Edward Harris was evacuated to Rushden in 1940 and became friendly with a Rushden schoolboy, John Neville. The two have kept in touch over the years and the latest letter from Edward to his old friend John is reproduced below.

Dear John,

Many thanks for keeping in touch about the war years in Rushden and sending me two photos. I have been trying to remember as much as I can about those days but only being seven when the war broke out and eight when I arrived in Rushden with my mother, memories are very faded and I have no one to ask as they are all dead and I have no diaries to refer to.

Based on my memories, my mother Mrs Jenny Harris and I (Edward Harris) arrived in about August or September 1940 from our flat in Holborn in London, leaving my Dad to carry on running his transport company, which was an exempt occupation, in Grays Inn Road. He had been a very young soldier in the First World War and was invalided out when wounded and was not called up for the Second World War. But he went through all the bombings in our flat in Holborn and was often on the roof of the garage kicking incendiary bombs off.

My mother and I stayed at 38 Talbot Road with Mr Percy and Mrs Edna Groome and their black Scots Terrier. This I believe was just after the local school had been bombed and a German plane had machine gunned an area where a lady (Mrs Anderson?) who lived in Talbot Road suffered a wound to one of her legs and a policeman had stemmed the blood flow which saved her. We came to number 38 because one of my father's lorry drivers had his wife move out of London to Rushden. He was Bob Cooper and his wife was Vera Cooper and they had a young daughter. Bob was called up into the army but safely returned after the war.

We used to go to gatherings or parties at the house of Mr and Mrs Hillier, I believe in Highfield Road and they had daughters who were probably in their twenties and great fen to be with.

I know I used to walk round to the Co-op store with my mother and everyone saved up for their "divi" and we collected Stork margarine tokens of some sort. I can only remember two friends, Wally a London boy of my age who lived next door and Madge who lived at the end of the road and we all used to play together and swap comics. There was a whole gang of us, both Londoners and locals. We played in the fields at the end of Talbot Road and had snowball fights in the winter. We were always accompanied by a large Alsatian dog that belonged to a family of Londoners in the last house in Talbot Road.

I remember being in the cupboard under the stairs as "protection" when the German bombers came over to attack Coventry in November 1940. My mother kept me at home as the school had been bombed, streets machine gunned and Coventry attacked and she was taken to Court and fined ten shillings for keeping me away from school. I then went to the hall of the local church, which I think must have been in Highfield Road and sounds like the school you attended and as we are nearly the same age, we may have been there together - a small world.

Saturdays we went to the local cinema, the first time being turfed out of the seats we selected as regulars had the same seats every week. We soon learned which were to be our regular seats.

I went with my mother to Thrapston market and she selected a live chicken for dinner. The stallholder rung the chicken's neck and handed it to me still jerking about. That I will always remember as a "townie" not used to country life but I did enjoy it for dinner and I never became a vegetarian.

Sunday afternoon or evening we went to the Athletic Club and most of the people who were there worked in the shoe making industry. I know Mr Percy Groome was known as a "clicker" but he was called up into the RAF.

I think my mother and I came back to live in a flat in Finchley sometime in 1942 and I went to a little prep school for a year before winning a scholarship to Christ's College Finchley a sort of grammar school and finally moving back to Holborn where I was accepted into Mercers School, situated in Staples Inn in Holborn.

I do not know if any of this is of interest. I cannot remember much else about the time at Rushden.

Best wishes,

Edward

Rushden & District History Society - Volume 19 Number 3 June 2010 page 10.