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1229Constance Helen Jessup
I lived in Lewisham London and was evacuated in 1939 to Wye in Kent and was in the church of st Gregory and st Martin in Wye to hear the announcement of the start of the war on the radio, I was billeted in a Mansion with about 5 children ,the house was owned by Captain Horsley,(I have seen his grave behind the church) the mansion is now a school. On the day that war was declared the sirens went and we all rushed home to a gas - proof room. During the 'Phoney War' I went back to London as it was quiet, but before the Blitz I was again evacuated to Dorset, we all sat in a school room in Buckhorn Weston and we waited to be picked. I ended up with Mr and Mrs Bowden of Brook Cottage, Buckhorn Weston and stayed with them until I was 14 years old ,washing water was obtained from the stream outside and I had to go up to the farm and fill a milk churn with drinking water from a tap. I have revisited the cottage in the last few years ,it is now a holiday cottage ,I was allowed to go in and see my old bedroom, another child Sybil Chapman was also billeted there she later married a farmer having been in the land army.I was brought back from Dorset in time to be bombed out of 23 Leahurst Rd, Lewisham by a doodlebug and had to start work at 14 and worked at Chiltonian Biscuit factory, I was there when the Sandhurst school was bombed killing so many children. I married Richard Gordon Ackrill after the war He served in the East Surrey Regiment at the end of the war after working at J Sainsbury in Catford and Fire watching he had 4 brothers all of whom served Throughout the war and all of whom survived. They were Jim a Sergeant Major on Crocodile flamethrower tanks, Peter a bren-gunner who landed in Normandy, Ted who fought through Burma against the Japanese and Jack who again was in the far-east.
Constance Ackrill
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