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Part two of an edited oral history interview with Mrs. Anne Misselke (née Alexandre) conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

“So we went on the train and it went on and on and of course going through the countryside, it was nice to see the countryside. Suddenly we saw these huge, big things that looked like big pieces of wood on the side of the railway line and it said in big white — there was a lovely picture of trees and fields and a river and cows sitting - and in big white letters ‘You are in the Strong Country’. We said to our teacher, ‘What’s that?’ Because she was sitting in our carriage, ‘Oh’ she said, ‘I don’t know.’ A little bit further on and another one — ‘You are leaving the Strong Country’. And the noise of the train on the rails and then another one — ‘You have left the Strong Country’. We kept saying, ‘Well, what can that be?’ She said, ‘I just do not know.’ And it wasn’t until years after I’d got married and went to live in Hampshire that I discovered that that was an advert for beer! To my recollection, I cannot remember and I’ve got a terribly good memory and I can remember everything that happened but I don’t think there was a picture of a glass of beer on there. So anyway we began to get very hungry because of course we’d eaten our sandwiches on the boat and eventually the train stopped at a very big station with a very wide platform. On that platform were lots of ladies with trolleys loaded up with tea urns and milk and water and sandwiches and sausage rolls and cakes. Then the senior girls and boys got out and the teachers got out and passed everything thing through and we all had a good tea. Then eventually a big loud voice said, ‘Has everybody had enough to eat and drink?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Everybody in,’ we all got in again and we waved goodbye to the ladies and off the train steamed again. I mean it was a corridor train but there was nowhere to get food, we could go to the lavatory on the train. But anyway the teacher then said, ‘Now children you must be very, very tired because you’ve had a very long day. You’ve got to try to get to sleep where you are sitting.’ You could hear the sound of the train and it lulled you into a sort of a sleep. And eventually the train stopped and a big loud voice said, ‘Everybody OUT!’ So we all got out and we formed into lines again and we were on this platform and we had to go down the steps and along a tunnel, turn left at the bottom of the steps along the tunnel and we came out along a road. There was a hill going up and there was a big high brick wall there and another one there so there was only one way out and it was up the hill.

All the way down this hill was a fleet of black taxis waiting and the road was made of little square cobblestones. My friends and I were the first children out of the tunnel, so they said, ‘Into there, children.’ So we got in this taxi and it turned round at the bottom and up the hill, along the road and then it ended up outside this lovely building, I’d been taught to appreciate buildings because my dad was a builder. It was a white Portland stone building and it had sort of things with pillars at the top and then there were pillars at the front. We didn’t go to the front we went up the side to another entrance that also had some pillars and some steps and standing on those steps were some ladies. Then when the car stopped they came running down the steps and I happened to be the first child out of the car and one lady said to me, ‘Hello, dear’ so I said, ‘hello.’ She said, ‘And what is your name, dear?’ So I said, ‘Anne Alexandre’ and she said, ‘and how old are you dear?’ So I said, ‘Ten’ whereupon she looked at the lady next to her and she put her hand on her shoulder and she said, ‘oh, thank goodness they do speak English!’ This was at Stockport Town Hall. They said, ‘Come along in children’ - they were rather posh Stockport ladies - ‘come along in children.’ So we went in, into this beautiful big hall, I can see it now — it had big black and white stone flooring. Then there was a beautiful stone staircase going up there with a stone balustrade. If you looked up you could see doors and a walk way going around like that but in front of us were these big doors and they were opened and it was a great big room with a stage at one end and the curtains were open. Just as you went in here there was an area with red curtains around it and you could hear babies crying and mothers whispering so that was obviously for mothers and babies. All down this big hall were camp beds in rows, head to head, here and there a chair and little walkways between each, all the way down the centre — this was Stockport Town Hall Ballroom you see. There was nothing on the stage.
So we all assembled and they showed us where our bed would be then they said, ‘Now just sit down on your beds, children until everybody is in.’ Then when we all got in they said, ‘Now then children, it’s half past five in the morning and you’ve had a very, very long day. We’ll show you where the toilets are, you can go to the toilet, wash your hands and face and come down again and lie on your beds with your clothes on and then we’ll wake you up when it’s time for breakfast. So they took us up this stone staircase to show us where the toilets where and we all washed our hands and faces and we went back down again and lay on our beds and of course we were really tired so we did go off to sleep. Then they woke us up about eight o’clock and then they said, ‘Now, come along, we’ll show you where you can have your breakfast.’ Halfway in this Ballroom there were some more fairly big double doors and we walked down a wide corridor to another big room, not as big as the Ballroom but it was a big room. In this room there was a big long table all down one side. There was a tea urn, I think there was a portable vat of porridge it seems to me, lots of bread and butter, milk, tea for the teachers and of course hard boiled eggs and that was our breakfast, while we were in Stockport Town Hall that was the same breakfast every morning. And every night when you were sitting on your bed in your pyjamas they would come round with a trolley and they would come up very close to each child and say, ‘Have you been today?’ And if you said, ‘no’ they gave you a dose of Syrup of Figs so we very soon learnt to say that we had been, even if we hadn’t!

There was a room upstairs, up this lovely stone staircase and along the corridor, there was a room there with a lot more clothes. So we all would take it in turns, about four or five of us to go in at one time to find something else and the ladies, these very nice ladies would be helping. One day I was looking for another dress and this very nice lady who’d welcomed me, they’d got to know our names of course and she said to me, ’Did you have to come through the Mediterranean to get here, Anne?’ But in the daytime we would go out with our teachers in little groups and we found the swing park, we found the library, we found the Art Gallery, we went to the town and we loved the market. We all had pocket money in our purses and of course we could buy things like cherries, well I hadn’t ever tasted cherries, I don’t know if anybody grows them in Guernsey but I’d never tasted fresh cherries only tinned ones. A lot of us hadn’t and of course we would buy a pennyworth of cherries, oh, that was lovely. In the market they had this wonderful machine - we used to stand in awe looking at it. It was glass sided and there was something bubbling inside there and suddenly it would make a sort of plopping, gulping noise and this mechanical arm would come out and drop in bits of dough. They would go round and another one until it was full of these things bubbling and going round in these bubbles and suddenly another mechanical arm would lift one out and put it onto sugar paper outside and that was an American doughnut machine. There was a lady there who, with a pair of tongs, would turn it over and then of course she would sell them. Of course we’d never seen that so we would buy cherries and American doughnuts. It was a nice market. There was an outside market and a covered market. I don’t really know how many days I was in Stockport Town Hall. And of course one by one various children would start coughing or they would develop spots or whatever. So when the first one got a few spots and a cough they moved the bed of that child onto the stage and drew the curtains. Of course one by one more children did get coughs and things.

Anyway, eventually one Saturday afternoon we were all inside, I don’t know what we were doing, but anyway there was an announcement over the sort of tannoy system, ‘Would Anne Alexandre please go to the office.’ So I thought, oh I’ve been a naughty girl, what have I done? Anyway, I went up there to the office and there was standing a very nice little round faced smiling gentleman with his wife and two children. He said to me, ‘Hello Anne, do you remember me? I’m your mum’s cousin, Cyril!’ He said, ‘Do you remember I came on holiday to stay with your grandma with uncle Tom?’ Well I knew uncle Tom because he was my grandmother’s brother and he used to come nearly every year with somebody or another, usually his wife auntie Flo but I know he had brought his sons once or twice. So I didn’t really remember Cyril. He said, ‘We don’t know where your mummy is but I’ve come to take you to live with us until I find where your mummy is.’ Now he really was my mother’s cousin and he was a secretary at the Manchester Education Department and he knew that lots of Channel Islands schools and people were around the Manchester area. He had been doing absolutely sterling work for the family because he’d already found my mother’s cousin Mollie who had come over with her two small children and she was in a church hall not too far away, I didn’t know she was near me. Her husband Len, who had come on the very last boat with a lot of men was in another church hall with just men and they didn’t know and Cyril had got them together.

Then another cousin of mine, Josie who was a bit younger than me, she must have been six or seven I think by then, she was with the ‘little ones’ she hadn’t come up into the ‘big’ school yet and they were in another hall. Cyril had taken Josie up to her step sister Kathy in Beverley so he really was working hard for the family. So of course I had to pack my little suitcase and off I went with Cyril and his wife Doris and their two children Marjorie and Ralph. On the Monday I went to school with Marjorie. I don’t know what time of June maybe it was towards the end of June but anyway I went to school with Marjorie until the end of term. Then we went on a little holiday with Cyril’s brother Roland and his wife and little boy, Michael. We had two holiday cottages near Rhyl in Wales and we had a wonderful week. It was lovely because we children would just get up from the breakfast table, run over the dunes and we were on the beach. So we had a lovely time. On the way back, as we were driving back Cyril said, ‘Your mummy is coming to fetch you on Monday Anne so when we get back home we’ve got to get you ready.’ Sure enough my mother came to fetch me.

My parents had left on a boat with my grandpa Alexandre and it was a wood boat with very limited accommodation because they had decided that they would go to my mother’s other brother, Jack. He had been invalided out of the Army being stone deaf. He had been a young soldier, from the age of 16 I think but he had been invalided out when he 26 I believe. He and his wife had taken the managership of a pub on Salisbury Plain. At the beginning of the war he had said to many relations, wherever they where in Guernsey or London, wherever — if you are ever bombed out or need anywhere — come to us because we have got plenty of rooms. It was one of these big old pubs with rooms. So they had decided that they would go to Jack’s. So they went to Jack’s and my mum’s sister Dulcie, she was there as well with her little boy Michael. Every day my dad would go out within a 20 mile radius of Salisbury to try to find work and there was nothing. Of course in Guernsey they didn’t have these cards that they had to have for the Labour Exchange in those days, they didn’t have anything like that in Guernsey you see. Of course that was why he couldn’t get a job but he didn’t really know that. But anyway he used to help Jack in the bar in the evenings and after a couple of weeks some chaps where there in the bar and they said to my dad, ‘Well you want to go up to Coventry Jim if you haven’t found work. Coventry is safe as houses it’s in the centre of England the Germans will never get there. There is loads of work. You can work in a factory doing your war effort. Ruth can help you and what not.’ So they decided they would go to Coventry for the day. Auntie Dulcie had said to them, ‘If you can find a house big enough for all of us I will stay at home and look after grandpa, the children and the house and get the food ready and you and Jim can get a job doing your war effort.’ So that’s what they looked for. They both found jobs. My mum was going to work for Marconi, I think it was Marconi, building radios, I’ve forgotten what my father did. Then they went to the estate agent and they found a nice furnished house and they went back to Salisbury and of course then they packed up everything and off they went. They were settled in this house when she came to fetch me.�

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