Evacuees
A group of evacuees came to this village from the East End of London with their teacher Miss Lewis. All the evacuated children attended Ruishton School with the village children and were divided into three classes. The 4/5 - 7/8 years old (infant class) pupils were in the ‘little’ room with Miss Bimm as the infant teacher. In the big room there were two classes. The juniors aged 7/8 – 10/11 years had Mrs. Wickham as teacher, she was also the head teacher. The pupils aged 10/11 - 14 years had Miss Lewis as teacher. In this room pupils were often distracted by what was happening in the other class.

The winter of 1941/42 was particularly cold and the school only had limited heating. In the ‘little’ room there was an open fire in one corner, but elsewhere in the room pupils were cold, particularly those near the door. In the ‘big’ room there was one ‘tortoise’ stove half way along one long wall. Away from the stove the room was cold especially in line of the doors at each end. Before the evacuees arrived the smaller number of pupils could be grouped around each source of heat. Combination of remembered "smells" - coke burning in the stove, milk de-frosting in the 1/3 pint bottles around the stove together with wet footwear drying!

Hot school dinners were provided from early war days and were delivered ready-cooked. These were served to the pupils by the teachers and eaten in the classroom. Whist drives were held during the autumn and spring organised by Mrs. Clapp. Profit from these funded a summer outing for the school children. Many children learnt to play whist during these evenings and everyone looked forward to the Christmas Whist Drives.

There was also a Christmas Party in the ‘big’ room. Paper chains and lanterns were made by pupils from coloured paper to decorate the classrooms.

I left Ruishton school just before my 11th birthday in 1942.

Air Raids
If the "Alert" sounded when we were at school we either sat under our desks or with our backs against an outer wall. At home we went under the stairs. My mother had made beds on the floor of the cupboard and if the alert sounded at night we slept there. The only time bombs fell near to us was one Saturday afternoon. We watched a spitfire chasing a German bomber which off loaded its bombs. They fell in the fields between Lipe Lane and the then Lane End Inn, causing craters which subsequently filled with water. The alert sounded after the bombs had fallen!

(When Bristol was being bombed at night, from our bedroom windows we could see the glow of the fires.)

Food Rationing
Living in the country we were able to supplement our rations with home grown vegetables. we had a large garden and although my father was in the army he always managed to come home on leave in the spring to help dig and plant the garden, and in the autumn to lift the potatoes. We hoped to grow enough main crop potatoes to last through the winter. Sometimes a rabbit would be left outside our door by a kind neighbour who used to go rabbiting

We had an evacuee called Jean Luckett whose two brothers stayed with Mr and Mrs. Rowe of Rose Farm Busby Cross. Sometimes we had eggs from the farm.

When we went into Taunton we always took our supply of paper bags - recycling of bags was vital. If we saw a queue my mother would join the end and either my sister or I would go to the head to see what we were queuing for! (We must have spent hours in queues.) I particularly remember biscuits, including broken ones, and soap flakes so it was important to keep food and non-food bags separate!

The British Restaurant was in the Town Hall building, where Dixon’s etc. are now. It was possible to buy a two-course meal for 1s 6d (7.5p).

During the weeks before Christmas we always saved our sweet ration as chocolate bars, so that at Christmas we could indulge ourselves. Our father always saved his, which he brought home for us when he came on leave having bought it in the NAAFI. Each holder of a child’s ration book was allowed one orange at Christmas. These were brought from South Africa by ship.

In the summer of 1940 block huts were built along the route of the Taunton to Chard railway line. As children, during our school holidays, we helped by twisting wires to hold together the vertical and horizontal rods for reinforcing the concrete before the shuttering was erected.

That same year soldier’s were under canvas in the grounds of Henlade House.

Travel
The only coast we could visit was the Bristol Channel, Weston-Super-Mare and Burnham-on-Sea. (The south coast was out of bounds to all that did not live there.) We would catch a train at Creech St. Michael but only 8 tickets for Weston-Super-Mare, could be issued at that station. We always went with our neighbours Mrs. Parsons and her four boys making 8 with us. John, who was two years older than I, and I together were sent on early to buy the tickets. If others had "beaten us to it" we have had to settle for Burnham-on-Sea where there were no limits on tickets. I never did discover why there was a limit on tickets to Weston-Super-Mare, because we all travelled on the same train!

There was an American airbase at Merryfield airfield, Ilton near Ilminster. When off duty the Americans travelled to Taunton by local buses, and trains on the Taunton to Chard line. By the time the buses reached Henlade, and the trains Thornfalcon station, they were frequently packed to capacity and we would have to walk to Taunton. Towards the end of the spring of 1944, late every evening planes would fly overhead from Merryfield, towing gliders, their engines labouring under the heavy load. They would return in the early hours of the following morning. On the morning of June 6th we -realised the engines sounded different. We looked out of our bedroom windows to see there were no gliders. The invasion of Europe bad had begun. (I later learnt that my mother who worked part-time at the Admiralty (now the Hydrographic) had known the date of invasion, but had been sworn to secrecy.)

Gas Masks
These smelt strongly of rubber and I always had difficulty breathing when wearing them. We had to carry them everywhere and the square cardboard boxes began to show wear. It was then possible to buy cases made of canvas like satchel canvas in which to put the cardboard boxes with the masks.

As the war wore on, prisoners of war started to appear in this area. There was a camp at Puriton. Italian prisoners were transported in army lorries to farms to work and travelled along Lipe Lane. They were dressed in brown battledress uniforms with diamonds cut out which were patched with another colour. They always seemed happy and friendly when they passed and I always had the impression they were pleased to be out of the war.

We followed the course of the war with the help of sketch maps in the newspaper and newsreel at the cinema, the turning point in North Africa as the Eighth army started advancing, on through Sicily and up through Italy. After D - Day allied troops advanced through Europe and into Germany but nothing prepared us for the pictures in newspapers and newsreels of the concentration camps. I have lasting memories of feeling horrified and sickened by what I saw - I was thirteen years old. We were told that the world should know the truth and see the truth and that it should never be forgotten.

It was just two weeks after my eighth birthday that as a family we gathered around the wireless to hear the announcement that we were at war. That was the first time I saw my mother cry.