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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Three Counties Action on behalf of Susan Berry and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

This is a story my mother told me. She along with my 5-year-old sister, and my older brother and sister were evacuated to Enfield, but because my sister was under 5 she was kept with my mother and my older brother and sister were separated from her. So when she got to Hitchin she walked round the town for a week trying to find someone who knew where they were staying. She met a neighbor from Enfield who told her she had seen my brother and sister playing in a park — Windmill hill in Hitchin and she found them there. As the older 2 were over 5 they were sent to another house and after that she stood on the side of a road asking a soldier where my dads regiment was as he was in Lincoln. As it happens he knew my dad and when the went back to the barracks he told my dad he’d seen my mum and my dad got a lift down on the back of a lorry and then took them all back to Lincolnshire. He rented a cottage and the whole family including all my brothers and sisters stayed there.

My own memory is when my father came home after the war. I was around 3 and I remember my brother and sister taking me to meet him off the bus and he had his kit bag. I was so excited to see what he had in his kit bag. And that is my earliest memory of my life; I think I was mostly just excited to see my dad.

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