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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Katie Balderson on behalf of Mr D J Waller and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

My parents owned a sweet shop in Hornchurch. We were bombed in 1940. All the windows were blown out — the only glass left was the shop door which we had left open. A few days later my parents sent me up to the local butcher to exchange a bag of coins for a £5 note. On the way back I managed to trip and broke the remaining glass in the shop door front. It was 1952 until the shop was fully rebuilt.

I was evacuated with my brother in 1944 from Hornchurch to Pen-y-cae, near Wrexham in North Wales. I was age 7, my brother was 10. I remember it vividly, like it was yesterday. We had to queue up in the schoolyard with hundreds of other children and board buses to Paddington. Then by train to Wales.

When we arrived in Wales all the children waited for people to take them in and after all the other children had left 2 boys were left — me and my brother. The school caretaker took us in and we lived in the school

I remember that we used to set mole traps in headmaster’s garden and sold the skins. At that time mole skins were very valuable and were used by plumbers to wipe lead pipes and join them together. Children caught the moles which were then sold on.

I also remember the Italian Prisoners of War who lived on the farm along the road from us. My brother and I used to spend our pocket money on cigarettes which we bartered with the POWs — 2 cigarettes would get us a really lovely leather belt.

I went back for the first time this February after 59 years and the first three people I met remembered me.

A London wedding - 1940
In 1940 when my brother and I were pageboys, wearing blue corduroy suits. On the way to the church in Upminster we travelled by car with the bride, the bride’s father (Mr Gardener) and a driver. We were stopped by a policeman and asked for ID cards. Did he think we were 5th columnist? Incidentally Mr Gardener had been the last ever person to speak to PC Guttridge before he was shot by Kennedy and Browne in the 1920s.

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