Hythe, Frank and Jimmy. They were fun, and did Laurel and Hardy impersonations. They know they were due to go overseas, but of course didn’t know where. Then their new kit arrived – shorts, thin shirts and bush hats with the brim buttoned up on one side. “Ah,” we guessed, “Burma”. Don’t be daft, they said, this is the British Army. It’ll be Russia . . .

Anyway, before he went, Jimmy said to my mother “If things get bad again here, you can send her to my family in Devon”. She took him at his word . . .

As I came down to Kingswear station along the estuary of the Dart on the train I was thrilled to realise I would have to go on a boat to get to Dartmouth (the ferry). In fact I was go down to the ferry every day after school and travel across and back, for a penny each way, for fun. After the constant stress of life on the front line in Kent, Devon equalled heaven, for it was quiet, and beautiful scenery surrounded us on every side. Devon seemed even more ‘backward’ and strange than Shropshire. I had to wash at a pump in the garden, and the house was creepy and old-fashioned, with a spiral stone staircase and no ’mod cons’ – no electricity, no indoor toilet only an earth closet – not at all what I was used to!

As well as being disorientated, I was not treated very well there. The family ate the usual wartime meals, but all I can ever remember having was bread and jam (without butter). Devon was full of American sailors who were kind to the children, throwing handfuls of gum and ‘candy’ out of the backs of their trucks. I became friendly with one of the young guards at the Naval College, Danny, and he would give me tins of fruit, chocolate etc from their PX. These were taken from me when I got ‘home’ and I never saw them again.

I enjoyed the walk to school along the river, and watched the daily build-up of ships. They soon began to fill the river and it seemed you could walk to Kingswear across the decks. Mostly American, they had brightly-painted sharks’ mouths on the prows, red and black with stark white teeth. They looked fearsome to me.

One day, as I walked to school, I was astonished to see the river was empty except for the penny ferry. Everything had gone, overnight. Much later I realised this must have been part of the build-up to D-Day.

About two months later, my teacher sent my mother the school photo in which I, always a plump child, looked haggard and unkempt. The teacher said that I should be brought home, and I was. I made the long (4hr) journey through miles of flooded countryside to Paddington, then via the underground and Charing Cross to Sandling Station above Hythe, again all by myself. By now the V2s were at their height, but unlike the Doodlebugs they were hopeless as a terror weapon. No wailing siren, no awful suspense - if one hit you, well, like the famous Direct Hit, “you wouldn’t know anything about it”. The underground to Charing Cross was like all wartime train journeys – packed. Men and women in uniform, sailors sitting on kitbags, people lucky enough to have got seats trying to catnap. All the world seemed on the move in a sort of weary resignation, and all of them as fed up with it as I was.

The last surprise, when I got home, was a small black shadow that hurled itself at me when we opened the door. It was one of the puppies born when the doodlebug had landed, only a couple of months ago, though it seemed like a lifetime. She was my welcome home present.

The next spring we wore red, white and blue ribbons in our hair and had street parties to celebrate VE day. I would dearly like to know if Danny from Dartmouth survived the war . . .

During all these solitary travels, which I perceived as banishments rather than safety measures, my guardian angel protected me physically; but the anxieties of these times led to a chronic insecurity which I have carried with me ever since.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.