Wartime Evacuation in Reverse - Middleton to London
When war was declared in September 1939, my parents and my older sisters Ann and Sally, then aged two and nine months, were living at Beachcroft, our grandfather’s house in Southdean Drive fifty yards from the sea. The whole area rapidly became a vast armed camp with military manoeuvres accompanied by the screeching and clattering of tanks. There was no chance of those toddlers playing by the sea. Beaches were fenced off with barbed wire, sown with mines and protected by high iron scaffolding. Our mum watched one of the unexploded mines bob about on the waves just yards from the house before it was safely detonated at low tide. There were coastal batteries and gun emplacements in front of the house with relentless overhead activity from the RAF bases of Tangmere and Ford; the latter was shortly to be dive bombed by Stukas. When the military took over in the village, our family did a reverse evacuation in August 1940. Mum hired a lorry, packed it with h...