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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War website by CSV Storygatherer Carole on behalf of Victor Marker. The story has been added to the site with his permission. Victor Marker fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

I was the first born in 1936 at our home in Admiralty St, Keyham, over the next few years there was a further sister and brother born.
When I was around four years old I can remember the start of the bombing of Plymouth. Our mother would walk us across the railway bridge to St Budeaux so we could watch the raid, the bombers were trying to hit the dockyard. When we returned to our house one early morning we found a large crater at the top of the hill, and our house had been blitzed and there was a WVS truck with the ladies giving everyone a cup of tea.
Because of the damage we were evacuated as a family to Bideford, North Devon, and given a ground floor flat in a house in Bridgeland St.
Soon after we arrived a London family, the Lovelocks, moved into the flat above us. Everything was overseen by our mothers as we rarely saw our fathers, they were away with the forces.
Harry Lovelock, their son, and I played in the back garden. He had an accident, pushing the garden fork through his foot. A mad rush to hospital — this was a good start to our stay in Bideford.
One of the mornings, soon after we arrived in Bridgeland St, my mother went down towards the quay to the corner shop to purchase some milk, it was raining very hard. She met a lady with two boys, she asked what she was doing out in such bad weather. It appeared where she had been evacuated to was a doctor’s house, she had to be out of his house form eight in the morning until six at night. Mother said “oh my God, come round to our place and have a cup of tea. As they walked back my mother had to apologise as we had no cups, we had to drink tea out of jam jars. They laughed and became close friends for all their lives - Hilda and Vic Smith, their sons Ted and Donald. After the war when they returned to London Hilda became a great foster parent and she fostered over one hundred children, in fact she was on ´óÏó´«Ã½ ‘This is Your Life’.
During our stay in Bideford we spent most of the summers at Westward Ho!
VE Day — what I can remember is that everyone was down on the quay, there were parades, and a soldier helped me to climb a lamppost so I could see.
When we moved back to Plymouth our family had increased by three. So each time our father had some leave our family got bigger.

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