My evacuee memories

15/05/2007

Further to your call for evacuee memories, at aged seven, I was told that I would be going away on "holiday" without my Mum, but with all the school children one day in September 1939. I was already packed for my "holiday": PJs, a change of undies, soap and flannel, toothbrush, slippers and one toy  - my teddy, dressed in a siren-suit - all in a brown paper carrier bag.

We marched from school to the train station, with a label round our neck, stating our names and that we were from London's East End.

Later that day we arrived at a small village station and were taken to a wooden hut  - the village school.  From there, local people owning a car took us to our "new homes". A farmer took me and another girl called Audrey to a row of small farm cottages opposite his farm, and promised that we could go and watch him milk his cows. I was excited as I had never seen a live cow before!

But the very rotund lady with a big flowery apron in the cottage would not have us, as she had asked for two boys, so we had to stay in the farm house. Our bed was in the loft, a double mattress on the floor! My teddy bear went everywhere with me, round the farmyard and to school, which was every other day, as the village children used the school hut and it would not hold all of us together.

My mother soon found out where I was and came to visit, sleeping on the same mattress as us girls. She sat up all night holding the rats off us!

Needless to say she took me back to London - and the bombs!

 

Dot Monger, Reading