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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by David Baker at Dorking Library and has been added to the website on behalf of Peter Sarah with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

This is an account of the evacuation of my brother and me from Harold Wood in Essex to a farm in Stithians in Cornwall and it describes the country life we lived.

It was 1940, and we had just seen the bombing of the docks. We also saw guns and dogfights in the sky and, on the way to school, we collected hot shrapnel which we took with us to see who could find the biggest piece. My parents decided we would be safer outside London.

My name is Peter Sarah and my story begins at 10.30 a.m. at Paddington Station where my mother put me, aged 10 and my brother James, aged 12, on the Cornish Riviera Express. We were bound for Redruth, but we had to get off at Plymouth because the line had been bombed. From there, we travelled by bus to the ferry which took us across to St Germans where we joined another train that took us to Redruth. At Redruth, we were met by a small pony and trap and taken to Hendra Farm in Stithians. For each of us, the stay cost our parents twenty-five shillings for full board. We saw it as a great adventure.

On the farm we did labouring and we loved it. Up early every morning, we fetched the water, called in the cows and helped to milk them — I remember trying to squirt my brother and accidentally getting the farmer - washed ourselves and ate a plate of porridge with warm, fresh milk, all before starting off for school.

We saw all the seasons there. We planted cabbages, delivered chickens and learned to plough. We watched the local hunt; saw the dogs kill a rabbit. In August or September, the farmer killed the pig. I also remember the farmer putting a bull over one of his cows, something his wife felt we shouldn’t be seeing. Every Sunday, the vicar of the local Wesleyan Chapel came for roast chicken. We watched as the farmer’s wife separated milk from cream on the range in the kitchen, slowly producing Cornish cream.

In the end, we were there for just over a year and didn’t see our parents once in that time. They wrote and we sent the odd postcard, but that was all.

A few years ago, we went back to revisit and introduced ourselves to the people in the farm. It was a nostalgic visit with many wonderful memories, but the beautiful valley where we had walked and played and watched the hunt, is now an enormous reservoir.

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