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Interview recorded on Saturday January 11th 2002 between Jennifer Parsons (aged 11) and Pauline Lavinia John (aged 66), Jenny’s Nana.

Jenny : Did all your friends get evacuated with you ?
Nana : No they didn’t. I went to a school quite a long way away from where we lived in West Dulwich and I think the school was closed — and that’s probably why I was evacuated. We didn’t go as a group from the school, and I remember going with my mother to a place called Lavender Hill, and it was from there that I was evacuated. Lavender Hill was in Clapham, which was quite a long way from where we lived — so I didn’t know anyone that I went with.

Jenny : Why did you get evacuated ?
Nana : I think because we’d been living in London for about a year and we’d had a lot of bombs. We used to go down to the shelter at the bottom of the garden but they were worried about a new wave of bombs, with the V2s they were called and my Mother was working as well, so there was really no-one to look after me, and I think my parents thought it would be better if I were somewhere safe.

Jenny : Where did you go?
Nana : I went to a place called Kettering which is in Northamptonshire —it’s a town where they used to make shoes — that was their business and I went to a family who had one daughter called Sheila. They didn’t really want an evacuee, but people had to take an evacuee if they’d got room. Sheila was a little bit older than me.

Jenny : Did you get on well with Sheila?
Nana : Yes. We didn’t see very much of each other. I went to school just around the corner, and I’m not sure where she went. I used to go home at lunchtime. The school was very different to the school that I’d come from, so it was quite difficult.

Jenny : Was it very different from your home?
Nana : Yes, very different because where we lived in West Dulwich, we lived in the top part of an old house and there were people living underneath us, whereas this family in Kettering had a council house, so they had a 3 bedroom house, which was very nice. It was a pleasant place to be out in the country a bit — sort of on the edges of the town.

Jenny : What was rationing like ?
Nana : Well I can’t really remember too much about it except that people used to grumble about it. It was only after the war that I realised that we hadn’t been able to have things like bananas and oranges, and sweets were rationed, and you didn’t have much meat — you had to queue for things and you had to have coupons, not only for food, but you had to have coupons for clothes and there wasn’t much choice so it was a very basic diet. They do say now that the diet we had during the Second World War was more healthy than people have today.

Nana : I was up in Kettering for about a year, and I think I saw my parents once during the year — they must have come up for the weekend. I wasn’t terribly happy there and I don’t know how it was organised, but when I went back to London, I went on my own. When I was taken to Kettering, the whole train was full of evacuees, when I went back I just went on an ordinary train and I remember I had to stand in the corridor. I don’t know how long the journey would have taken, but a sailor looked after me. He made sure I was ok and gave me sweets and things, and my parents met me in London. But when I first went, they didn’t even know which town I was going to — you weren’t told — and they had to wait until they got a letter with an address at which they could find me — which would have been a bit worrying for everyone, and then when we got to Kettering people were just funnelled off and taken to various houses and I never really saw anyone I’d travelled with again.

I remember silly little things, like once I went home at lunchtime and I must have .. I don’t know why I would have done it… but I put the electric kettle on and I forgot to turn it off and it boiled dry and I was really, really frightened. But they weren’t unkind to me or anything — they just didn’t really want me! I think people got an allowance for having an evacuee. They were really very good — they never really discriminated between Sheila and me — we both did the same things.
I don’t remember very much about Kettering itself — it was quite a small place then. It’s a lot larger now. And they didn’t have things like bombs up there — we didn’t see of hear of any of the war planes or anything, whereas in West Dulwich there was quite a lot of damage.
I must have come back home in 1944 and I went back to the school that I’d already been to which had reopened by then.

Jenny : When the war started, how long was it until you got evacuated?
Nana : The war was declared in 1939, and we were on holiday in Hastings — and then we went back to Pirbright, which is near where we live now. And I stayed — I wasn’t evacuated — but I stayed in the country with my Mother’s mother — Auntie Cath’s mother. My parents moved to London because my Father had heard of a better job, so they moved to London in 1942 and then soon after I went up to join them, but every now and again I would be sent back to Pirbright, so it was a bit awkward. I do remember one occasion when I was going with my Grandmother back to Pirbright and we were sitting on a train at Waterloo station. We waited and waited and the train didn’t move, and all of a sudden a man came along said “Get out! The train’s on fire!” so we had to get out and wait till we could get down to Brookwood station.

Another time, I was with my Mother and Father. And we were living in Guildford — this was before they moved to London — and we had to spend the night on Guildford Station, in the subway under the platforms because of the bombs — because the German planes would pick up the railway line at Guildford — It’s a straight line and it would take them straight into London; so they would turn at the Cathedral and go in. There was a big raid and we had to stay in the station. I also remember being taken out one night and looking at the red glow in the distance and being told that that was London burning.

Jenny : Were there a lot of people when you had to stay there ?
Nana : There were quite a lot — the train had been quite full. There weren’t many trains — they’d sort of been commandeered for the troops and things like that. But I also remembered going with my mother to Guildford station and seeing lots of the soldiers who were coming back from Dunkirk, which was quite early in the war. On the whole you just got on with your life, really. People didn’t fuss too much, you got quite used to it.

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