大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Peter Haynes and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

War was declared in September 1939 and for the first time that I could remember we did not have our family holiday that year. For the first twelve months the war was a bit of a non-event for us - the only real impact on our daily lives was rationing.
After about a year evacuees started arriving in Stoke-on-Trent, they came mainly from London and Colchester as I remember. Our father became the Billeting Officer for Stoke-on-Trent - he had to find accommodation for all of the folks arriving here. Big cars were turned into ambulances - in actual fact they were often just vans. The ambulances were used to transport the evacuees around the city. Father was actually quite powerful he could requisition houses to billet people in - if he saw an empty house that looked in a good state of repair he would requisition it for use by evacuees.
I met a lady about 15 years ago who asked me if my dad had been the Billeting Officer during the war. I said that he was and she was thrilled. She told me how wonderful dad had been with her and her family and how very grateful they had been to him!!

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