大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Angela Parks of CSV Media on behalf of Hazel Chadfield and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

In 1940 I was ten years old living in Chatham in Kent, when I was moved to Wales. I went to stay with a husband and wife and the wife didn鈥檛 seem to be in very good health. I was with one other girl, who was about the same age as me and we had to do a lot of work. We still attended school though, even though the school was quite a long way away.

The house we had been moved to was not very good. We were neglected and when my mother came down to see me she had to wash all my clothes. She said that she would come and take me back to stay somewhere else. I waited for her to come, but on the day she was due to collect me, she couldn鈥檛 get through London, because of the bombing. I never did see her again, because she was killed during the bombing later in the year.

My cousin was also later evacuated to Wales. The family she was staying with invited me for Christmas and then insisted that I stayed on with them and didn鈥檛 go back to the place in which I鈥檇 previously been living.

I came back to Chatham before the war ended and went to live with my aunt. However, it was not as different to my previous life as it could have been, because my aunt lived next door to where I had lived with my mother.

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