Dunkirk doll : Dorothy Evelyn Dray, British Auxiliary Territorial Service

Moulded composition baby doll with moveable arms and legs. The doll is thickly painted in flesh tones, with brown hair, blue eyes and a red mouth. She is dressed in hand made clothes; a red cotton petticoat; a long grey dress with elbow length sleeves, self fabric sash cut on the bias and a matching fabric bonnet; and a yellow cardigan knitted in garter stitch with a line of white crochet decoration around the neck and down each side of the front. A length of string is knotted around the doll's neck leading to a sliding loop to which is attached a small orange cotton tassel and yellow and blue plastic beads.

This doll is associated W20608 Dorothy Evelyn Dray. During the Second World War she served with the British Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). In May-June 1940 British and French servicemen were evacuated from Dunkirk in the face of the German advance. Many returning British and French soldiers were transported inland from Dover by train, arriving at the Addison Road Station in London so that urgent hospital cases could be unloaded and the men could have something to eat, their first food since the evacuation. The ATS would welcome these soldiers by handing out pies, buns and tea. On one of these occasions a French soldier handed Dorothy this doll through the window of the train. He told her he had picked it up in a Belgian village in the wake of fleeing Belgian refugees. He had hung the doll from his left wrist, by the cord attached to its neck, and carried it throughout the evacuation. After the war Dorothy Dray married an Australian archaeologist, James (Jim) R B Stewart, later Professor of Archaeology at Sydney University and moved to Sydney. He had been a prisoner of war of the Germans. She brought the doll with her to Australia.