Evacuation in 1940 - From Ramsgate to Basingstoke

The schools in Ramsgate were evaucated en masse to Staffordshire, but it was decided that I should accompany my father's parents to their youngest married daughter in Basingstoke. On 29 May we went to the Railway Station and it seemed to me, aged seven and a half, that soldiers were everywhere - all over the pavements, filling the entrance hall and all the subways, stairs and platforms. They were very quiet and some did not have their uniforms. On the train they filled the corridors and compartments. Approaching London we could see barrage balloons. We reached Basingstoke in the afternoon and for a time it seemed an idyllic existance, but my grandparents' house was bombed and when some of my toys arrived I began to realise that I wasn't on a summer holiday. In fact the first time I went home was for a week after my grandmother died in 1942. People returning to 'unsafe areas' were registered so that if their accommodation was bombed or shelled the Rescue Teams knew how many people could be dug out. In July or perhaps August 1940 I remember running after a Wall's "Stop Me and Buy One" tricycle with the ice-creams in an insulated box over the front wheel, only to be told all the ices had been sold and I never had ice-cream again until Easter-time in 1945. As the sweet ration was only eight ounces for a four week period I'm afraid to say that I always ate the whole ration in one day and then had to wait another twenty-seven days without any. The only time I had fresh fruit was at Christmas when my aunt always seemed to get Golden Russetts. But while I was still in the Brook Street Junior School one of my friends told me a little shop in Basinstoke had real lemons. My aunt sent me off with the ration books and I was sold nine lemons, but my aunt only got eight because I stood at the bus stop and ate one and I must have enjoyed it bcause I have loved lemons ever since! Oranges were sold by weight, too, but my aunt in St Peters, Broadstairs, was clever - she sent the ration books to the greengrocer one at a time because, she said, it was easier to weigh more accurately three pounds than one. Pregnant woment and children under five had priority over everyone else for oranges and bananas and it was probably in March or April1945 that people like me had a banana since 1940.

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