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This story was submitted to the People War’s site by Alison Irvine of CSV Media on behalf of Rose Hyams (nee Wolfshaut) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

From London to Monmouthshire
I was six when war broke out. I was evacuated to Cambridge for a year. My mum went with me. We went to my aunt’s. We came back to Petticoat Lane in the East End after a year. Then I was evacuated with my school. I was seven. I went with my sister who was a year and nine months older than me. We went to Monmouthshire in South Wales.

When we arrived, we went to a school hall. There were long tables with cakes, sandwiches and they asked me if I wanted ‘tea or pop’. I didn’t know what pop was, so I went for tea. All the other kids had lemonade but I was stuck with tea. They then drove my sister and I to a family which was two widows and a widower (a father with his two daughters). When we arrived a newsagent from across the road bought me and my sister a comic each — the Beano. They cost about 1d. I began to like it.

I stayed there for a few years. My mother came down to visit me with my brother who was 2 and a half. He wasn’t old enough to be evacuated with the school and my mother asked if he would be taken in by a family privately. She would pay them. They recommended a family on the opposite road to where my sister and I were staying. My mother said ‘I’m going to leave him with you for the day and I’m going out. If he frets, I’ll take him back. If not, I’ll leave him.’ When she came back he was happy, so she left him.

Back to the East End for a holiday
I came back for a holiday with my sister and she didn’t want to return to Wales. So, as I didn’t want to be separated from my brother, I went to live with him in Wales.

I liked the first family I stayed with. In fact one of the ladies knitted a lot and it was she who taught me how to knit.

I got on well with the other children. We had a school just for evacuees. It was on a mountain. The other kids were from all over London.

Before I was evacuated
My father had a fruit stall in Petticoat lane and my mother used to help him out. If there was an air raid we had a bag prepared with sweets, fruit, biscuits — if there were any — ration book and identity card and it was my job to pick it up and run to the shelter. If ever I was at home on my own with my brother and sister and we heard the sirens go I used to pick my brother up and run with my sister to the shelter which was in a block of flats opposite and they had converted a bottom floor flat into a shelter. They had blocked up all the windows and put tape on them. My mum would be on the stall and see us running to the shelter and knew we were OK. She stayed at the stall and if it got really bad she’d come and join us.

The tube and the shelters
In the evening we used to go to Liverpool St station to sleep in the tube. We took our own bedding. There were trains going backwards and forwards. The kids had a whale of a time because we didn’t go to bed and used to play until about 11 or 12. Eventually we settled down.

We also went to a shelter in the city. I didn’t go there with my parents. I went with a woman who, when I was evacuated, her cosmetic shop got bombed and my mum let her store her stock in my bedroom. She had nowhere to sleep so I used to go to the shelter with her. There were bunks and we’d fold our bedding up and leave it there until the next day. We could leave it without fear of it being stolen. Everybody helped one another then.

VE Day
I remember going to Levy’s record shop and dancing in the streets. The atmosphere was incredible.

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