God in the life of Sally Trench

I turned to God when I was seven, knowing that he’d love me even if nobody else did. I was sent to school at these convents. The first time I got expelled, I thought that should have confirmed to my mum and dad that they were quite the wrong places for the free-spirited soul that I was. But they didn’t take a blind bit of notice, and sent me to the next boarding school. I decided that my parents didn’t love me, and that created the most terrible loneliness. So it was very simple. I turned to God as my father, my mother and my friend. And we’ve never parted company.

Life as a down and out

When I was 16 I was expelled from school again and my father told me to get a job because I was so hopeless. One day I was crossing Waterloo Station and I saw the homeless sleeping on benches and I thought ‘My God, in this day and age, this shouldn’t be happening!’ So I left home and joined them on the streets.

My decision was very embarrassing for my father. He had lords to smart dinners, who would talk about their children getting into Oxford and Cambridge, and all he was able to say was that his daughter was living on a bombsite with dirty old drunks. However, I did not become an alcoholic or a drug addict – I think I was too frightened of those things. But I did live amongst the homeless and try to help them. If someone was coming out of prison, I’d go and meet them and try find them somewhere to live. I took on the world very young. In my arrogance, I thought I could change it. And despite my middle class accent and the fact that I washed every day at Waterloo station, I was accepted by the homeless. I never went to church when I was on the road. But everything I did was for my God, because I saw Christ in all these people.

Bury me in my Boots wasn’t written as a book. It was written as an outlet for my feelings, on hard toilet paper. I kept the rolls in the left luggage department of Waterloo Station. It was discovered by a priest who was worried that I would become a drug addict or an alcoholic like the people I worked with. I said ‘No, Father, I’ve got a marvellous outlet – I write everything out of my system.’ He said, ‘Well, I’d love to read your manuscript.’ So I gave him the left luggage ticket and he went and collected the rolls of toilet paper, and typed it out and sent it to a publisher.

So the whole thing of my writing the book was a complete fluke. On 27 March, 1978 people still crossed the road to avoid me. Then the book came out on 28 March, and suddenly I was called the ‘Joan of Arc of England’ and everybody wanted to know me. The sheer hypocrisy of society so galled me that two weeks later I fled to America.

But I knew that I had to return to England, and with the money from the book, start a charity for children – I suppose I felt prevention was better than cure. So I started Project Spark. We ran a school for the deprived and the delinquent and those who had been expelled. They came with police records, but through tender loving care and discipline we got them back into a routine. Many went on to further education. One is a barrister.

When the Inner London Education Authority was withdrawn, so were our grants, andI was left with a large empty house and no children. My own children were grown up, and I had left my husband five years after we were married. I  was burnt out and I was also angry that our units were being written off, and that anger made me want to write again. So I wrote Somebody Else’s Children about my experiences with the children.

I decided I must do something completely different and I went to the Project Spark’s board of trustees and said I wanted a large house in the country with grounds for children to play in. We found this house just north of Oxford and as I was doing the renovations, I was praying to God to give me something to do. In 1991 I had just finished when war broke out in Bosnia, and as soon as I saw children being shot at and houses burning, I knew what I had to do.

Behind the battle lines

I know everybody wondered what this middle-class, grey-haired lady could do, but that’s what I went out there to find out. I pretended I was a journalist to get behind the front line and see what was going on. There were children starving to death, children orphaned by the bombing, children who were catching rats to eat.

I got the first 22 children out before the visa restriction was imposed on refugee children by Major’s government. They lived in this house, and my sons came and helped. That left me free to become a truck driver. I used to speak at four or five British schools a day, asking the children for money and tins of food. Their generosity was astonishing

I led the convoys across Europe without stopping,arriving in split Croatia on the third day. The drivers slept for 12 hours while I went to the UN and found out which bridges had been blown up, what curfews were going on. I had to do my homework so nobody got killed. And then we would drive into Bosnia the next night, and deliver food to the children and medicines to the hospitals, and then come out as fast as we could. I did 36 trips in all.

Fran’s War   was written in 1999 when the war was over. I turned it into a novel, but it’s based on my experiences. It was about the survival of a group of orphaned children and about the war between the faiths – why the Catholic Croats turned against the Muslims. It’s about forgiveness, love and endurance.

When I was writing my book, I had a revelation. I realised that all the fearful times I had had in London were a preparation for Bosnia. I’d never been shelled before, of course, but I had been knifed on the streets of London.

Hope for Bosnia’s children

In 1995, peace came to Bosnia. And the children whose substitute mum I was would crowd round me and say ‘You can’t leave us now Sally.’ Their schools had been shelled, their teachers had fled or been killed. And I couldn’t think of anything better to do for Bosnia at that time than getting some of their brightest kids educated at schools all over the world in democratic countries, and returning them at 18 to build up Sarajevo University. Now those children are hospital doctors, BBC translators, international lawyers. They knew they had a second chance in life, and grabbed it with both hands.

Now that I’m older I know my limitations. I know that I can’t go off to Iraq. I’ve also got to be here for my parents and for my children and grandchildren. God gave me this house to use, and he’s keeping me grounded here to help people locally.

Prayer is a very important part of my life, but I’m not a Bible basher. If people saw me in the corner of a derelict building in Bosnia reading the daily office, no-one ever questioned me about it. I go to church three or four times a week. The Eucharist is my safeguard. It gives me the courage to get through the week.

I haven’t had a cosy life but I have been in the right place at the right time and I have tried to do what God expected of me.

Interview by Christine Zwart

Donations to Project Spark can be sent to Orchard House, Church Lane, Wendlebury, Bicester 0X25 2PN.