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My Grandad, the Evacuee

An Interview with Eddie, by Sam, 23 January 2005

Where did you live in 1939?
In West Ham in the East of London

How old were you when war broke out?
I was 8 and my sister was 4

Do you have any memories of the declaration of war?
Not really; my sister and I had already been evacuated before war was declared on 3 September and it was announced on the wireless that we were at war with Germany.

How were you affected by the war?
Well, at an early age we were parted from my mum and dad. My sister was very young. Though we were together, we had no idea where we were being sent, neither did my mum and dad. In fact, we ended up in Chipping Norton, not far from here and it was only after our arrival there, that my mum and dad were told where we had been sent. We saw our parents once a month, more or less, when they came down to see us by coach. That was all.

What were your memories of evacuation, the journey, arriving etc?
I can remember going to school on Friday 1 September with my 4 year old sister, who was not yet old enough to have started school then. Both of us were carrying our gas masks with cardboard boxes and a small knapsack with a change of clothing inside. We set off with all the other school children in a long crocodile to the local rail station. Small groups of anxious mothers came out from their houses to watch silently as we made our way to the station. From here we somehow circumvented the mainline London stations, joined the GWR line to Oxford and the branch line to Chipping Norton, which is now closed. I do have some photos of the arrival, taken at the time at Chipping Norton station. Once we had arrived, we then formed up another procession, up to the local cinema, where we were kept together before being allocated to and collected by our new family. I also have a photograph of them, standing outside the house with my sister and me.

How big was the house you stayed in? Did it have a big garden?
It was quite small; the garden was quite large. The house had two rooms downstairs and two up. There was no water supply or lavatory in the house; for this we had to go outside, day or night, to the privy, round the side of the house, something we had not encountered at our house in West Ham! For water we again had to go outside to a shared tap, set in a small alcove in the wall and you can imagine in winter, quite a while was spent each morning thawing out the frozen tap.

Do you have any more memories of the evacuation like new friends, new school etc?
I soon settled down to a routine at the local Church of England school with our own teachers from London; for the first week or two on a part time basis, then on a full timetable. We soon became part of the local community and made new friends. In fact I can remember one mate, a local boy called Sid, slightly older than me; he had a ju-jitsu booklet and he liked to practise the various holds on the rest of us. I can also remember eagerly reading the headlines in the newspaper each day once the Blitz had started in London in the 1940s, showing that each day we were shooting down 100s of enemy planes. Good for morale, I suppose.

Did you write to your parents?

Yes. Once we had settled in, we used to write fairly often to mum and dad in London, with a line or two added from our new ‘mother’. In fact I have found one such letter I wrote, telling her of the visit of King George VI to Chipping Norton who came there to review an army regiment on parade in the town centre.

'Dear Mummy,

I saw the king today (Wednesday) so look out on the British News, he was here at 9:30am + gone about 10 o’clock. Did any of the eggs get broke? (Write in the next letter). I stood in between two soldiers, there was 15,000, they came over the place. I stood up the front and I could have almost touched the king as he passed. I had such a good place. Rosie + Mrs ___ saw him. It is the first time any king has been to Chipping Norton, and so there was great excitement.

Love to Mum + Dad
From Rosie and Eddie'

What were the people you stayed with like? Did you like them?
Our new ‘mother’ with was an ordinary housewife, but she was a heavy smoker. In fact she would often send me to the local shop at the top of The Lees, to buy cigarettes through my dinner time; but remember, I was only 8 years old. Her husband, worked, like so many of our neighbours, in the Bliss woollen mill. He worked in the engine room. They looked after us okay and we got on all right with them.

Did you have to carry your gas mask around with you all day?
We did have a gas mask each, but we didn’t have to carry it everywhere we went. In fact in Chipping Norton, we simply never needed it.

Do you keep in contact with any of your friends from the evacuation?
No, in 1941 we left Chipping Norton and so left contact with our new friends and also school friends that had remained at school.

Did you have any jobs?
Again, we were too young to have any jobs; we would sometimes fetch the water from outside.

How did you cope with the rations; did you miss chocolate?
The food on ration was enough to keep body and soul together. It was a little short on bulk foods such as bread, but we were never really hungry or aware of being short or deprived. We didn’t miss chocolate: after all, what was chocolate then, a real luxury! We didn’t have Mars bars and Snickers and things like that. We had a few boiled sweets but nothing more. Looking back I would reckon that the adults made sure that the children were well-fed and looked after.

Do you remember experiencing any air raids?
No, we never had any air raids in Chipping Norton, although the sirens did sound from time to time to test the system. One day we did see a large black German airplane flying overhead. You could plainly see the black cross on the side, it had probably lost its way. Another time, two or three small bombs were dropped on the local golf course, so we all had to go up there on a Sunday walk to see the craters. We did see the sky lit up in the distance by the burning fires on the night that Coventry suffered a large air raid.

What do you remember about the end of the war?
After two years or so, we moved back towards London to be nearer London so my father could join us and continue working in London by travelling there each day.

We were once more a family, so there we were in Letchmore Heath when the war with Germany ended in 1945. I had already see the previous year the occasional V1 doodlebugs flying out beyond London, and also on the morning of the D-Day landings, thousands of gliders being towed out towards France. On VE day itself, we had a celebration on the village green and then later in August we celebrated VJ day when the Japanese government finally surrendered to the allies after the dropping of the two atom bombs, one bomb Hiroshima and the second bomb, Nagasaki.

Thank you for your time

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