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On 1st September 1939 German troops moved rapidly over the border into Poland and the Second World War had begun; quietly in towns and cities throughout Britiain, the invasion signalled the start of a unique evacuation - the 'children's Dunkirk'.

Hundreds and thousands of children rubbed their eyes and vacated their beds for a journey into the unknown. For many, it would be months, perhaps years before they returned to their homes, and some, like me, never did as a child.

On that never-to-be-forgotten morning, more than a million children formed long crocodiles and made their way to schools, from where they boarded trains and buses taking them to pre-arranged places of safety in the countryside and coastal areas.

Too young to know what was going on at the time, I was in the first 'wave' of the mass evacuation that was eventually to disrupt the lives of more than three million of my generation. So many times over the years, when I brought it out in conversation that "I was an evacuee," there would tbe comforting reply, "So was I." It became a sort of common bond and, dare I say, a badge of courage for facing the unknown and the dreaded selection process on reaching their destination.

We all now grow old, but the approach of each significant anniversary of such an awesome experience invevitably invokes the deepest emotions still in most evacuees. At three years of age when the war began, I must have been among the youngest travellers to be unaccompanied by a parent, on the way to a new life only God knew where when we set out.

Television beams a romantic view of London's East End - the centre of the nation emergency operation - as well as the wartime camaraderie in retrospect. But there was anxiety, too, for parents, who while welcoming the rescue, could never be sure their children were safe in the hands of strangers.

The evacuation must have saved hundreds of lives, though too little thought was given at the time to how cruel the lottery system of selection to new homes on arrival at each destination.

Children left family members and familiar surroundings in danger points all over the country. Those of us from Grimsby had a mere hour's ride by bus to the seaside resort of Skegness, but it was a journey that changed all our lives.

I am pleased now that I cannot remember anything about that journey, though I have long since wondered what my feelings were at the time. I never knew my mother - she died when I was a baby - and for my father to work and look after me would have been a struggle in a less welfare-minded society.

Of necessity, I was passed around several relations and family friends before the outbreak of war, and it may have been thought that one more move would not make all that much difference. Evacuation offered a less painful alternative to sending me to a local children's home, and it allowed my father to take up wartime duties in the RAF.

I have been told many times of my pathetic appearance on arrival at Skegness, carrying a few worn clothese in a Grimsby fish bass (a type of hessian carrier bag at the time used in the fishing industry). My legs were affected by rickets. I was still not 'house trained' and I had picked up a few naughty words. Around my shoulders would have been a Mickey Mouse gasmask and, of course, I wore the inevitable identifying luggage label, now a treasured symbol of those stark years.

The first couple who selected me soon realised their mistake, and after just one week passed me down the road to 49 Briar War, the home of Ted and Rose Willis, who became my foster parents with whom I stayed for 17 years. They and their daughter died some years ago, but their son (whom I am proud to call brother) is part of the family.

My father was never a well man after been invalided out of the RAF contacting TB. Following a year in hospital, he kept in touch and visited, but our high days and holidays contact was somehow unreal. My childhood was over by the time he remarried.

Being a former evacuee may have helped me to get started in a lifelong career as a journalist, and a book writer, now in retirement. I am sure I speak for the majority of my fellow evacuees when I say how grateful we are to those residents of Skegness and surrounding district for being the Good Samaritans that "took us in" in a time of crisis, which, we must hope, will never return.

Reproduced by Ipswich Museum with Peter Hopper's permission.

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