In 1938, all school children were issued with gas masks. Neville Chamberlain had just returned from Munich with his famous piece of paper. Education at this time called for pupils of 11 years of age to take a entrance examination which would stream them to other more senior schools (Eleven Plus).
I was given the right to a 'free place' in a grammar school if I could pass their entrance examination. So I entered entrance exams for St. Olave's Grammar School - Brockley Grammar School and a school sited in New Cross - Addey and Stanhope Grammar School. The first exam result came through for Addey and Stanhope so my father suggested that I join that school at once as war was looming on the horizon.
Operation Pied Piper was put into effect just days after my entry to the school. One September morning we were herded into buses for the railway station and entrained for our unknown destination.
Other members of my family were sent elsewhere. Eldest sister Joan was evacuated to Hastings, two younger sisters sent Hailsham in Sussex and I was on my way to Burwash, Sussex.
Arrived at the destination, wearing our identity labels and carrying our few belongings in knapsacks or fibre suitcases and of course our gas masks in a small cardboard box strung around the neck. We must have looked a scruffy bunch, because the journey of only 60 or so miles had taken a very long time.
We were lined up for inspection by the villagers who selected the child or children of their choice. My first billet was with a family with two sons who tormented me unmercifully. I wasn't allowed to write home without my letter being read by the landlady, however I managed to smuggle a letter to Dad who came to the village and arranged for me to be moved.
The next home was with a very kind couple, Mr and Mrs Booth at the other end of the Burwash village. He was a chauffeur for a lady who lived in a big house at the end of the driveway. They had one son, Ken, aged about 15, who was very friendly to me. In fact the family treated me as a second son. Ken worked as a butcher boy and I would often visit the shop and help at the slaughterhouse.
Mum and Dad came down to see me as often as they could, the school arranged special parent's trips, and they would also send me a shilling each week. They now had their family spread out all over Sussex.
Addey and Stanhope School held the classes in a large mansion in Burwash Common. My lodgings were at the corner of the country lane, which led to the house of the famous writer and poet, Rudyard Kipling. Sadly, with the war going badly for the Allies, Dunkirk, the evacuation of troops from the continent it was decided by the authorities that we should be moved from the South of England and we entrained for a village in South Wales (Garnant). There I stayed until deciding to return to London to live with my mother after my father was called away to Scotland to work in the docks there.
