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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Teresa Parsons and has been added to the website on behalf of Bessie Prina with her permission and she fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

At the outbreak of the war I was living in Eastbourne. I was nearly 9 yrs old and had a sister who was four and a half. We stayed there for the first year and experienced quite alot of air raid warnings, though not too much bombing. We evacuated as a family on Set 13th 1940 to Cheltenham in Gloucester. WE arrived not knowing where we were going to be billeted and ened up on a farm temporarily. WE stayed there for two days and wre then sent to Shepton Mallet in Somerset. They weren't expecting us, as it was a real struggle to find us accomodation. We ended up on someone's spare room floor where they were storng potatoes. My parents decoded not to stay there and went back to Cheltenham. WE lived with variuos different families for the next couple of years. Finally we manged to find a flat of our own and sent for our furniture that was in storage. WE heard a lot of bimbers going overhead to places like Coventry which was badly bombed. The rationing was a problem for my mother who had to make enda meet. I can remember the excitement when we knew that bananas were in the shops and we'd rush to the shop with our ration books. Things like cucumber snadwiches fro tea on mum's half day off were areal treat. We couldn't do a lot of cake baking then as the fat ration wouldn't run to it, not a lot of eggs either. There were very few sweets too but it didn't bother us much. We returned to Eastbourne in April 1945. VE Day was very exciting, everybody out on the strets were dancing and singing. Then there were the street parties with all the flags out. I don't know where they got all the food from! I did't have any family that served in the war. My dad was a motor mechanic and he maintained army vehicles especially American so he was exempt from call up.

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