Follow-up

FURTHER to the letters regarding wartime evacuation, aged ten I was evacuated to Exmouth, as were my brothers, Ronald, 11, and Dennis, 13. I remember being happy, even excited, to be going to Devon, having only been as far as Hastings on the Sunday School yearly outing. Our father had seen us onto the special train at Tonbridge, and we stopped at Salisbury, where sandwiches were handed to us through the windows. After a night sleeping on the floor of a school hall, a girl named Rita Palmer and I were taken to our new home. Our host was a Miss Isobel Wrightson, along with her invalid sister Miss Lucy. Rita and I had a large bedroom and our own sitting room. There was a cook named Alice (with a well-fed cat), and a maid named Jane, who ran off with an American soldier. There were GIs stationed in Exmouth, and some had been billeted with the Wrightson family before our arrival. Miss Isobel told me they were descendants of Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker philanthropist. A cottage in the huge grounds accommodated nuns from Truro. On my 11th birthday, the nuns made me a cake. I can’t remember ever having a birthday cake before this, being number five out of six children. In later life, married with three children, we decided to holiday in Exmouth. I discovered the house had become a hall of residence for students. Gone were the double gates, and the gardens had been replaced by tennis courts. It is 76 years since I was that evacuee kid, but the memories I have remain clear. Doris Large (nee Newman),

Tonbridge, Kent.