Memories of Mary Tout (nee White)

Mary Tout - Born 15th June 1938Father: Henry (Harry, but known as Dick) Lovell Seyzinger White (HLS White). Photographer, and keen on first aid and gardening.Born 29th Dec 1910. Married my mother on 28th April 1935. Lived in Kent, right on the border of London, Sidcup UDC.When the war came, Dad was in the Civil Defence and went into the army in January 1942, aged 31. I remember him going down the path. I was 3 and a half—it was a dark January morning. We went back into the dining room, and my mother put her arms around my sister and me, and she cried.My first evacuation was to Exeter at age 2, before the cathedral was bombed. I said of the cathedral, "Oh Mummy, isn't this a big welfare" (clinic).The second evacuation was to Rimington, Lancashire. The nearby town was Clitheroe. I was three. Dad was with us for three weeks, then went back to London. He brought me a little truck. I fell into a well, but fortunately, it was covered. "I was soaked through to my vest!"Dad was then called up on 8th January 1942. He was a hairdresser and a stretcher bearer because he was in the Red Cross. I think he went over on D-Day. He was in Holland, France, and Belgium. My father was in the Royal West Kent Regiment, number 6354706. However, that regiment was full, so he was moved to the Royal Wiltshire Regiment but kept the same number. Wives wore the badges of the regiment.The third evacuation was to Halifax, Yorkshire. An official came with us and had an attaché case with chocolate in it! We had to stay at a school for two or three nights and slept on mattresses. It was a Victorian-type school. On a bus, the people were waving and welcoming us. I remember playing in a park. We stayed with Mrs. Southwell. She had a very grown-up daughter, Joyce, who was 17. Mrs. Southwell taught my mother to make sour milk cheese. There was a fish and chip shop around the corner (run by Mr. and Mrs. Craven). My grandmother (father's mother) came with us from Ealing. She originally came from Sheffield. Mum taught her to crochet. I was 4 then.We went home when I was 5. Cooper's Lane School, SE12.The doodlebugs started on my 6th birthday. I remember my mum talking to the lady over the fence. "On her 6th birthday!" They came continuously from the 6th of June.We had an Anderson shelter in the back garden. My sister remembers Mum running down the garden with a plate of chips in her hand. We had candles in the shelter. We would get up in the middle of the night; Mum would get a few things ready, and off we would go to the shelter.A little girl down the road played with us. When the air raid sirens went off, she would run home but then began to share the shelter with us.The bombs persisted. Come September, we had our fourth evacuation. We went to stay with relatives in Wickhambrook, Suffolk. They had been bombed out in London, and two cousins were killed, aged 13 and 15. We lived in a cottage in Wickhambrook, and I went there and waited in a beautiful garden at Bury St. Edmunds for the bus. We took a single-decker bus. My aunt and uncle had 10 children (two were killed), with some still at home. Quite a crowd there, and lots of Americans were around. A bomb went over, and everyone ran out except my mum—it was not a new thing for her. The toilet was a hut in the garden. The men had to dig a hole to bury the contents of the buckets. We got nits, and my mother had to comb my hair out. It was a farming community, so we didn't starve.We went to the local school, presumably. But when I went to the records office, the records showed: "Two children of Mrs. White refused admission due to lack of accommodation—so many evacuees." Eventually, we were given space and went to school.My Dad came home on leave to the London house. There was a rate demand from the council. The property had been vacant because we were in Suffolk. The official said they hadn't been told. My Dad said, "When there are bombs dropping all around, do you think I am going to wait for you to tell me to send my wife and children away?" We didn't pay the rates.There was a stream there with a plank of wood to cross it. I remember in springtime, there were three classes: one for infants, one for juniors, and one for seniors. We hadn't had the chance to learn. My cousin left school at 14.Come March, my mother received a letter from my grandmother. A bomb had fallen on our road—there had been lots of damage. The ceiling had come down in my bedroom. So Mum thought we had better come home—March 1945. Back to school in London. School was odd because maybe half the children were missing and there were new teachers.The night the incendiary bombs fell, when the all-clear went, I went up into the bathroom and could see a red glow from all the burning. The next day, my aunt came around and said a house in nearby Exmouth Road had its front blown off. For years afterward, there was a brown mark in the corner of our porch—possibly residue from the incendiary bombs.In May 1945, we were on the bus. My mother asked the conductor, "Has the war finished?" He said, "Yes, it has—we heard it on the bus." We called in at my aunt's on the way home, and she was already making a red, white, and blue dress for my cousin.We stayed up late that night. We just sat out on the verge, and everybody was up. Someone got a piano out, and we had a party. They had a marquee and gave a tea for the children. There was a sports day on Mercer's playing field.

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