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My Longest Day
Journey date 12/12/41

We stood together on the station platform, my two sisters and I. It was eight o’ clock in the morning. There seemed to be a lot of children although we were the last to be evacuated from Southampton. I think there must have been a hundred.
The train huffed and puffed into the station. My sisters both began to cry and held my mother’s hands. Perhaps if there had been another hand I’d have held one too.
I did not feel like crying. I felt excited. I was eight years old, my sisters ten and twelve. We had never been away from home before.
The train arrived packed with children. Every carriage appeared to be bursting at the seams. I didn’t see any grown-ups.
We were thrust into the train and it started off almost immediately. I managed to get a look at my mother, she looked very unhappy.
I sat holding my carrier bag which held one change of clothes, a few sandwiches and a Christmas present. My mother had given each one of us a Christmas present in advance. ‘’Just in case’’ she had said.I knew what the present was, we had opened them because my mother liked to see us open our presents. It contained lots of little things, one I remember very clearly was a white handkerchief with pink strawberries all over it.
I felt in the carrier until I found the present, and pulled out the handkerchief. I remember that handkerchief. It was a great comfort to me.
The window in the door of the train had been left open since we had left the station. I held the handkerchief tightly in my hand and let it flutter in the wind. My mother will see it and know I am waving to her I thought. We must have been somewhere near Lyndhurst by then.
I sat like that for half an hour or more. At last a lady came into the compartment and closed the window, telling me that I should not wave things out of the window as I would attract attention from the air.
I remember feeling an awed sense of importance at being capable of doing such a thing, certainly not frightened.
All the children were very happy, my sisters had cheered up and were chatting quite gaily. I decided it was time I cried and did so. The more I pretended to be upset, the more attention I received and I enjoyed that very much. I must have really cried because I remembered the handkerchief was a wet ball.
We ate our sandwiches. Most of the children in the carriage seemed to be from Southampton, they all had sandwiches. The children who said they were from London had none.
The train stopped in the forest, not at a station. There seemed to be dense woodland all around us. I thought we must have arrived and looked with interest at where we were to live, perhaps out in the forest among the trees.
The lady who had closed the window came into the carriage and told us we were stopped because of an air raid. I felt quite safe there among the trees with all the other children.
It didn’t seem long, probably half an hour and the train moved off again. I think it must have been the slowest train ever built. I don’t remember passing through a town. I had never seen such endless country and I remember being terribly hungry and thirsty.
We stayed on the train all day. Once we stopped at a station and people came to the carriage windows and gave us buns and biscuits and I shared a cup of water with someone. I remember one girl on the train who was from London. Her hair was so curly it reminded me of a huge nest of money spiders. I had seen one hanging from the clothes post in the garden. She seemed terribly hungry and took up a lot of room in the carriage.
I felt better after the buns. I can’t think why it took so long to arrive at Dorchester. It was dusk when we were at last able to get out of the train. We must have looked dreadful. We had been shut up since eight o’clock and it was probably about 3:30 when we lined up on the platform. Our labels tied to our coats, our carrier bags held firmly, we three sisters stuck together like glue.
There seemed to be a never-ending line of us as we trailed along the street. I remember people standing in groups staring at us. I felt very much like crying then and very cold, it was after all, December.
We were herded into a hall where long tables were set with heaps and heaps of food. I think for a moment everyone went wild, we snatched and ate and ate. We behaved like hooligans copying the worst behaviour and enjoying every minute. It was very warm in the hall and the lights were bright after the dismal train. We were paraded before a doctor as I suppose he must have been, and a nurse. They gave us a medical inspection through our coats and hats. We were issued with coloured cards and divided into groups.
Outside in the cold night air again we boarded buses. Through the night in the almost non-existent light of the bus. On and On, we were all cold. After a few stops, during which the bus had been inspected by strange people coming aboard to seek out groups of children, there were only six of us left upstairs and it became bitterly cold. Apart from the driver there was no adult. It seemed we had been on the bus for ever, I began to despair. The children were quarrelsome, my sisters too tired to be of any help. I cried and cried. My handkerchief dried out now and stiff, became a wet ball for the second time that day. I remember the taste of that handkerchief. I bit it and chewed it and dragged my teeth through it, feeling it tear into long gaping holes.
I must have fallen asleep for when I awoke the bus had stopped and people were coming up the stairs. Very kindly people who smiled at us. I don’t think anyone had smiled at us before during that day. I remember particularly the vicar, who helped us down the stairs and into a tiny school house. Here it was very warm and we were half frozen and quite stupid with sleep.
We sat on the floor in groups and a lot of grown ups sorted us out like so much jumble. Gradually every one disappeared through the door just leaving the six of us. The vicar was saying. ‘’The farm will take four and the cottage two.’’
We were then parted. My middle sister was put with the other three children. The last pencil line was drawn through the list.
We were once more out into the night. This time in a car with the kindly vicar. He drove quickly through the lanes. It was very dark. We said goodbye to our sister at the farm. The vicar, telling us to stay in the car, disappeared into the house with the four children.
We sat in the car. I was too frightened to move it was so dark and quiet. I was far more used to rattling tram cars and the rows and rows of houses.
At last the vicar came back and in a matter of minutes we were at the cottage, stumbling up the path almost unconscious with fatigue.
Inside the house was a table set with more food. A tall man with a friendly smile, a girl about twelve years old and the roundest sweetest pleasantest plumpest lady I had ever seen. ‘’Its eleven o’clock, we’ve been waiting hours!’’ she said. I gave her the crumpled carrier bag. I was glad to be home.