I was not evacuated during the war but remained at home with my sister May and my parents. We all lived in Hastings where my parents had a hotel near the seafront. My sister and I had a German nanny who was interned until the end of the war – that is to say, she was kept in a secure place, a bit like a prison, in case she tried to help the Germans who were of course the enemy.We all had gas masks to wear if ever the Germans used gas and every time there was an air raid we all had to go to the Air Raid Shelter which was underground, in this shelter we would hopefully be protected if a bomb had been dropped. We also wore identity discs that were small pendants with our names and addresses on them, in case we were injured or lost.In 1940 my new nanny, an Englishwoman named Hermione, married my cousinHarry who was in the RAF. My sister May and I were bridesmaids. So that was the second nanny we lost! One thing I was very worried about at that time was the fact that the wedding cake was kept in the hotel fridge for a week before the wedding. This was a beautiful three tier iced cake and every time a land mine went off I thought it may destroy the cake! (Well, I was only 4 years old at the time!).For quite a few years we were not allowed to go on the beach as land mines were buried there to deter the enemy in case they arrived by sea, and also barbed wire had been placed all along the seafront.All this may sound quite frightening but at the time everyone tried to carry on their lives as normally as possible and May and I went to school and learnt many sports including ice skating, horseback riding and tennis. Our father helped out as an A.R.P. Warden. He was not sent away to war because he had already fought in the first World War and had been left with a weak chest after being gassed.Apart from the permanent residents at the hotel, we had Canadian Air Force officers billeted at our hotel.I remember how very excited we all were when the war came to an end in 1945and we would never again be afraid of hearing an aircraft overhead and would no longer be awoken in the middle of the night to go down to the Air RaidShelter. We had all been rationed as to how much food we could buy and we could only get a quarter pound of sweets or chocolates each week. Because my parents had a hotel we had large boxes of sugar delivered, and my mother let us take a two pound bag of sugar to the local sweetshop and they would let us have one pound of sweets in return!Hastings was spared the bombing so we had it fairly easy during the war, unlikeLondon and the other cities. All the children who were evacuated most have very different stories to tell. It must have been very difficult to be separated from their parents for all that time.
