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Enclosed letter from my sister in England may be of interest as another letter on war doings. She is a teacher in London schools and has been evacuated with a group of children.
L. M. GAUNTLETT
Glendale, Calif.
Dear Len:
I am evacuated from London with 84 little girls & boys—two to four years old. One morning the Head came along and said "Evacuation tomorrow at 8:15 a.m." At last it had come. Ever since last September the schools have been preparing every detail. All parents had to fill in forms if they wished their children to go with the school in charge of the Teaching Staff. Badges had to be made for every child, gas mask cases, and some kind of kit bag for their food for 24 hours and their change of clothes. . . . No one knew where their billet would be until arrival. In the poorer schools, it was a pathetic sight to see the rags on the children & nothing in their pillowcase, which was all they could get for a kit bag.
Miss Willis with whom I share the flat at Hampstead, is Head of an Infants School of 300. All didn't register to go, but there were the elder brothers & sisters who could be included with the little ones if their parents wished, and vice versa, but they mostly chose to leave the little ones in their own environment and let the elders join them. Some little ones went to the upper school, but the teachers were glad not to have them! . . .
It was a terribly wearing time. They lost their labels, the parents kept altering their minds & going on or coming off the register & each day returns had to go to County Hall & to Government Offices. . . .
Miss Willis' three departments number about 900, & they started off at 8:45 to walk, dragging their bags, to their arranged place of transport. There, all was a seething mass of children from schools all round, & frantic officials, trying to get them into the trains. They were put in just anywhere, & schools have got separated. The head master is in Scotland with 25 boys—Miss Willis is at Henley-on-Thames with seven members of the infants' and men's staff. They are having half sessions in the Village School. One room with all the village children in the morning, the same & only room for the Bevington children from 1:15 to 5:30. It is chaos of course, & can't last. The girls' school head is somewhere else with some staff & children. I have heard from friends that the same has happened to them. Children & staff are billeted in cottages, houses, mansions, in a hopelessly mixed way. Some have clothes, some have one rag . . . .
. . . The schools are scattered all over England & Scotland. My school is at Shirley near Croydon, and Miss Willis' in Kensington—and we have discovered each other quite near! Taplow Lodge is an empty house (Georgian) lent by Lady Astor. About 20 rooms, and quite all right as temporary quarters. There is no furniture. The babies' mattresses are on the floor—five large rooms full. Most of the staff are managing in the servants' quarters, & the Head & I have a furnished bedroom each—that is to say a few necessaries put in, & a comfortable bed.