Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. When the war ended nobody came to take him home and he was sent to a children's home. When the children's home closed he was given the choice of returning to Tamarisk or to live in another home, he chose Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.

I had said many good byes to all my friends and to my sweetheart Marion, whom I loved so dearly. On our last tearful night we held each other's hands standing on the bridge that crossed the old canal.

I felt utterly desolate that following morning, my last in East Hanney. I had fallen into bed at perhaps five in the morning feeling terribly sick. I hadn't slept all.

Somehow through a haze of tears I shook hands with my 'champion' dear old Grampy. I knew then, as he did, that we might never see each other again. For nearly twelve years of my life Gramps had been the only person I knew I could lean on. The only person I could trust, in fact the only person who had ever cared.

Now here we both were, me looking forward to a new and hopefully a better future, whereas Gramps was nearly at the end of his life. There was nothing to really to say that last cold morning. I watched Gramps ride away to work on his old bicycle. He never looked back.

Mr English, my social worker, was picking me up at ten o'clock so I decided to take one last look at the only place in the world that I could call home. I could hardly see anymore from the tears that blinded my sight.

Perhaps I should have grown up right then and become a man or perhaps I should have done what I had always done when I was in deep trouble run away. The lump in my throat was choking me.

I should have been happy that day! I was going to a far off land to a new start in life, my first adventure! But all I really wanted to do was cry! This tiny fragment of England called East Hanney was my home and the people living there were my family and now for some unknown reason, I was about to turn my back on it all.

The foreboding of it all had been with me for weeks. I didn't want to go away! I didn't want to go to the other side of the world. For the first time in my whole life I had found someone I loved and who loved me back

I tried to convince myself that I was only going for a short while. Just long enough to make a quick fortune. Then I would return rich and my sweetheart and I would get married and live happily ever after. It was the dream that kept me moving forward

That is what I kept telling myself and that is what I thought everyone else wanted to hear. That is what I myself wanted to hear and believe in. I remember putting a little bit of East Hanney soil into a tobacco tin, to take with me to Australia.

Mr English drove me to London and I said goodbye to him outside a gaunt looking building where all us future 'millionaires' had gathered for our last night in England. I listened to the hopes and the fears of all these young men. Young, callow youths trying to be men who had come from all over Britain and gathered here to find their dream.

I lay on my bed that last night in England thinking how much this place reeked of the infamous boys home 'The Homestead' where I had spent so many miserable years as a boy. I could hear crying just like many times before and felt so utterly lonely that I wanted to cry too. I wrote a long tearful letter to Marion knowing sadly she was already just a memory.

February 6th 1952 dawned grey and cheerless as I gazed out the window. We got on the train at St Pancras station and I felt overcome with emotion. I had started my life of loneliness as a five year old evacuee at this very station some twelve years before!

I found myself listening to a very nice looking girl who tearfully was asking me to look after her brother when we got to Australia. The girl looked devastated. There were mums and dads on that train, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles as well. There were sweethearts and friends and there were a few boys on their own like me.

Once at the port I looked up at the rusty black painted ship that towered above me. I had never been on a large ship. The P&O liner, the 'Ranchi' was old and had been sunk twice in bygone wars and there was a brass plaque on one of the dining room walls that mentioned an earlier dunking!

I stood on a deck looking back down at the wharf. It was a long way back down to the ground and worse still it was a long way back to East Hanney! The band was playing with genuine rain soaked enthusiasm. I turned my collar up dug my hands deep within my pockets feeling bitterly cold as I heard them play:

'We'll meet again
Don't know when
Don't know where,
But I know we'll meet again
Some sunny day'

My mind fled back to Marion, the girl that I loved. The deck moved beneath my feet and I watched my country slowly slip past as I looked back over the lights of London town.

Tis Farewell. 1952

THE END