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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of Jean Shingler with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

We had school children from Liverpool evacuated to us as we live in the country, we had a boy and a girl. They just came we weren’t asked,
The boy stayed for 2 years and his mother came too from Liverpool — I was 9 he was about 7. The girl was not with us long — about 6 months. Then her mother was expecting another baby so she had to go back to help, she was about 7 years old too.
It was around 1940 and it was alright — we got on alright.
The boy’s father was a merchant seaman, he was lost in the Mediterranean convoys that were torpedoed.
Then my grandparents got bombed out in Liverpool and had to come and stay as well with us for one year. I don’t know where my mother put us all.
Mum worked in a munitions factory, gran looked after us.
When the war ended on VE Day you could hear the ships all the way from Liverpool 20 miles away letting off their sirens.

At school in our dinner hour we had a little job to do collecting the cork off the tops of tin lids from pop bottles as scrap. I remember one girl coming in and telling us that the Germans had forced the army to Dunkirk and that they were trying to get the army back out.

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