My mother was fourteen years old when the Great War started and could remember vividly the Zeppelin raids on Hull. During the 30's we had seen newsreel shots in the cinemas of air raids by the Japanese in Manchuria, by the Italians in Abyssinia and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, particularly the raid on Guernica. She was a pessimist, and after Munich and the distribution of gas masks, preparations for war began in earnest and she was really worried about what would happen. At this time I was a pupil at the Hull College of Commerce in Brunswick Avenue which covered a two-year course in commercial subjects. It was a mixed school with ninety pupils in each school year and we had completed our first year of the course in the summer of 1939. During that year parents had been asked to indicate whether or not they wanted their children to be evacuated in the event of war and my mother gave her consent for my sister (who was at a different school) and me to take part. My friend, Kathleen Murtagh, was also a possible evacuee and we hoped we could "be together". We were both in our fourteenth year.
 
We were given instructions as to what to take with is in the event of evacuation - a change of clothing, night clothes, and toiletries which had to be carried in a haversack plus our gas masks. I can't remember if we wore labels. All through August everyone was glued to the "wireless" listening to news bulletins and little groups of people gathered in the streets discussing events. My mother's brother was a "Territorial" and he had already departed with his regiment (the 4th East Yorks). My father was home from sea, and on Thursday 31st August it was announced on the one o'clock news that the evacuation of children would commence on the 1st of September and the various places involved were listed including Hull. My father left that day to go back to sea, my brother was already in the regular army and so my mother had a great deal to worry about.
 
Lilian has already commented on the logistics involved in this great movement of people, and the authorities in Hull had planned for the evacuation of 50,000 children. The evacuation began at 6.00 am from Paragon Station and Hull pier, and continued until 6.00 pm. In the twelve hours over 55 trains and seven ferryboats took the children school by school to the area allocated to them. In the event not all the children who had their names down for evacuation turned up. These figures appeared in a "Flashback" edition of the Hull Daily Mail.
 
My sister left home first and she went with her school to Snainton near Scarborough, and my mother's youngest sister was one of the helpers which pleased my mother. We reported at our school at about 9.30 am and left around 11.00 am as far as I can remember. We walked to the railway station, and I recall how light the traffic was in Ferensway and the newspaper placards announcing the German invasion of Poland. Once we were on our way the teacher in our compartment told us that we were going to Malton.
 
When we arrived in Malton we were taken to a hall and met some friendly ladies (probably the nucleus of the WVS) and given a meal. We then each received a small brown paper carrier containing a can of corned beef, a tin of condensed milk, a packet of biscuits and a Kit-Kat, plus a stamped postcard for writing home. We were then taken by car to the hone of our host family - Mrs Marwood and her unmarried daughter, Ethe1. They welcomed us and were very friendly. We were given a large bedroom with a double bed and also the use of tile "parlour" which contained a piano and as Kathleen and I had had music lessons we were allowed to make use of the piano. Miss Marwood, as we called her, was very kind to us and found out the times of Mass at the RC church and later on arranged for her hairdresser to cut our hair at her expense. War was declared on the Sunday morning and again everyone was sitting by the wireless waiting for news bulletins. On the day before, conscription of all men aged 18 to 41 had been announced. During our stay there we tried to be helpful, looking after our room, helping to wash up and clean the silver on a Saturday morning, but we were never told to do certain jobs.
 
The Head of the College, Mr. George and his wife, plus several members of staff and their families had evacuated with us, and after a few days it was obvious plans were afoot to get the school organised. The local authority had opened up part of the Malton Grammar School including the gymnasium, where we used to meet daily and we used the gym quite a lot in the early days. One favourite pastime was having races up and down the ropes and I learned how to tie two ropes together and swing upside down. The staff worked hard keeping us busy, taking us for walks and we visited Kirkham Abbey by coach and had a picnic there, some hardy souls even swimming in the river.
 
After a couple of week a school was organised. This was in the Friends Meeting House in Greengate, a small building used as a community centre and a children's clinic was held there weekly. We had two rooms with trestle tables and in the meantime members of the staff had returned to Hull, loaded their cars with stationery, books, typewriters etc, and soon we were able to continue our studies. I can't recall how many evacuees there were originally -some did drift back to Hull in the early days, but the numbers in Malton did not need a large staff and when the school opened there were three male teachers and one female teacher - when we had our end of term exams that Christmas my report records 26 pupils. We were given homework and not allowed out at all at night without permission from Mr Parsons who was in charge. Occasionally we went to the cinema and my friend Kathleen who was an exceptionally clever dancer, was given an introduction through our host family to a local dancing teacher, Mrs. McCormack, and was twice the star of the show at a concert for the troops which the teacher had organised. Malton is quite a pleasant country town, with plenty of country walks and we seemed to spend most of our spare time walking round the shops (Woolworths was one) or going for country walks, and later on in this phoney war period when several of us bad been home for a weekend and brought back hockey sticks, we played hockey. One day Miss Fair suggested we play the boys at hockey but it never happened again as the boys forgot the rules and lifted the sticks over their heads - she said it was dangerous and we said it wasn't fair!
 
We wore school uniform and of course stuck out like sore thumbs in the town - they knew ^"who we were" and we had to be on our best behaviour. The main street in Malton isn't very wide and Kathleen and I were on one side of the street when a couple at boys from the school called to us from the other side. We replied and continued our walk, but the next morning in school the sky fell in on us when Mr Parsons admonished us in no uncertain terms about this behaviour saying, "Miss Fair said you were screaming like fishwives!" On another occasion when we had had some heavy snow we were taken tobogganing down a local hill. Miss Fair quite wisely was wearing slacks but by the time we got home everyone knew that our lady teacher had been seen wearing trousers!
 
After a while we moved from the Marwoods and went to stay with Mr. & Mrs. Bradley. They too were extremely friendly and kind to us and I can remember sitting round the fire on Saturday nights either darning socks or helping to patch sheets and listening to Garrison Theatre on the radio.
 
We went home for Christmas and my father was home from sea which was a bonus as his ship was very rarely in Hull at Christmas time.
 
After our return to Malton plans were made for the College to re-open in Hull, and at the end of February Kathleen and I returned home and joined the College again. When Mr. Parsons called for us in the car to take us to the station and saw all the things we had to take home he said, "It seems incredible to look back and realise you both arrived here with a haversack each". We had to change trains at Driffield where I left all my schoolbooks on the station platform and it cost a shilling to get them back again. I kept in touch with Mrs. Bradley for a long while and visited her once in 1941 - she told me they could see the glow in the sky there from the fires in the Hull blitz and her neighbour was so worried about "those poor little kids".
 
I left the school at the end of March 1940, the school having found me a position as a shorthand typist with a local firm. We did not know at that time what lay ahead.
 
Looking back I am grateful to the people of Malton for taking us in and for the College staff for their sterling work in getting the school organised.