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This story was submitted to the people war Website by a volunteer from Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on behalf of Vera Gooding.

Vera Gooding.

I remember the evacuees coming into the village. We had to take them. There was no choice. We went down to the New Hall and waited a long, long time. Some people got them and they wouldn’t stay. They went back again. Eventually I got a little girl. She was about nine, I imagine. And her brothers went next door. They had a lovely time because their hosts had a farm and a butcher’s shop and they thoroughly enjoyed this. This little girl stayed with me for a long time. The boys had to go back and one of them, I think, had to change school. The girl went back eventually. When the doodlebugs came she was very nervous of them and came back again and went down to Stoke Canon and worked for the Ecclesiastical Commission. She stayed there a longtime until they went back and they took her back to London. She’d met a young man in Silverton. He was in the Navy and they kept in touch and were eventually married. She had a little boy. They parted. He went to Australia. She eventually went to Australia but they didn’t live together again. They both died quite young. A while back the boy came to see Silverton because he had an aunt in Silverton, and to see me. His mother had left him enough money to visit Silverton.

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