 In 1933, as a 7 year-old boy, I was evacuated with hundreds of others, by rail from Ramsgate to Staffordshire. First, we were taken from the train to a village `Women’s Institute` wooden hut. There each evacuee was picked out by prospective guardians (our name was pinned to our jacket labels).
Of course, the healthy and `cute` kids went first - so our future home and foster parents were random (i.e. anyone could pick us). In fact, I was picked by ‘proxy’, so to speak, because my future ‘parent’ was ill at the time, someone picked me for her. So it was I arrived in the middle of the night at a smallholding in a tiny Staffordshire hamlet.
I found myself sitting on a huge armchair, with a pint glass of cold milk that had been thrust into my hand and two doorstep slices of currant bread. That I had never even seen before, in my much poorer previous existence `in the smoke` down South.
I shall never forget coming downstairs that first morning in my `new` house and life meeting my new `parents` for the first time. What would I find? What sort of future faced me? Of course, as a 7 year-old kid, I was too apprehensive and too young to even think about what sort of life might lay ahead.
Submitted by Mickey
Location: Ramsgate - Staffordshire
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