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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reginald Stone, and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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This is a short story about the plight of evacuees and their parents who sent their children from London to the north of the country. Saying goodbye must have been very heartbreaking.
Some parents tried their best to visit them, others were simply pleased for their children to be looked after away from the bombing.

After coming from the city to the quiet countryside, they had to get used to changes in lifestyle; my mother took a brother and sister, aged 6 and years. They had to walk two and a half miles to the nearest bus. We had no electricity or gas; we had open fires, hot water bottles and outside earth toilets.

When they returned home, they discovered they had been orphaned.

I feel a need to mention the English residents in Durban, South Africa. They greeted the troops as they arrived by troopship on their way to the Far East war against Japan. They waited on the quayside to take them to their homes and let them have a bath and some decent food, after being on board the ship for four weeks.
I feel they deserve a special thank you, one particular family, Mr. And Mrs. Matches took my brother in 1940 and me in 1943. They informed my mother that we had passed through safely. They corresponded for years.

PR-BR

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