Should We Evacuate? -Jean Budden

SHOULD WE EVACUATE?

My father was on the Lifeboat when we were due to be evacuated. My mother was going as a helper with my school, my oldest brother had gone straight into the RAF and the next brother had gone away with the Intermediate School. I was going with the school with my mother who had gone as a helper and the reason we didn’t actually get away in the end was because they told my mother that they didn’t need any more helpers. In the interim she had had a letter from my brother who had gone with the Intermediate School saying “Don’t send Jean on her own, it’s like a cattle market, they just pick you out, we’ll have that one and that one”.

Well I don’t think that happened everywhere but that was his experience. You know, they were put in a big hall and people went round and said, “We’ll have that one and that one”. He said to my mother, “Come with her” but in the end we didn’t go.

My father had gone down to Jersey. We had watched them from our attic windows, watched the Lifeboat going, and it was attacked. I think that was the time when there was one wounded and I think the coxswain was killed, a Mr. Hobbs I think his name was, Hobbs or Zabiela, but of course that was rather frightening for my mother. I didn’t really know what was going on, but she had told me afterwards, “Your father was on the boat.”

Anyway he luckily wasn’t hurt but he was down in Jersey. The boats were going with the evacuees so he rang up from Jersey to my cousin who worked at the telephone exchange and asked if we had gone. She said — “No, they are waiting for you to get back”. But by the time he got back the last boat had gone so that’s how we came to be here. That was why we hadn’t actually gone.
JEAN BUDDEN

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