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My Mother, Valerie Jeanette House, went to West Street School in Belvedere, Kent and was initially evacuated to Saltwood near Hythe in Kent before being moved to a safer location on a farm in Ickham, Kent. She was then sent to Rackenford in Devon where she remained for over 3 years. It was during this time she learnt of the tragic death of her father, Thomas Arthur House, an ARP Ambulance Driver in a bombing raid on Erith on 29.11.40. He was 44 years old.

After returning home during a lull she was sent away again due to the flying bombs and this time she went to Ulverston in Lancashire (now Cumbria).

She remembers how the evacuees were always being blamed by locals for wrong doing and how frightened she was on hearing that an evacuee had died through illness. She can recall an Iris Goddard, also from Belvedere being sent to Devon along with a Kathleen Ayres from Bethnal Green. The trauma of her childhood has never left her.

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