What’s your Story? | War Baby part 3 - Go

In this final part of my Mum’s reminisces from her childhood, she shares how she was evacuated with her Mum and brother and how they survived a near miss from a doodlebug.

In this case it was drastic circumstances that led to their leaving their home, albeit temporarily.  There can be many different reasons for leaving the familiar and striking out into the unknown; war, work, adventure or maybe even a Godly command.  God told Abram ‘Go from your country, your people and your Father’s household.‘ (Genesis 12:1).  Abram didn’t know where he was going, but he did have God’s promise of blessing for him and his future.  Sometimes God calls us to ‘Go’.  We don’t always know where we will end up or who we will end up with but if we trust God, he will show us the way and bless our faith in his promises.  

In about 1943, it was decided that although Kingston was relatively unscathed, it was prone to random bombs as the Luftwaffe were returning from their raids, so we were to be evacuated to somewhere safer.  At that time children under five were not generally sent away without their mother, so mum Lilian, my brother Tony and I were sent off together.  I am sure you have all seen newsreels of kiddies being sent off with their gas masks and labels to nice country districts out of harms way but this was not to be our fate.

For some reason, our destination was to be  Batley,  near Dewsbury, in Yorkshire.  Not for us the green pastures of leafy  Britain but more the dark Satanic mills!

We departed from a dark stuffy station in London and arrived in a grim grimy station up North.  Everywhere seemed cold, wet and sooty.  At our destination we were greeted by a stern lady dressed austerely in black.  The house seemed quite large and terraced,  approached by a flight of stone steps up to an imposing front door.  We entered into a clean and tidy hall, and thence upstairs to our rooms.

It soon became clear that mum and the lady of the house were chalk and cheese but the peace and quiet was welcome and we soon settled in.  Mum found a job, Tony was sent off to school and I was dispatched to a nursery.  Now nursery was ok, but they had this strange idea that children needed a nap in the afternoon.  Little camp beds were pulled out, each with a blanket and we were put to bed.  As a very grown up three year old, I thought this a great indignity but to sleep I went - though I still didn’t like it.

Well, my mum was bright and breezy and our landlady was stiff and starchy so before long we were on the train again heading back South to Kingston, where we stayed for the rest of the War, although many nights were spent in the air raid shelter in my Grandma’s back garden, on little camp beds!  Ironically, we were fortunate enough to be just missed by a V2 bomb landing nearby and demolishing a house and all in it.

Fate stepped in after the War, when my future husband and his family, who were from near Doncaster, Yorkshire, moved to London.  Their father and all five boys ended up with good careers in the City, instead of down in the mines!

Ps:  please remember I was three or four at the time, so what seemed large and high might not have been and my memories may have become misty over the years.