Personal story:
Iwas just four years old when my parents sent me to Herefordshire from my home in Essex and I became a child evacuee. One day, my father told me had to go away. I burst into tears – I didn’t understand what war meant.
Along with hundreds of other children, I was taken to an enormous building in the countryside. We were terrified. I shared a dormitory with 20 others and every night we wept and wept. We missed our parents so much.
A scary matron would creep along the corridors shouting “In your beds!”
Shortly afterwards, my brother arrived. Swinging on a tree one day, he broke his arm and was sent back. I rushed up to the headmistress and begged: “Please, please, can I break my arm too so that I can go home like my brother?” The answer was a resounding: “No.”
I returned home in 1944. That was when I experienced air raids for the first time.
You dropped everything and ran as fast as you could. The hysteria was overwhelming.
We’d hide in caves under our house, you couldn’t see anything and sometimes we stayed there overnight. I was so frightened and thought
Hitler was down there waiting for me.
There was an extraordinary feeling of family – there were lots of people we’d never even met before but everyone was so kind to one another.
We were living in Kent when the war in Europe ended. The whole village went mad. I couldn’t understand why everyone was singing and shouting: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s finished!”
The neighbours came out of their homes holding glasses and waving flags.
We had balloons and jelly. There were no mobile phones or even televisions, so the news was shared just by people telling one another.
I recently turned 84. A few years ago, I decided I just had to share the legacy of what I went through with school children.
In 2016, I published my book Lotte’s War, about my experiences.
I’ve visited over 200 schools sharing my story and telling pupils what it was like to be a child evacuee and live through the horrors of war.
The children are always fascinated and moved by what they hear. Once, a nine-yearold boy with tears streaming down his face exclaimed: “Gosh, I can’t believe you’re still here. Thank you for being alive.”
I tell them about the rationing, which went on for ten years after the war ended, and how if you needed a shirt you would tear down a curtain and make it.
My parents were great friends with the Churchill family and we used to visit them at Chartwell. Just before war broke out, we all went swimming in their swimming pool.
My brother dived under Churchill, who was floating in the water, and tipped him over!
My mother shouted: “Don’t drown the Prime Minister!” We had no idea who he was.
The school children laugh their heads off when I tell them the story.
On the 75th anniversary of VE Day, I shall be thinking very powerfully of the vulnerability of us innocent people who simply didn’t know or understand what was happening.
And those children whose Daddy’s never came home.
Such courage was shown and such despair was suffered.
After our generation is gone, there will be no-one left to tell these stories. I can’t bear to die yet – there are so many schools I still have to visit.