AN EVACUEE'S STORY

With little understanding of what was happening, ten years old Patricia, like many other children, was moved out of London along with her two sisters, having to take responsibility for them and later for her little brother. The secure family life they knew in The City is suddenly taken away, replaced by life in the English countryside of the 1930's, primitive by comparison. Her sisters are moved away one by one and she is left alone for the first time in her life in the care of a well meaning but strict retired Head Mistress, in a large house that has no electricity, no gas, no sewerage and no tap water. Returning to London when all seemed quiet,she is evacuated again when the bombers return and she finds her school bombed or burned and is told to move on to the nearest one still working. More billets, some pleasant and some not so pleasant, altogether she experienced seven billets and fifteen different schools. She learned a great deal about life beyond The City and about people, the kind, the generous, the mean and the untrustworthy. That those experiences made a lasting impression is evident in how much is remembered in this story.