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That first winter of the war was a very cold and snowy one, with the snow being quite deep especially where it drifted. As the main front drive of the convent was on a slope we had great fun, plenty of room to make a slide, which because of the slope, it gradually got longer and longer. We even persuaded Sister Augustine, one of the Irish nuns to join in, much to the amusement of everyone watching from the windows of their room.If we could get Sister Augustine in a good mood and she wasn't busy she gave an impromptu Irish dance for us. Sister St Louis was the needlewoman of the house, her embroidery was exquisite and I spent hours learning various stitches from her. If it was Sister Columba on dormitory rota then it was Irish folk stories that night, long after any of the others put out the lights. Stories of her childhood in France from Ma Mare when it was her turn and when it was Sister Christine, it was us who helped her to wrestle with the English language.

During the summer months we played in the two fields belonging to the convent, keeping a wary eye open for the two cows the nuns kept. We helped in the kitchen garden when it was fruit-picking time, the first few weeks of the war we all went off to school with ripe plums or greengages in our pockets, given to us as we left by one of the nuns. In no way were we pushed into any help we gave, encouraged, yes, but forced no. At harvest time was when us Londoners got a real taste of country life.One of the local farmers gave the convent permission to glean his corn fields All the corn gathered was threshed back at the convent by the older big girls and it was used to supplement the ration allowed to feed the chickens that were also kept. In a way it was a very self sufficient life, fruit and vegetables from the garden, milk fresh from the two cows, with plenty of eggs from the chickens. As time went on and there were fewer evacuees at the convent those left offered to help more and more in different ways. All the refectory washing up was done on a daily rota, supper trays were taken up to the old ladies up-stairs. My lady was the only non-catholic in the bed-sits, so it became a natural choice for us to be paired. Later it was a natural progress to help in other ways. Sister Augustine was in charge of cleaning the chapel and the up-stairs main hallway, so my Saturday job was to sweep the front steps and clean the front hall. I used to love it the weeks the tiled hallway was due for a polish, with dusters on my feet it became a lovely slide. In other words the little jobs we did were the sort we well might have done at home to help mother.

It was not all fun and freedom, we did get regular air-raid warnings and being in the country and in a fairly isolated position we could hear not only the siren from Baldock itself, but also from the various villages nearby, so in time each siren became easily recognizable to us. On the nights it was decided we would go down to the cellar to sleep it was the order of the sirens that quite often helped the decision. As well as the high pitched "moaning minnies" there was one siren we all called growler from a nearby factory Growler was usually the first to sound off if the raiders were heading in our direction and always the last to sound the "all clear". Although the warnings became quite regular, apart from a few incendiaries being dropped between Baldock and Weston there was only one bomb that I can recall, that landed in a field of Brussel sprouts some 300 yards from Growlers factory. A good job it wasn't a direct hit, the factory was making munitions, instead about twenty sprout plants were uprooted leaving a crater some ten foot across. Although that was about the actual amount of bombing near us, we often saw enemy planes on their way to have a go at airfields that were not all that far away, between Royston in Hertfordshire and the outskirts of Cambridge. I can remember on one occasion walking "home" after school there was the sound of rapid gunshots, then my friends and I saw a low flying plane following the line of the railway machine-gunning a train on its way to Cambridge. Again the height of the convent and its location also gave us good views for miles around. During the height of the blitz by looking out of the dormitory windows we could see the red glow of the fires in London, possibly the docks.
As usual once you try thinking back more and more incidents are remembered. For instance writing letters home. What 8 year old really ever thinks about writing a letter let alone to his or her parents if they have never had the need to write more than a "thank you" letter to a relative for a present or to Santa just before Christmas. In fact the sole extent of my letter writing at the beginning of September 1939 was one to Santa the previous year. To make certain that I and the other evacuees did write to our parents one of the weekly English lessons was set aside for this at school. Old partially used exercise books being used to provide the writing paper. Pages were torn in half length wise and given to us to write the all important letter on. Most I assume contained the plea "when can I come home " while the rest a thank you for the postal order and "when are you coming to see me'. For the envelopes the cover of the exercise books were made use of, so a tiny envelope about 3 inches by 3 inches was used for our tiny half page letters. These were sent to our London School in bulk, after the teacher had carefully checked each of us had addressed our letter correctly. Sometimes they went by post or entrusted to a parent who had come on the weekly coach and then distributed with the help of teachers who had stayed behind or parents at the other end. This continued for about 18 months or so, but as the number of evacuees dropped the letter writing lesson came to an end and we were expected to write and post, our letters ourselves.

I mentioned previously that when we arrived at the convent there were already some slightly older girls who regularly stayed during school holidays as their parents were in business. I did not however mention that these girls were of French or Belgian/ Italian or Italian parentage, so all were bi- or even tri-lingual. Quite a little "League of Nations" in fact as well as the religious differences.On the whole we got on very well despite the many differences there were. Of course there were squabbles and faIlings out, like there are in any big family, but these were soon forgotten. One thing that might have worried the evacuees parents, once they were aware that their daughter was being fostered by a Roman Catholic Convent, would their daughter be influenced in her religious thinking. This was cleared up before any worries could start. Ma Mare wrote to each set of parents the day we arrived explaining that we would all be well looked after and no pressure would be put on anyone to alter their religion, all she would ask was that we would all attend either Sunday School or a Church service each Sunday, which one was entirely up to the individual, though if we chose to attend a service in the convent chapel we would be more than welcome. For the next few months we must have driven the local Sunday Schools mad. We had decided among ourselves that as there was a choice of Church of England, Methodist, Congregational and Baptist in the town we would all go to each in turn. Having got extra chairs to accommodate the original 12 of us one week, that Sunday School was left with empty seats as we had all gone somewhere else the next. When the Sunday School teachers called at the convent to complain about our odd behaviour Ma Mare in her very best English told them that the rota was our own idea after she had expressed her wishes for us to attend Church on a Sunday. This erratic way of attending Church lasted until the heavy snow we had during the winter of 1939-40 when we decided that we could keep warmer by attending the evening service in the chapel.

Quite early on in the war the local Civil Defence held an exercise in The Avenue Field where on our first day we were sorted into groups. Volunteers were asked for to act as casualties. I went along with several of the other girls and eventually was given a luggage label with my injuries on it to tie round my wrist. I was quite upset to find that I only had a small head injury while my friends had broken legs and arms. Whether they had run out of ideas by the time they got to me or not I don't know. It could have been that they were not sure how I would re-act to being well and truly tied up as I was almost if not the youngest to volunteer.

It must have been quite soon after the snow finally cleared that first winter when the army first appeared . Several large empty houses in the town were requisitioned and used as barracks. Once again The Avenue Field was brought into use, this time to park all the lorries. Being that the field got its name from an avenue of Horse Chestnut trees through the centre I suppose the army made use of them for camouflage where the lorries were parked up. Soon on our way to and from school we would stop and talk to the soldiers. Just about everyday things like what we had done at school and they would tell us the up-to-date news of their children. Then just as suddenly as they appeared they were gone again to be replaced by another group soon after. Because they did not have any shoulder flashes to say what regiments they were from and we certainly didn't ask, the only identification I can recall is the insignia painted on the mudguards of the lorries. A clenched fist covered in armour, a bulldog, sideways on but with its head facing and for a very short while a bow and arrow, the latter was red while the other two were white.

One day, it must have been either a Saturday morning or during a school holiday, we learned that a plane had crashed on the way to Norton. This was along the route we had taken to the park on the day war had been declared. So off we went and when we reached the small level crossing there was a small crowd. A few other children possibly from Norton or Letchworth a couple of policemen and some other adults. Most of the plane had already been taken away but there were quite a number of pieces of wood, not very large but all painted bright yellow. When someone asked why we were told it was because it was a training plane and the blood was because the pilot had been killed. In recent years having visited the Mosquito Museum at Salisbury Hall, Herts., and seen the prototype Mosquito they have there painted in the same bright yellow it has crossed my mind more than once as to whether the few remains of the bright yellow "training " plane was the one which Geoffrey De Havilland was flying when he was killed flying an early Mosquito which he had insisted on being painted yellow. The area in which this plane crashed was not all that far from Hatfield as the crow flies.

Once America came into the war at least one of the airfields on the Hertfordshire/ Cambridge borders was taken over by the USSAF and it became quite a common sight to see members of the USAAF, especially the officers in Baldock. On one occasion when I was in the town, either having gone for a walk or to do some shopping an American officer stopped and asked me the way to The George and Dragon, the, to me, big hotel that still had a restaurant. I pointed out that it was a short way down the road on the other side and after he thanked me we both went our separate ways. Of course when I got back to the convent I was full of the fact that one of the Americans had stopped me tor directions. A week or two later, this time with a couple of the other girls I was again in town and the same American came towards us, saying "Hi" as he passed and once again thanking me for the directions I had given him the last time we had met. I couldn't understand why my friends were so excited, then they asked me if I knew who it had been, having said no they couldn't tell me quick enough that it was Clark Gable. At the time I didn't even know who Clark Gable was until they showed me a photo in a copy of Picturegoer that one of the other girls had back at the convent.

Earlier I mentioned that some of the "holiday" girls, who also became evacuees like the rest of us, spoke fluent French or Italian. even both. Although I never, at that time, learned to read or write in either language I did come to understand them when spoken and could even manage a few phrases myself. This became quite useful later on when some Italian POW's began to help on local farms. We had heard, goodness knows how, that they were to be transported to and from the farms in lorries everyday and that they would have an identifying circle on their backs. One day as we were all on our way to school two lorries passed us, each with about 20 POW's in the back, all looking very downhearted. As soon as the other girls realised who they were they called out "Good morning" to them in Italian, the look of surprise on the POW's faces to have been spoken to in their own language by a group of schoolgirls walking along an English country road was amazing. From then on we always looked out for them, greeting them according to the time of day. My Italian must have been atrocious, but at least they found it understandable. In time, although they were not supposed to, some of the regular drivers would slow down when they saw us and the Catholic girls if they were with me would hold longer conversations, even if the reply had to wait until the following day.

Thinking back the only things I and my fellow evacuees at St Josephs Convent, missed was the fact we very rarely saw a newspaper or heard the radio, so in that respect I was very ignorant as to what was happening in the war. This I discovered during one lesson at school, when the class was covering "Current Affairs" I knew nothing of El Alamein, Tobruk, or come to that Dunkirk. One funny incident from school was the day I had to explain to the Domestic Science teacher why I hadn't got my apron with me. How do you make a teacher believe that you couldn't bring your apron because the cows had eaten it ? I couldn't and had to do 100 lines "I must remember to bring my apron".
Once the main blitz was over I did return to London for week-ends or during short school holidays. In the end as all was quiet my parents finally let me return for good in July 1943, but I have never forgotten the foster home I had during the war, I was well looked after, well cared for and above all it gave me an insight into other peoples way of life that I would never have experienced otherwise.

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