How I Missed the Occupation by Pauline Taylor

Another story from around the time of the German Occupation.The recent Coronavirus outbreak has left students with some of their possessions left behind in England after they made it back to Jersey. For Pauline Taylor, her possessions had been sent on ahead to Jersey... and then she was stuck in England, an enforced evacuee! She mentions working as a teacher a manor house converted into a school. This was common practice - country houses were requisitioned for use as schools for evacuated children from the cities.

After the Occupation, she returned to Jersey, and if she is the same person as Miss Pauline Gruchy Dart (married surname was later Taylor), her details are listed below. I'd be pleased to have any confirmation.

Dart, Miss Pauline Gruchy of Le Mielle Cottage, First Tower
c/o St Margaret's School, Bomer Heath, Shropshire.

How I Missed the Occupation by Pauline Taylor

By rights I should have been in the island with my family and would have been, if the boat from Southampton, on which I was booked, had in fact sailed. My trunk, with all my winter clothes, made it – sent in advance - but by the time my last term at Southampton University College ended in mid-June 1940, I found myself an enforced evacuee.

I was 20 years old, had just over £2 in cash and whatever clothes and possessions which had not been returned to Jersey. When the Hall of Residence closed for the summer vacation, I would also be without a roof over my head. My family back at home must have been extremely worried, but I cannot remember being unduly anxious, and of course, at that time had no idea it would be five years before I saw them again.

A teaching job at a boarding school seemed the obvious answer, but I was late starting to apply (having expected to get a posting in Jersey) and it took a long time to find one. The Summer was spent doing some land work in Hampshire (never, before or since, have I known such backache!) and waitressing in North Wales, where a friend's family generously gave me hospitality. This kept me going until I was offered a post in a small school evacuated into a manor house in Breconshire, where, among strangers, and enduring the rigours of a very severe winter, I was not very happy!

My 21^st birthday was not a celebration. Nevertheless. I look back with some nostalgia to the time when I had perforce to stand on my own feet and learn to take full responsibility for my own decisions. It was a turning point in my life, and one I do not regret.

Throughout the war I had wonderful support from friends and from one group of relatives who had evacuated to London. Occasional Red Cross messages kept a tenuous link with home When Liberation came, I heard Churchill' speech Our Dear Channel Islands" sitting on the floor of the headmistresses study. It brings tears to my eyes still today. A good supply of tissues will be needed in May!