Follow-up

NOT all evacuee experiences were negative. I was born in Rosyth after the war as the youngest of a large family. My father, a shipwright, after enduring hard times on Clydeside, had accepted a job in Chatham Dockyard, offered by a visiting re-armament recruitment team. Years later, I asked my parents why they had chosen to uproot themselves when war was imminent. They told me that having no radio and being too poor to buy newspapers, the war was a surprise to them! I do not know how common it was for mothers to be evacuated with their children, but when the bombs started falling, my mother and older siblings were allocated accommodation with a childless couple, Mr and Mrs Jackson, in Faversham, Kent. My father transferred to Rosyth Dockyard, with his family following later. My mother and Mrs Jackson became friends who wrote for years after the war. Mrs Jackson sent presents to us children and, though distance was more of an obstacle then, she once visited us in Rosyth. My siblings have fond memories of Kent.