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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Wendy Wood of Hastings Community Learning Centre, a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Southern Counties Radio on behalf of Rosemary Hill and has been added to the site with his/her permission. Rosemary Hill fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was a nine year old girl in January 1941 when my brother Brian and I were put on a train at Rochester station. We had gone from Hastings to live with our grandparents in Rochester when our mum had died six weeks’ earlier and we were still in a state of shock. The journey seemed to take forever and we thought we were going to the end of the world as we had never left the South East before. Eventually we arrived in Newport, Wales where people were waiting to choose child evacuees to look after - we felt very upset as no one wanted to take a brother and sister together and we were sent to a children’s home for a month. However Mr and Mrs Hoskins came to our rescue in February and took us home to their little terraced house with no bathroom and a toilet up the garden! We called them Auntie Rhoda and Uncle Ray and they looked after us well. We joined the local village school in Wattsville as well as the Baptist and Methodist Churches. My brother was quite unhappy to start with and ran away several times but eventually settled down and passed his 11+. We were very happy in Wattsville and I didn’t want to come home to my dad and new step mum but we came home to Hastings in 1944. My brother went to Welwyn Garden City to school and when the doodlebugs started coming over Hastings I quickly put my name down for Wales again but this time it was Merthyr Tydfil. Again I had lovely people looking after me and stayed there about six months when we heard the war was over and we could come home for good. I returned to Hastings and lived with my step mum and dad in Ore Village.

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