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My name was Teresa Williamson. I lived in Ramsgate in Kent with my mother Ada, my father Sid and my younger brother and sister, Sid and Bernie (short for Bernadette). At the outbreak of war I was eleven. On the 2nd of June 1940 we were all gathered at the school with a gas mask round our neck and a label on our coat. We were then taken on a bus to the railway station from there we boarded a train, but before we got on the train we saw all these men returned from Dunkirk sitting around the station; some were hurt and some were not. One of them had a foreign flag and he said whoever could count up to ten in French could have it. None of us knew any French so he kept his flag.

We got on the train, my sister, my brother and I, with all the other school children in the class, and the train went straight through to Stafford where we went to an assembly point and were given a biscuit and a glass of milk. Gradually everyone was taken away but six of us were still there at the end. Me, my sister, my brother, our cousin and two girls from our class, but eventually they sorted us out.

The people didn’t want our brother, they only wanted girls but we said if they didn’t take him we wouldn’t go either. My sister said ” I don’t think I’m going to like it here”. I said “I don’t think I am either”. The people had one daughter; she was a little bit older than me. That same evening the other three girls who were the last ones to go came round they wanted us to run away, they didn’t like it there so they wanted us to run back home. How we were going to get back home I don’t know but that’s the way it was. Gradually it all settled down and we went to the school with all the others from our class. We used to have to go by bus to the school but we had to walk home.

While we were in Stafford we had a few laughs and some tears. First of all we lived in Stone Road but we don’t know what happened there because we were taken with the same family to Wolverhampton road. My brother couldn’t come there so he had to go with her sister and their boys. She had all boys. When we were in Wolverhampton Road that’s when they started the bombing of Coventry so the couple slept downstairs and we girls slept upstairs, except when there was a raid. Then we slept downstairs too on mattresses. There was an outside toilet but the old man wouldn’t go out at night, so when he needed to pee he went in a coal bucket they kept for the fire. Us children had to go outside if we wanted to go.

My mother used to send things up and for my birthday she sent us up some wool. It went missing and my sister said “Where has it gone?”. I said “I don’t know I haven’t had it”. So she said “We’ll have to look for it”. So we went to look in this chest and we couldn’t open it. I said “Ida where’s the key?”. “I don’t know” she said. We went out and when we came back we caught her with the chest open and all our things that were missing were in it. So I just grabbed her and I said “You lying cow” and I pushed her and she landed in the coal bucket and it hadn’t been emptied from the night before. She cried because she was wet and black and I got told off but I didn’t care because she shouldn’t lie.

My mother came up a bout a week later. After that I said “I can’t stay here” and we didn’t, we came come. We were coming home any way because of my brother. He used to have blond curly hair. When my mum came up he wasn’t in the house so she said “Where is he?” and they said he was over on the common. Well it was September and the weather wasn’t all that good. He was out on this common, all his hair was shaved off because they said they had fleas. He had one of those tins that they put coal in to keep warm and she heard him coughing. She didn’t see him; she heard him coughing with a croupy cough which he did get sometimes, so she called his name and he answered and she took him back to the house and wanted to know what was he doing in out in that weather.

The next day she went round to the authorities and she told them she was taking us home and they said” You can’t do that.” and she said “Don’t tell me what I can do with my children. I’m taking them home.” and with that she brought us back to Ramsgate.

When we got back to Ramsgate where we caught a lot of the bombing and we did take a lot of flack from the Germans with the gas works, the port and the airport. It was all war and no schooling until eventually there were so many children home and we went to school for an hour a day.

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