大象传媒

As recounted by Mrs Vickers

"With a large brown label tied to our coats for identification purposes, we children all stood in our street with our parents to await the arrival of the red double-decker bus which would take us to Paddington Railway Station where a train waited to shunt us on to South Wales. Mothers and fathers hugged and kissed their children as they said their goodbyes and now with the departure of my sister and with three sons gone to fight the war mum and dad found themselves with just my elder sister Margaret, not forgetting our dog floss, left at home to face the ongoing blitz - the whole family having been split in all directions as were hundreds of other families.

What a long day it was and finally on arrival at our destination many, many hours later we were taken to the local Town Hall where, what seemed to be a whole village, waited to collect their allocated evacuees. The family to which my older sister Kath and I had been allocated was expecting to take in boys but things weren't very well organised and they ended up having to take my sister and me instead. Earlier, when approached by different officials, my sister kept on repeating that we weren't to be separated and I shall never forget how tightly I held on to her hand for fear of being taken away from her. Throughout this entire experience I had tried so hard not to cry but when, at the end of an extremely long day, we were finally tucked up in bed in the home of our new family and with my heart now so heavy, I could no longer hold back my tears and eventually cried myself to sleep with my sister's arms wrapped around me in an endeavour to comfort me and to keep her promise to mum to take care of me. How she must have fought back her own tears for my sake as she tried to shoulder her new responsibility.

Although my childhood experiences of war were frightening, sometimes funny and certainly sad, I feel that I am the richer for having lived through WW2 as it taught me things I could not have learnt in the schoolroom!"

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