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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Rob Illingworth & Alison Palmer of Kent Liraries & Archives on behalf of Kathleen Andrews and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

At the start of the war I was at Birkenhead on Merseyside. I was evacuated to Gobowen in North Wales and Catherine, my best friend at school, her parents wouldn’t let her be evacuated. She wrote me a letter, they used to write letters home as a whole class and things like that and I just kept this one, it just stayed with me

Caledonia Inn
27 Cleveland Street
Birkenhead
Cheshire
11 March, 1941

Dear Kathleen

I hope you are quite happy where you are billeted. I miss you very much and wish that you were back here again. Your mother told me that the woman you are billeted with is very kind to you and treats you like one of her own children. I hope your mother gave you my letter and Kathleen Anderton’s. I wish I was out there enjoying long country rambles as you are doing. I am going in for the scholarship examinations shortly and the nun from the convent says that they would say a prayer for me. Our school saved a hundred pounds for War Weapons Week, we had a procession at the beginning of War Weapons Week. The first procession was of sailors, my they did look neat and when the man at the head of the procession twirled his stick I thought every minute he would drop his baton … When I saw them I wished old Jerry could see them for that would chase him away for good. By the way, can you get Holy Mass and Communion out there? I must close now but here is my last sentence — pray for peace and not for pieces as the priest of St Sylvester said.

I remain your loving friend, Catherine Summers.

She was blown to bits that night, the pub got a direct hit. She lived in a pub, The Caledonia, we called it the Cally. That same night … it was only letters in those days and I think my Mum wrote and told us, but to be honest with you that night, 11th March, was one of the biggest blitzes that Merseyside ever had. Not very long afterwards, when they eased off, my mum brought us back home and that was it. I spent the rest of the war and the rest of the blitz in a shelter almost. You wouldn’t think it when you hear the television coverage, it’s London, London, London … they forget about Hull, Southampton and Coventry.

Well the place we were evacuated to was a farm, I mean it was just alien to us, I’d never been outside Birkenhead. I’m not ashamed to say that the first night that I slept there I slept between sheets for the first time in my life because we were a working class family. My father was a merchant seaman and my Mum used to manage on thirty bob a week. They were lovely people that I went to, couldn’t fault them, Mr and Mrs Jones of Little Mardy Farm (Hengoed, nr Oswestry.)

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