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I was ten and a half when the war began, and having only been at grammar school six months, I was evacuated. On the actual day of evacuation I went to school and had first lesson as normal, after this the headmaster came around with a letter for everyone. We were instructed to go home immediately and give the letters to our parents, ensuring we returned to school by dinnertime. I cycled home and gave the letter to Mum because Dad was at work.

The letter was a list of things to pack; it also stated that if we weren’t back at school by one o’clock it would be assumed that we weren’t being evacuated. I was back at school by one o’clock; and we were all put onto buses and taken to Castle Bromwich railway station. At this point nobody knew where we were heading, including the driver, all he knew was that he’d be routed along the way. At around six o’clock that evening we finished off at a place we later found to be called Milton Mowbray. There were various grown ups waiting, people picked us out and that was the start of our new lives. My friend and I were picked together, which at first we thought was great. It was only with time did we discover that we weren’t welcome at all in our new home.

We were treated quite differently from the rest of the family, for example having to sit at the bottom of the stairs to eat our dinner whilst the rest of the family would all eat together quite comfortably around the table in the dining room. We also noticed that we were given all the food they didn’t want; it wasn’t a very pleasant atmosphere.

Every Saturday I remember we had to go to their farm and muck out the pigs, as you can imagine this was a very unpleasant job to have to do. After just six weeks in this particular evacuation house, my Mother and Father came and created a row because the letters that we’d sent home had not been happy ones. My parents insisted we were moved or they would take us home.

As a result of this, the authorities moved us in with a widow and her son. We were very happy there. The widow’s sister owned a shop so we didn’t go short for luxuries; we were extremely well fed. We stayed there quite contented for the next twelve months. We were evacuated as a school, and returned home as a school in October 1942, a year after our initial evacuation.

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