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This contribution was submitted by Peter Payne to the People's War team in Wales and is added to the site with his permission.

I remember the announcement on the radio and my father telling me that we were at war. I suppose I became aware of what that meant when they started bombing London. Being near to Croydon which was used a lot by the RAF, the planes used to come over ….we used to see dogfights in the sky. There was a block of flats and we used to go up on the stairs on the outside of the flats and stand up there and watch the dogfights in the sky. I don’t think I was frightened….it was quite exciting. I was about 14 and we didn’t realise people were getting killed. At school the air raid sirens would go maybe three times a day and we’d rush down to the shelters…..so my education was marred by all that.
I was in Surrey for most of the war and joined the Army Cadets and we were doing manoeuvres in Beddington Park in Carshalton and we saw a doodle bug come down quite low….you could see it and we knew it was coming down because when the engine stopped you knew it would fall. We all had to lie flat on the ground and I can remember the air…as it exploded, the air blowing up my trousers. And because we were in the cadets we all rushed over to where it had bombed all these houses in Wallington and it was just carnage you know. I think that’s when I realised that there was something going on…and it wasn’t a game.

My sisters were evacuated to Ely in Cambridgeshire and I remember going to Carshalton station and up to Oswestry.
We got there about tea time and it was too late for the people to come and pick us up so we stayed overnight in the school….on straw palliases and we were picked up next morning. It was a bit daunting really. They were a couple in their 50s, Watkin and Gladys Richards and they had a huge farm, Morloch and it was a few thousand feet up in the hills and it was idyllic. It was an unbelievable place…when I used to look up from the village to the farm it looked like another village. It was quite exciting really…it was all new …I’d never been to a farm before…seeing the animals and all what was going on, the milking and that. I used to do odd jobs on the farm and I used to drive cattle. We used to walk from Oswestry to Llansilio…on a Wednesday morning we used to leave at six o’clock and walk five miles into Oswestry to the cattle market, then Mr. Richards used to bring us back in the car. Some days I used to just play about on the mountain, go for walks, play about with the sheepdogs, different things….set a few snares for rabbits. There was more to eat there..the food was good food and they were allowed to kill several pigs a year so the meat and everything was gorgeous really.
I was treated very well, just like one of the family. I could have stayed if I wanted to.
The funny thing was when I got my call up papers for National Service I was sent to
Shrewsbury — near where I’d just come from. I was kitted out at Park Hall camp then went up to Rhyl to Kinmel Park camp where we did our training…then we had a big parade and they called out your names as to where you were going to. Some of my friends went to Germany, Cyprus, Belgium, places like that….but I went to Nesscliff which was just down the road from Oswestry at an ammunition depot.

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