During the first year of the 1939 – 1945 war, when I was eleven years old, the government decided that London was too dangerous for children and that they were all to be evacuated to the countryside.  I wasn’t a bit upset; I thought it was a holiday that I was going on.

I said goodbye to mum and dad and went to school with my clothes in a case, my gasmask and a label on a string round my neck with my name and address on it.  We all got on a bus outside of the school and off we went.  Some children were crying but I thought they were silly.

We arrived at a place called Crawley and six of us went with our teacher to a big house; we were to sleep all in one big room and the teacher in her own room.  The house was the Vicarage and the Vicar lived there with his wife and daughter, who was about seventeen.

When we had sorted out which bed we were to have and had had a wash, we all went downstairs into a big room.  The only furniture was a big table in the middle with chairs around it, a few pictures on the wall, and some toys sitting on shelves; there was a carpet on the floor.

We all sat round the table with our teacher and had spam and lettuce and weak tea, but no bread.  In place of bread we were given what looked to me like dog biscuits with butter!  They were very, very hard and came in squares of five; it would have taken dog’s teeth to eat them!  No one ate the biscuits.

One of the girls had gum in her mouth and trying to chew and eat at the same time; the teacher told her to take it out and behave herself.  I think our teacher was really mad at the food we were given, because we were only in that house for two days before we were split up into twos and billeted out to other places.

The girl I was with was an orphan and had been passed from one place to another in London, so she was used to going to different people’s houses.

Anyway, we were sent to a really nice young couple, Mr and Mrs Comfort who had not been married long.  She was tall and thin with glasses, about twenty one, and he was short with sandy coloured hair, a little older.  They had a nice ‘two up, two down’ house with a toilet at the end of the garden.  At the bottom of the garden on the other side of the hedge was a railway line, and at night the trains would make a din.  When we were first there we couldn’t sleep, but after a few nights we were OK.

They were nice people and looked after us really well.  Mrs Comfort was a good cook, and we had delicious fish cakes for breakfast with bread and butter.  We used to have some really nice, homemade dinners.

Meanwhile we went to school (ha ha!).  Well I laugh because we didn’t do any work at all at school, just played games.  The teacher used to bang out tunes on the piano and would ask us what tunes we would like to sing.  I asked for ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’, so she banged away and we all shouted it.

We also played a lot of running races in the field and I remember winning a bar of chocolate; but I don’t remember doing any reading or writing or sums or anything like that.  The Crawley children were with us evacuees as well, so they must have had a job to fit us all in.
My dad came to visit me twice.  Mum couldn’t come, either because she had to look after Esme and Lily or because she was full of pain from her arthritis.  Anyway, dad came and I took him out for a walk around Crawley.  I remember we walked down a road called ‘Gossip’s Green’ and dad and I laughed.  The other time we walked down the High Street and watched Mr Comfort play in the town band; I forget which instrument he played.

My sister Esme told me years later that our mum used to sit and cry for me.  Me, well I didn’t miss mum and dad or my sisters at all!  It was all new and different and the days and weeks went by quickly.

We had been at the Comforts’ about three or four months when Mrs Comfort had to go into hospital for an operation.  Arrangements were made for my friend and I to live with his brother and his wife about two miles away, right down the High Street just out of town; it was a very long way to walk to school.

This little cottage had a very long, thin front garden.  It was a ‘two up, two down’ with very low ceilings and the toilet out in the back garden.  She was a short, blond fluffy little woman about twenty-eight; he was tall with glasses and dark hair.  They were kind to us.  He had a harp which he would let us play on; he didn’t use it himself.  We would twang away on it and try to get a tune out of it.

Sometimes he would make us do sums, but it didn’t last long as he soon get fed up!  I think he was a farm worker.

One morning when we came downstairs no one could get out of the front or back door due to the snow, it was three quarters of the way up the doors!  After a lot of shoveling we were able to get out and get to the toilet, but we didn’t go to school that day.

When my dad came to see me one day he banged his head on the low doorway....poor dad, what a welcome for him.

When I was with the first Mr and Mrs Comfort they took me to see a film called ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’; that night in bed I was so frightened and scared that I nearly suffocated!!

Evacuation to Bridgewater

We stayed at that little cottage for about four or five months and then the government decided that we were to be evacuated again farther out from London, as Crawley was not considered to be safe any longer.

So once again we were put on a train with our clothes packed, our gasmasks, and tickets around our necks with our names and addresses on.  We were taken to a place called Bridgewater (in Somerset).

This time we were taken to the High Street and stood around in a group while some women came and looked at us and picked out the children they fancied; two each.  They didn’t like the look of me and my friend, perhaps because we were too loud, because we were the only ones left at the end.  Anyway it turned out to be lucky because the billeting officer and his wife took us home and they had a lovely house.  They were kind to us and we had a big bedroom.

He was a big fat man with a big nose and a red face, and she was a tall, plump woman with glasses; they were about fifty or fifty-five.  They had no children of their own, so I think that they didn’t really know a lot about young people, but they meant well.

The only thing was she gave us this licourice medicine every week ‘to flush you out’ as she would say; and flush us out it did!  We were forever on the toilet!  I think my teacher had a word with her, because she stopped doing it after a few weeks.

One weekend a social worker from London came and took my friend back; so I was on my own in that great big bed at night.  I didn’t like to be the only child in the house, I was getting lonely.  I told my teacher that, although I liked Mr and Mrs Gates, I didn’t want to be there on my own, so I was moved to another house down the road.

This house was very modern, with a large front garden with a wide path up to the house.  It had four bedrooms, a large kitchen and a dining room.  A Mr and Mrs Bath lived there with their daughter of about twenty.

Another girl and I were given the small bedroom with a big bed and dressing table; it was at the front of the house and looked out onto the street.  We were only allowed in the kitchen and the dining room; we would have our meals in the kitchen and in the evening sit around the table in the dining room.

Mr and Mrs Bath were never in; I don’t know where they went in the evening but their daughter and her boyfriend would sit with us.  Sometimes we played cards, but most of the time they would be kissing, with my friend and I trying not to look and playing cards by ourselves.

We went to the pictures and saw Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in one of the ’On the Road To….’ Comedy series.  In the film they were cornered by some bad guys and to escape, they faced each other and played a game of ‘Pat A Cake’.  On the last word of the rhyme, they both swiveled around and punched the bad guy on the nose and ran away.  We thought it was very funny.

In the summer when the evenings were light, we would go to the park and play on the swings.  One evening a little local lad came and stood by us as we were playing.  He was only about eight or nine and he just stood there.  I expect that he wanted to play with us.

My friend and I wanted to show off; I don’t know why, but we started the game of ‘Pat A Cake’.  The little lad stood there and was watching us, and when we came to the last word we both turned and thumped him in the head, just like we had seen in the film.  He ran away crying, poor thing.

The next time we went to the park we were playing away, when suddenly I got whacked around the head!  Of course it was the little boy’s mother.  She just walked away without saying anything; looking back I don’t blame her at all.

We were sent to the church three times on Sunday.  Morning Service, Catechism and Evensong.  We didn’t mind because we used to make fun of the choirboys and giggle and make eyes at them.  After church we would wait for them and walk with them.

I got smacked around the head once in church by a woman who was sitting behind us.  I suppose we must have been giggling.  They didn’t like us London children.

I remember the first day at Bridgewater this kind couple took my friend and I to the seaside, it couldn’t have been far away.  Anyway, there was a dead body washed up on the beach.  They were saying, “Come here, come away”, but we were too curious and went to have a look.  We didn’t see anything much, thank goodness, because the police waved us away.  I expect that the kind couple that took us thought we were horrible little things!

Mrs Bath owned property around the town and she would send us children to collect her rent.  Some people didn’t like to have children asking them for the rent, and wouldn’t pay.  I don’t blame them.

The whole thing was beginning to get out of hand when our teacher found out and had it out with Mrs Bath.  We were taken away and were about to be put with someone else, but by then the blitz was over and the London children began to go back to their homes.  They drifted back home in twos and threes until it was my turn.

Return to London

My dad came and met me at St Pancras station and we went home by bus.  I remember looking out of the windows and seeing the streets in a terrible state:  buildings down, rubble everywhere, wide open spaces where there used to be houses, it was terrible to see.

When I got home, and having kissed my mum and had a big hug, I cried because I was so pleased to be home again with my sisters and mum and dad.  It’s funny because all the time I was evacuated I never missed them; I suppose it must have seemed like a big holiday to me.

It was just before Christmas, and dad had put up all the Christmas lights around the mirrors and pictures.  It looked so pretty with the paper chains and all the decorations; it felt so good to be home in our lovely house with my family once again.

After Christmas the schools got sorted out and we went back, but only for a short time because I left school at fourteen.

We had an ‘Anderson’ bomb shelter at the bottom of our garden.  This was a hole dug down in the earth, which was then covered with corrugated iron and reinforced with earth and sand.  Inside were four bunk beds with an old box for a table, over the entrance was draped an old curtain.

There were still air raids, but not so often as in the first years of the war.  During the final year there were ‘Buzz Bombs’ and rockets, which were shot across the sea from France (V1 pilotless planes and V2 missiles).  These were awful because you could hear the Buzz Bombs buzzing along.  While you could hear them you were safe, but when the buzzing stopped you know that they were coming down.  The rockets made no noise at all; there was just a sudden huge explosion.

Now my dad worked at night with his taxi, and how he got around the West End and all over London in the blackout I’ll never know!  No lights at all were allowed because the German planes might see the lights and drop their bombs, so how he missed the craters and bomb holes in the road, and the other cars is a mystery.

About two years later when I was around sixteen years old (I’m not sure of the exact dates), we lost our dad from a stroke.  Mum had got dad’s tea ready and he had sat down to eat it when he had this massive stroke.  The perspiration was dripping from him, and I remember mother saying “Please don’t leave me George, don’t leave me.”

Anyway the ambulance came and I went with dad to the hospital.  Mum couldn’t go as she was crippled with arthritis and couldn’t walk.  At the hospital I waited in a room there and the doctor come and said, “Sit down”  so I did.  He said, “your father has passed away, we could do nothing to help him.  Would you like to see him?”  So they took me to see dad.  I kissed him; he looked so peaceful.  Then they took me back to the room I had been in before and I cried and cried.

Dad’s brother Fred came to get me at the hospital and took me home.  I tried not to show him up, but I couldn’t stop the tears running down my face on the bus ride home.

I remember there was a big red ball of a sun that evening, and it didn’t seem right that everything was going on around me just the same, and that it was a beautiful evening and that my beloved dad had died.

I remember the siren went one night for an air raid, so we had to go out to the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden.  Our mum was washing her feet in a bowl of water when it happened.  “Come on mum!” we shouted, so poor mum had to go hobbling up the garden with bare, wet feet.

Before we had the Anderson shelter, before dad died, we used to have to all go under the stairs during the air raids.  Dad used to put a saucepan on his head to make us laugh and relieve the tension.

A few months later a bomb fell onto Brixton Prison about two streets away from the bottom of our road.  I remember that I was dancing to the gramophone at the time, the record was ‘Blueberry Hill’.  Anyway, the blast from the bomb swung my neck around and I had a stiff neck for a week.  It blew all of our front windows in, and smashed all of our lovely big flowerpots and ornaments.  The knob flew off the gas stove and hit my mum in the eye!

But we were very lucky that day;  down at the end of the street they were laying out the dead people on the pavement, bringing them out of the rubble.  Mrs Hardbattle, the lady from next door said “Never you mind going down there, you look after your poor old mum.”  She was right, mum was very shaken.

By Elsie Turner