Pat Field
Pat Field pictured feeding a lamb during her evacuation in Devon.
Pat Field
Recollections of evacuation to Devon and Gloucestershire
Evacuation to Devon
Pat Field was born in 1934 and lived with her family in Kidbrooke at the outbreak of war in 1939. In June 1940, she was evacuated with her school to Devon. She recalls, ‘I was told that the King had said we had to go out of London. I was quite looking forward to it until the actual morning when I can remember sitting on a table in this basement flat in Kidbrooke Park Road and thinking, you know, ‘I don’t want to go’ and they were trying to persuade me’. Having been persuaded to go with the school to Devon, Pat was billeted with an older couple of a farm. The evacuated children attended the local school but were taught by their London teacher. During the school holidays Pat spent her days on the farm, sometimes helping out with tasks such as picking up potatoes.
Gloucestershire
After less than eighteen months Pat left the farm and moved to Exeter for a short period with her mother who was expecting her second child. It was the intention that Pat’s mother was to find a place at a maternity hospital in the area for the birth but as there were no available places they had to return to London. From the end of 1941 to the end of the war, Pat and her mother were based in London but spent short periods in Gloucestershire during times of heavy bombardment. Considering the time she spent in Gloucestershire, Pat states ‘I loved it around there. We used to [...] run free up in the hills. It was just the edge of the Cotswolds and it was lovely. I mean, terrible thought, but I often think I probably had a more interesting childhood because of the war than if I would have been in London all the time’.
Downloads
Interview with Pat Field (189k)
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Evacuation (148k)
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Life in the Cotswolds (65k)
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Doodlebugs and Flying bombs (127k)
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