The Twins Who Were Evacuated to Dawley

Well, I wouldn’t have been where I am today. During the war my, Foster mother had Evacuee Twins from London. They came in 1941…, I think it was, and stayed till the end of the war. It was very funny actually, because it was done through the church. The Vicar arrived one day and said: “Will you have Twins? They are coming tomorrow.” She said she’d have one, well, might as well have two. Course, then there was a rush round to find another bed and all sorts. Anyway she went to Wellington, to the Station and met these twins, identical twins with their luggage labels on their coats and their bags and their Gas masks and they stayed for three years, till the end of the war. Their mother came to see them once during the war and they wanted to know who that strange lady was, they were only three. When they went back at the end of the war, my Foster mother said that the house was empty.
She was a ‘maiden lady’ who lived with her mother, so she decided that she would foster; so as the story goes she went to the Children’s home and they brought out these five little girls. She said of there was a reason they couldn’t be fostered permanently, they’d only be temporary. She wanted somebody permanently, she said it was you or nobody; so I had you, she said.
But I mean, money was tight. Had the necessities, had a lot of love, but when I was at school, I went to Grammar school and, they could easily have said at fifteen that she live with her mother. We’ve kept you for now; but now I’ve stayed on in the Sixth Form, and they saw me through Teacher Training College, so that I’ve got a good career; but, you see, that if it hadn’t been for the War I wouldn’t have had that. And I think, well, I just wouldn’t have had the opportunity, you see, because if I’d still been in the Children’s home there wouldn’t have been the money, in those days, to do anything at all.
But the Twins used to come back, during the long Summer holidays when I was little. But as I got a little bit older it became a bit of a handful, because they took me everywhere that was banned and of course, they lived in the middle of London; they were street-wise, they had to be.
They lived in a tenement building, you know When they went back and they must have had memories of Dawley, being taken out; walks down to Coverdale; the Wrekin, which was the favourite. I mean they kept in touch when they got married. And it wasn’t until the early 1970s when my foster mother’s mother died, I was teaching in Birmingham and I said to her: “Well, look, come over to Birmingham, we’ll get a house together.” And you know what happened, she wrote to the twins and said that she was moving. They lost the letter and we lost touch.
I tried to find them for her eightieth birthday, and six years ago I found them, and, it was just sheer luck really. I was reading the Evening Mail and there was a article about a little lady up in Wales who ran ‘Search for a Memory’ it was called, tracking people down and I read it and I thought that looks interesting, and by pure chance she was on the radio the next morning. And I thought this is just too good to be true so I phoned her up and she said send what information I’d got. Which I did, and, three days later she rang me up and said I’ve found them and they actually came up two days before their sixtieth birthday. They’d missed her eightieth because they only had two years before she died. They were three, when they were evacuated and they were sent on the train, under the sort of surveillance of the guard; “Just keep an eye on these, all the way from Paddington.” I found those (luggage tabs) before, I’ve got those; no…, the twins have got them; they asked if they could have them. Also the letter, which came from; it was something like the Children’s Fellowship, that the letter came from London and the correspondence about them. I mean really, I’ve got family, now.
My evacuated friends became my family. They’re coming up next week. They come up to me, I go down to them. They’re still, more or less identical, aren’t they? I mean I can tell them apart. They’re both married, they’ve both got two boys. But the thing is, unbeknown to us, the twins have been going back to Dawley once a year and they just assumed, that she’d probably died, you see.
Well, the interesting thing was, that they didn’t think that I would want to know them, because they said they sort of bullied me. Because when they first came back, they came on their first holiday and I was ensconced in what had been their home, and I always remember, because I called my foster mother: ‘Aunty Madge.’ And she said, “Huh, the twins bully you? You used to lock them in the shed and then run off, and leave them locked in there for hours!” But, the other way round, you know.
Well, I mean they were the youngest, their father was in the Army. The mother didn’t want them to be evacuated. They had an older sister, two older brothers and a younger brother. They’ve done all right for themselves.

(This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Wyre Forest Volunteer Bureau on behalf of Rosie Parker and has been added to this site with her permission. Rosie Parker fully understands the site's terms and conditions.)

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