BACKGROUND

More about Nina Bawden >
Wartime Cookery and how to feed your kids >
A bit about rationing >
Facts and figures >
Interview with evacuee Douglas Bentley >
Interview with evacuee Gwen Nutting >
Interview with non-evacuee Bette Trenchard >
Stories sent in by readers >

INTERVIEW WITH AN EVACUEE

Gwen Nutting, now aged 84

"I was brought up in a convent, but all us girls attended the local school.

Just before the war broke out we were told that the school was going to be evacuated. The Sisters at the convent decided it would be a good idea for us older girls (I was 13 at the time) to go with the school, so I experienced such a change in my life.

Hundreds of us with our gas masks hanging on our shoulders and a bag of goodies boarded the train – to where? – and we ended up in Ongar in Essex. Presumably safer, although it was only a few miles out of London.

We were taken to a big field where the local residents came and selected who they would take.

A bit like a lottery, only I think I came up with the wrong numbers!

Myself and another convent girl were taken to this most frightening house with these two old dears.

It was awful, my friend Ethel and I were too scared to go to sleep.

I said to Ethel, I am not staying here, I am going to have a word with one of the teachers, which I did.

She said two of the girls from the convent had gone to a billet in a little village two miles from Ongar, and the couple said they would be willing to take two more little girls. Ideal for us.

As they say – Timing is Everything.

It was really lovely, mind you it had its drawbacks.. The toilet was outside, so we were frightened to go out in the dark. There was a tin bath in the kitchen to bathe in about twice a week. We were certainly not used to that after the convent where we bathed every night. And proper toilets.

But they were a very nice couple who had a daughter of eighteen, who looked after us, as her parents would go out every night to the pub. They had a shop in Ongar, so used to meet up with friends.

We had no electric light, just an oil lamp on the table, and a candle to see us up to bed, which more often than not would go out. So we had to fiddle with matches to light it again. Memories of Dickens?

How the other half live. It was a rude awakening.

The little village we were in was called Fyfield. We had to walk to school, there and back every day to Ongar, two miles away, but we did have out own teachers from our school in Leytonstone London, so that was good.

There were only about twelve of us at Fyfield, so it was decided that we were to be moved to where the rest of the school was, to a place called Blackmore in Essex.

I was very sorry to leave our billets. We had had such good times, so it was sad after three months we had to say goodbye.

They were such a nice couple, and so was their daughter.

So goodbye Fyfield.

 

When we got to Blackmore we had to have new billets. Ethel and I went to a couple who were not very nice. Talk about ups and downs! They worked as a housekeeper and a gardener and handy man. So they didn’t have much time for us two girls. It was so different from our time before.

It was November now. I had many rows with this woman. After being there a month I was fed up. She said I was rude and was going to report me to the school, which she did.

I was called up on the platform and shown up in front of all the school. I thought, I have had enough of this, (spirited Gwen, at 13). So I wrote to the Sisters – always go to the top – and asked to come back home to the convent.

One of the Sisters came and took four of us back to the convent. No bombing had taken place in London. The deluge was about to descend on the Capital shortly.

It was nearly Christmas 1939.

But in 1940 bombs were dropping everywhere in London, so the convent was closed down and we were moved to a big house called Burton Latimer Hall in Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire.

You would never know a war was going on. I was there until I was sixteen. Then I got a job and started work.

That’s my story as an evacuee."