London 1944: search for survivors after a V-1 flying bomb attack

• ON a dull and cloudy Saturday, July 8 1944, that is, 75 years ago, I was among a group of children (I was then aged seven-and-a-half, and have now reached the still-active age of 82-and-a-half ) from Kentish Town, gathered outside the then Queen’s Crescent school and transported by coach to Paddington station to be evacuated to Wales.

On that late afternoon 330 evacuees from London were detrained at Lampeter in what was then Cardiganshire, and moved to a grammar school, where we were offered refreshments before being transported off into the Welsh countryside at night to be distributed to the people who would look after us for a year.

I returned to London in June 1945. I mention this often-forgotten evacuee episode of 75 years ago – organised under the rubric of Operation Rivulet and initiated by the government and managed by the department of health and the London County Council because of the onset of the German V-1 terror bombing campaign on June 13 1944 – because I wonder how many of those other 1944 Kentish Town evacuees are still alive?

I also recall that when I lived in Cathcart Street, there, on the night of February 18 to 19 1944 we were very “lucky” indeed not to have been killed by the German Luftwaffe with a bomb which seemed to be heading for us as it screamed earthwards.

Luckily for us, and for all residents and property in Cathcart Street, it landed in the road just in front of the “school” building in Holmes Road, which was then, I believe, a working men’s institute. After the war the building housed the Camden School for Girls.

JOHN P FOX
SE12