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In 1939 I was 8 years old and my mother was surpria sed when the billeting officer arrived with 3 children from Bermondsey — she had expected two! The sitting room was quickly adapted to dormitory with three beds. The children were undernourished, had imbetigo and to my mother’s horror had livestock in their hair. The children were amazed at our bathroom and indoor toilet as there home had no bath and an outside toilet was shared by several families.
The children were the Heron family Rose 10, Johnny 8 and Lily 6. Their younger brother Roy was 3 and stayed in London with his parents. With good food and clothes provided by a local charity they soon settled down at the local school, Lyndhurst Road Junior School.
We enjoyed skipping and we taught each other songs and on Sunday after tea-time my father would get out the bagatelle board. During September and October we spent some time on the beach before it was made out-of-bounds and fenced with barbed wire for the duration of the rest of war.
The Heron family stayed with us for three months but when it was decided that the parents would have to pay the parents took them back to London. We had some thank-you letters in December 1939, which my mother kept. My mother wrote to them but we never saw or heard of them again. I don’t know if they survived the blitz as their address was near the London Docks which was a regular target for the bombers.

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