Former railwayman Terry Root, 90, shares his memories of arriving in Swindon as an evacuee from London

Former railwayman, 90-year-old Terry Root reflects on his experiences of arriving in Swindon as an evacuee - a town he would come to call home.

With his gasmask in a box slung around his shoulder and carrying his worldly goods in a small briefcase, 12-year-old Terry Root arrived at Swindon railway station - confused but filled with a sense of adventure.

In 1939, Terry was just one of thousands of children who were evacuated from London at the outbreak of war - now 90 years old, he can remember the events of that day 78 years ago with astonishing clarity.

“When I got up to go to school that morning, I had no idea that I would be evacuated that day. I was living in London at the time and attended East Ham Grammar School.

“It was the last week in August 1939 when the decision was made to evacuate. All through that week, everyone in the school had to take a day bag and their gas mask because we had to be ready to go immediately if it was decided that we would evacuate that day.

On Friday September 1, when it was clear that war with Germany could not be avoided, we set off for Paddington Station and travelled to somewhere called Swindon - I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to my parents.

“I was fully expecting it to be somewhere by the seaside, because every other journey I had taken by rail had been to somewhere on the coast.”

The group of boys was led to a fleet of waiting buses.

“It was all very strange to me because they were these brown and cream coloured buses and of course, as a London lad, I just assumed that all buses were red.”

This was a far cry from Terry’s early childhood growing up in East Ham, London. Terry was the only child of Edith a seamstress and Sam a grocer.

“East Ham at that time was quite a respectable area, it is near the docks and near Chinatown so it was an exciting place to grow up.

If you can imagine, there were very few cars about, there was one car on our street, owned by an Italian man. At that time people mainly used trams and buses to get about. I remember rollerskating around the streets, being tugged along by my dog - it’s funny to think that you could do that then… I don’t think many parents would let their child rollerskate around the streets nowadays.”

On arriving in Swindon, the 100-strong group of boys gathered in the hall of Lethbridge Primary School where they were each issued with a bar of chocolate and a blanket before setting off in a crocodile down Croft Road.

“They would knock on every door they came to and ask ‘how many can you take?’ everyone was expected to play their part. I was one of the last ones left, because my surname is Root and they were dropping us off in alphabetical order.  Fortunately my good friend Ainsley was with me because his surname was Weldon. We were three quarters of the way down Croft Road and the next house that we knocked, 129 Croft Road, said that they could take in three of us.”

It turned out that the home belonged to newly-wed Rev Shannon and his wife who took in Terry, Ainsley and Alfie.  They were very kind but it did mean that we had to go to church twice a day and also go to Sunday school. It was a bit of a shock to the system.

Six months later, the vicar’s wife became pregnant and Terry had to move to the home of Mr and Mrs Cave in Tismeads Crescent and then shortly afterwards to Pleydell Road to live with Mr and Mrs Nutman.

“I suppose we were quite naive in those days, I used to follow the progress of the war and keep newspaper cuttings, but I was never worried about the country being invaded.”

The boys attended Commonweal School, Euclid St and The College but were taught by their teachers from East Ham Grammar school, apart from those who were called up to fight.

At that time the blitz in London became so bad that Terry’s parents decided to move out to Swindon where they took a room in 127 Croft Road - and this meant that Terry would meet up with his parents every weekend.

In 1943, as the war began to turn in the allies’ favour, many of Terry’s classmates returned to London, but Terry stayed on in Swindon to finish his schooling before moving to the capital to take up a job as a clerk at Unilever House and then with Lever’s International Advertising Service.

Shortly after the German surrender in May 1945, Terry received his call up papers and joined the Royal Navy for a short period where he sailed on the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious and sailed to Singapore to help transport former residents back to their homes.

After being demobbed, Terry decided to remain in Swindon where he worked for Great Western Railways as a clerk until being made redundant in 1986.

Although he never married, Terry has no shortage of friends - something that is apparent from the huge number of cards and letters surrounding him at his Toothill home congratulating him on his 90th birthday which he celebrated on June 13.

He added: “I didn’t really think many people would be interested in my story - but there can’t be that many people left now who have had the experiences that I have had.”