This is the family that inspired “Evacuees” - my family
Left to right - Sheila Nemeth (nee Gletherow), Violet Morgan (nee Gletherow), Bill Morgan, Edie Howsego (nee Gletherow)
(Photo taken in 2001)
It had always been an ambition of mine to write the story of my family’s struggles, living in east London at the start of World War II. Being a musician, I had the idea of writing it in the form of a “radio play with music”, so that is what I set out to do.
My father died when I was still little more than a baby, so the story itself is compiled from what I’d been told over the years by my mother and my older siblings, the ones who actually lived through what must have been a terrible ordeal. I lost my mother in 1977. We also lost Sheila, the youngest of the three “evacuees” in 2004. In fact, of my parents seven children, there’s only four of us left now, Vi, Edie, George and myself.
Our story begins in the summer of 1939. Britain was on the verge of war with Germany and the rumours were rife in Canning Town, east London, where my family came from, stories of food rationing and the like. One of those rumours concerned the evacuation of children and vulnerable people from London in case war broke out. These rumours were very troubling to my parents who had to weigh up the prospect of keeping the children with them, or for their own safety, sending them off to areas away from the city.
The evacuation, known as “Operation Pied Piper” was voluntary, but due to the risk involved, many families opted for their children to be taken out of London to a safer area. Parents would send their children to school each day with a packed lunch and a change of clothes, in preparation for them being evacuated, but for security reasons, they weren’t told when or where the children would be actually taken. So the children were sent to school this way each day, then come home after school……. until one day, they wouldn’t come home.
On the fateful day, my mother was at home when she heard a neighbour cry out “They’re taking the children now to Canning Town station!” My mother dropped everything and ran to the station, only to arrive there and see the train pulling out with my sisters on board, aged only 7, 6 and 5 years old. It would be some time before she found out where they’d been taken, which was the town of Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire.
Bletchingdon Hall
On arrival, the children were taken to the village hall in Bletchingdon for “billeting”, i.e, the billeting officer would allocate the children to local village people to take care of them. At the end of the day, there were ten children left, including my sisters. A large car, which my sister described as a “shooting brake” arrived carrying Lady Bailey of Bletchingdon Hall, who agreed to take the last ten evacuees.
Lady Bailey’s husband, Sir Abraham “Abe” Bailey was a South African diamond tycoon, who was also a race horse owner, and somewhat a philanthropist. The children were fed and clothed, and stayed at Bletchingdon Hall until shortly after Sir Abe’s death in August 1940. They were then taken from there and billeted in private homes in Bletchingdon village.
Meanwhile, my mother had been evacuated to Bridgewater in Somerset, along with my brother, George, who was just a few months old. She was there for several months until she managed to get to New Marston, in Oxfordshire, where she stayed with a lovely lady named Mrs Harris, who became a lifelong friend.
Later, my mother visited the children at Bletchingdon Hall, and eventually they all went to stay with Mrs Harris in New Marston. The house there wasn’t big enough for them all, so some stayed there while the others slept in a house nearby in Farm Road, New Marston.
My Dad, who was still working in London and serving as an air raid warden during the nightly raids, had secured a flat, the top half of a house in Holborn Road, Plaistow, which the family returned to in 1942, when the blitz was over, for the main part.
Our story ends there, but the war had many eras though, and the children were sent away to Oxford again in 1943. Violet, the eldest, had won a “scholarship” and attended Milham Ford school for girls. The children were back home again when the Germans began sending the V1 "Doodlebugs" in June 1944 (nearly 1,400 of them struck London). They were living in the flat in Holborn Road when a doodlebug dropped on Newport Avenue in the next street, destroying the flats and a few houses in Jenkins Road, down as far as # 51, the house we eventually moved to.
But that wasn’t quite the end of the story……..
At the end of the war, my eldest sister, Vi, met Bill, who was a young lad working for my Dad at the Workers Supply bakery, run by the local Labour Party in Hermit Road, Canning Town. A few years later, they asked my Dad if they could marry. Although they were both still very young, my Dad agreed. Bill had become like another son to him by then.
Vi and Bill were married for over 67 years and received two telegrams of congratulations from the Queen, one on their 60th wedding anniversary and one on their 65th. My Dad passed away in 1952 from a heart attack when I was just 15 months old. Bill then became the closest I ever had to a father in my growing up years. Sadly, Bill died from complications from Parkinsons disease three years ago.
