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This story was submitted to the People’s War web site by Ron Steer, of ´óÏó´«Ã½ South East Today, on behalf of Mrs June Sparrow, and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs June Sparrow fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

At the beginning of the war we were a family of five living at Greenwich with our dog, Rosa, and Jimmy, the cat. I was about two and a half years old, Sister Doreen was eleven and brother Jimmy was seventeen and in the Air Force Cadets. Mum worked in Old Street, London, and used to take me to a nursery nearby.
Immediately before the war started the nursery with most of the children, including me, was evacuated to somewhere in the country. I have never found out where that was in spite of the fact that my family used to come and visit me.
Later I was sent to Woking and my enduring memory of that experience is not a happy one; the lady with whom I was lodged did not like me and used to say some nasty things to and about me. Her daughter, however was very kind when she came home on leave. At the same time my Sister Doreen was evacuated with her school to Hastings. Later, after enemy action made hastings unsafe too, she was sent to Wales.
Shortly afterwards, in 1940, my Father was killed in the blitz by an incendiary bomb. It was not too long after this that Brother Jimmy was called up into the services and sent to Burma. The dog had to be put down because of her extreme fear of the bombs; in a very short space of time my Mother was left alone with the cat, to cope with her worries of her scattered Family.
My memory is of my appreciation as I grew older, of the struggle that my Mother must have had after ‘losing’ all of her family in such a short space of time. This is shown by the fact that she had a picture taken of herself for each of her children because she thought she was going to be killed. I was eight when I returned home.

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