From London to Amberley and Back

The contributor was born in London and lived there with her parents, who were both disabled. One of her father's disabilities was being deaf. He was very keen to do his part for the war and applied to become an ARP, but was refused on account of his deafness. He wouldn't be able to hear the voices of people trapped in bombed buildings.

In 1944 the contributor and her mother decided it would be safer to move out of London. Because of her disabilities, her mother was finding it increasingly difficult to get to their shelter when the sirens sounded. So the contributor and her mother were evacuated together to a family in Amberley, West Sussex. But it wasn't a success. They didn't get on with the family they were billeted with. After a while, the contributor's father came to visit them. Her mother said to him, "We are coming home". And so they returned to London, where they lived until the end of the war, their home not being bombed.

One memory that the contributor had of her stay in Amberley was seeing a cow in a field being blown up by a bomb. Years later the contributor returned to Amberley but was unable to find the house that she was evacuated to.