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THE LOSS OF A BEST FRIEND

I was only 4 years old when the War started and my brother was 10 years old. When they started to evacuate the children to various parts of the country, my mother decided to let my brother go but thought I was too young, so I stayed with her in Penge, South London. My brother was sent to Exmouth in Devon and he quite enjoyed it there. We went to visit him a couple of times.

I continued to go to school in Penge with my best friend Betty Carter, but after a year or two the air raids got so bad that Dad became worried about Mum and I being in London so he wrote to the lady where my brother was billeted and asked if she would also have Mum and I to live with them. She agreed, and after saying goodbye to our friends and family we were sent off to Devon. It was a lovely area to live in and quite near the beach.

I went to school there, but we only had to go in the mornings. I believe this was because there were so many children evacuated there that some went to school in the mornings and some in the afternoons. I have some lovely memories of those school days.

Firstly, there used to be a Bakers Shop opposite the school where they used to bake beautiful bread and rolls, which were always really hot and crunchy when we bought them first thing in the morning before going into school, and they were still quite warm when we ate them in our morning break.

Secondly, Mum used to meet me from school at lunch time and we would go straight down to the beach for the afternoon.

Mum had always been a close friend of my best friend’s mum (Mrs Carter), who we had left back in Penge, and she used to write to her regularly to let her know how we were getting on. However, on the 26th July 1944 when Mum and I woke up, the lady whose house we were staying in came up to our room and handed Mum a letter, which the postman had just delivered. Mum opened it, read it, and then read it to me. It was a letter from my best friend’s Uncle telling us that they had found a letter from my Mum on the doorstep of my best friends’ house. Unfortunately their Air Raid Dug Out had received a direct hit from a Flying Bomb which had killed the whole family; my friend Betty, her Mum and Dad, and her Grandparents.

That was a terrible day for us, and I still have the letter to this day, and also a photo of Mrs Carter taken just before the War

So Mum lost her friend and I lost mine, and these are some of the memories we had to live with in those days.

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