大象传媒

(This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by a volunteer from Three Counties Action at the Bletchley Park VE Day street party on behalf of John Faiers and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Faiers fully understands the site's terms and conditions).

Nobody told us where we were going. We went from North London and went to the Railway station. We were taken to Stamford and then a small village called BARNACK. We were met by a lady billeting officer who took us around. There was a queue of children being dropped off one by one at each house. I was fortunate as I went to a very large family who had a son my age. He was able to introduce me to all his friends in the village. I was 12 years old, I stayed there for 18 months and then I won a scholarship. I was asked to pick a profession and I talked to my father and he said there was going to be a lot of rebuilding after the war so I chose the Northern polytechnic building course, but I could not go there as although they had vacancies in their courses but not in the evacuated building. So my application for a position was altered and I was sent to Brixton School of building which was evacuated to Bracknell in Berkshire. I stayed there for 3 years and left in May 1944. When I left I tried to volunteer for the RAF but the ministry of labour advised me I could not join and I was instructed to join a firm of builders who had a contract for war damage and repairs. Although I changed from builders to a firm of surveyors I was doing war damager repairs for 9 years. The amount of damage to repair was phenomenal. I was with another nice couple when I was re-evacuated to Bracknell. I remained in building surveying and construction management for all of my working life.

I was driving through Barnack 40 years later and we found the house and knocked on the door and the lady who opened it said 鈥渙h it鈥檚 my Jack鈥�! Following that visit we did visit the Baker family several times and with regret I attended Mrs Baker鈥檚 funeral, and in the last 12 months the funeral of her son.

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