Evacuation Memories: Growing Up During the War

I was born in 1937 and we lived in Portsmouth. When the war started, my father who worked in the dockyard was posted to Egypt to supervise repairs to damaged ships, and, as the threat from bombing increased, my mother and I were evacuated to Andover in 1941 (I think).

For the remainder of the war, my mother and I lived in the front room of Mr and Mrs Corp's house at 14 Batchelor's Barn Road. They had two teenage daughters, Eileen and Jean (?). Fortunately, we seemed to get on well in what was an overcrowded house. We only had Mr Corp's radio for any entertainment.

I remember Spitfire week in Andover, seeing an aircraft unloaded and put on display in the square. I seem to recall that we collected wastepaper which was sold and went towards the cost of buying a Spitfire.

Later, the Americans came and built an airbase nearby. They organised a Christmas party for local children, but I was ill and couldn't go, but they sent me a goody bag of chocolates and treats. I remember sweets were rationed and almost non-existent, so the contents were literally like gold dust.

One day, we were excited to see a file of soldiers in full battle kit marching down our road, off to somewhere we knew not. It was the day before D-day 1944.

Shortly afterward, we heard a tremendous noise outside and rushed out to see the sky black with formations of aircraft towing gliders (I later found out that the local USAF base was a glider base).

Mum regularly wrote to Dad using folded prepaid airmail letters. His overseas mailbox was c/o HMS Stag. One day without telling her I wrote him a letter, on a plain sheet of paper. I addressed it "Mr Burgess, c/o HMS Stag", folded it, and went and put it in the local postbox without any stamp. Incredibly, he eventually received it. I still have it, though the pencil has almost totally faded.

On a lighter note, there were a lot of American servicemen around the town, and some of them obviously met local girls. I learned that if I saw them in the nearby park, lying on the grass with a girl, if I went and loitered near them, they would eventually offer me a pack of Wrigley's gum to make me go away. Later in life, when I still chewed gum, the taste would instantly transport me back to my childhood!

I still have a letter that I wrote as a young child, to my father, who was overseas at the time. Sadly, it was written in pencil and has faded over time to be almost illegible.