Goodnight Children Everywhere

I could not believe it, my mother was packing a case with clothes and belongings - I was crying incessantly, "I can't be going just for one night, why are you packing everything - even my toothbrush?"
I ws just eleven years old. I had passed the "Scholorship", my parents had moved in order for me to go to a higly reputable Grammar School. So it was a great upheaval leaving friends, school, relatives and moving to a new district and now this the "War" and the dreaded evacuation.
As an only child I suppose I was rather clingly and I honestly believed that no matter what the circumstances I would never be uprooted and sent away. Never, never, never...
I cannot remember the train journey but I do remember the clothes I wore. A brown coat with a hood and my gas mask in its box over my shoulder. I did not go with the group of children, I cannot remember why, my mother took me seperately to Bishops Shortford in Hertfordshire. This was the country town where my new school was situated. Sharing the building with the Herts and Essex high school based at Bishops Shortford.
When we arrived in the town my mother and I found the billeting office, this was the place where the billeting officer met the evacuees and designated homes (known as billets) for the children.
My mother and I were taken to the house which was to be my new home and I was introduced to the lady who was to be my new "mother". Although I had come from the East End of London origionally and had not lived in the lap of luxury, I was quite upset by the little, tiny dark house in which I was to be abandoned with this very large lady who was sitting taling to my mother and saying "But I didn't want a Grammar child... I told the billeting officer!" I couldn't believe it. My mother left me. She was gone. I cried, I sobbed, I howled, there was no consolling me. The lady did not know what to do with me - and then she handed me some paper and a pen and she told me to write to my mother and ask her to come and collect me. She took me to the letter box and when I posted the letter I honestly thought that my mother would receive it almost at once and come and put her arms around me and take me home.
There was worse to come. We went back to the little house, which I later realised was a railwayman's cottage adjacent to the railroad track, and after a while the man of the house came home. I thought that he was the biggest, tallest man I had ever seen and in his navy serge railwayman's uniform and his lantern to my childish eyes he was a formidable sight.
That night I "slept" with all of my clothes on. Stockings, liberty bodice, petticoat - the lot. The next few days ran into each other. The new school, new friends - I remember none of these, only the fact that my mother had not come. I had been abandoned. I would never see her again. And then one glorious day there she was - I was so happy, so delighted! I was going home with my mother (or so I thought)... but no! I was going to be placed in another billet with another foster mother.
The billeting officer said, "I know just the place for this little girl." The house was quite grand - a lady answered the door and welcomed us in. This was obviously a "rich" house. It had a large garden, fields with a few sheep, trees, a summer house. It was very "posh". The billeting officer left, I said good-bye to my mother once again. No tears this time. I was left with the lady - Mrs M. She showed me the room which was to be my bedroon adn the rest of the house. When we eached the bathroom she told me that my job was to keep my own bedroon tidy and to keep the bathrrom clean. "I'll show you how to do it," she said, "make sure you polish the taps!"
Later I met Mr M. He was considerably older than his wife, quiet and pleasant. Mrs M took me to one side. "Now," she said, "You are everything I did not want when they told me that I had to have an evacuee. You're a girl, I wanted a boy - you have curly hair, so make sure you comb it our in the garden, and you are Jewish!" she continued "You will not be able to eat with us as the food we eat is forbidden to you. So you will have to eat at the community centre!"
I became very attached to the sheep and when the lambs were born I spent a lot of time in the field with them.
Mrs M made me go with her when they were dispatched in crates to the cattle market and she made a point of telling me what their fate was to be. I loved them so - Jane, Charlie, Mary... I was in that billet for quite some time.
Once again I moved. By this time I was thirteen. Mr and Mrs R, a very nice couple with two children aged about six or seven. They were very kind to me but I had to go to bed at six o'clock when their own children were put to bed.
At last I was allowed to return to London. The doodlebugs, the V1's, the V2's were almost a relief. The experience of this child in wartime London was as nothing compared to the horrors of being an evacuee.

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