Evacuee

A Memory of Hinton St George.

I arrived at Merriott with my school shortly after Dunquirke inthe Second World War. I was billeted with the Arnolds. Mr Arnold was a preacher at the local Gospel Hall. I shared the bedroom with their son Eric who was then 15 years. He didn't seem to mind sharing with a 9 year old. After some months I moved to their friends the Richards, whose son Patrick was just one year older than me. We got along very well together. We lived at the manor house, Lower Stret, and with Mr Lye who also lived there ran Manor Farm. I loved to help Mr Lye on the farm, and also loved to go round with the milkman on the horse and trap. The housewives used to come out with their milk jugs and I was allowed to measure out the required amount into their jug. After the best part of a year I started sleepwalking and Mrs Richards was very alarmed one night when she looked in the bedroom and found me sitting on the window sill with the window wide open, asleep! I was sent to a hospital of sorts at Charcombe for observation but stopped sleepwalking and was sent on to a hostel at Cricket Malherbie, a dreadful place. Luckily they soon found me another billet at Merriott, at Beadon Farm. The Crutchers who owned the farm kept about six evacuees all the time, the reason was for them to do all the housework and the farm work. Luckily there was still the school. I got on well with the local lads, and remember the cousins Aubrey and Grahame Rowsells, and Keith Mitchell, all in my class at school, with one of my favourite teachers, Miss Bishop. I remember the other evacuees who suffered with me at Beadon Farm, Fred and Jimmie Dunne, and the Marshalls. An older person I remember with affection is Maud Farr who had the small sweet shop, what a character she was, and of course my girl friend, an evacuee from the Spanish Civil War, Anito Pallamache. After three long years I finally went home to London, just in time to catch the first of the V1's and the V2's. However I now lived at home in a house where there was electricitity, gas and running water, and had my first bath for two years. Back In Somerset, all cooking and water heating was done with paraffin and water was pumped by evacuees from the well. of course no flush toilet, guess who dug the hole and emptied it...

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