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This story has been added to the Peoples War website by Rupert Creed for GMR Action Desk on behalf of Robert Porter and has been added to the site with his permission. The author is fully aware of the site's terms and conditions

September 3rd 1939 was a Sunday- the day war was declared. I was 8 years of age living in Liverpool. I’d been on holiday with my family in Hunstanton in Norfolk but returned early on Saturday because of the imminent threat of war.
I was due to join a new school – the Liverpool Institute – but we were told that the school was being evacuated to Bangor in North Wales and I had to report as a little boy with my luggage label on my lapel and a little suitcase I could hardly carry, on St Georges Plateau opposite Lime St Station in the centre of Liverpool in the week following the outbreak of war.
I joined a group of boys of my own age all of whom were strangers to me, said a tearful goodbye to my mother and was directed across the road into Lime St Station to a special train that was waiting. It felt like a bit of an adventure but some of the boys were tearful in particular I remember one child had his pet kitten in a hatbox because he didn’t want to be parted from it.
The train set off and I remember seeing Conwy Castle on the way and we eventually arrived at Bangor Station where we disembarked. We walked out of the station and walked down the main street and I remember thinking ‘Wales is a foreign country isn’t it?’ I wonder if that man over there can speak English.
I struggled with my suitcase and we were directed down the road to Bangor Central School where we played in the school yard while the arrangements for our dispersal were completed. We were separated into little groups and taken by car to the ‘billets’ or houses where we were allocated. Everything had been very well arranged. All the houses in Bangor had been surveyed for the number of bedrooms and therefore for the number of children they were required to accommodate. It was compulsory.
Eventually we arrived, a group of six of us, at no.2 Tan Y Fron Terrace near the end of the High St. where we were greeted by Mr and Mrs Parry. I was frightened at first because Mr Parry had been wounded in the First World War and his left arm was permanently paralysed with his hand in a leather glove and Mrs Parry looked rather like an old witch to me as an 8 year old boy. I was soon to find out that they were the kindest people imaginable. In fact they wanted to adopt me but of course my mother would never hear of it.
There were six evacuees allocated to Tan Y Fron Terrace because in normal times it was a bed and breakfast establishment catering particularly for cycle tourists so there were several bedrooms.
It was quite a new experience for me living amongst a group of boys as I was an only child. I remember at night we used to try and frighten one another by shining a torch on our faces in the dark until Mr Parry found out and confiscated the torches.
Each morning I had to walk the full length of Bangor High St, about a mile and a half, to a little chapel school on the Caernarvon Rd which we shared with the Welsh children, ourselves in the morning and the Welsh children in the afternoon. This was the junior department of the school from eight to eleven in age.
In the afternoons when the weather was suitable we were taken for long walks in the countryside across Bangor Mountain and I remember in particular seeing a little narrow gauge slate train from Bethesda quarry, a train of slate wagons pulled by a locomotive called ‘Linda’. I thought wouldn’t it be lovely to have a ride behind Linda and I eventually did but it was many years later on the Ffestiniog Railway with my own children.
My mother came to visit me from Liverpool as often as she could and I lived quite happily with Mr and Mrs Parry. One unfortunate feature of our lives as evacuee children was the prevalence of skin diseases, scabies and impetigo which I later learnt was very common with children at this time and in these circumstances. Impetigo gave you scabby sores on your skin which had to be treated with ointment- it wasn’t nice. When I recovered my mother took me away for Easter to the Lake District after which I returned to Bangor.
However the next thing was an attack of scabies which was again was a skin affliction caused by a parasite which was spread by bedbugs. The symptom was of itchy lumps like heat lumps. When my mother learnt I’d got this she decided enough was enough and brought me home to Liverpool. She said, ‘You know there is a big risk – we’re going to be bombed in Liverpool’ And I said, ‘Well there’s only you and me- if we’re going to go we might as well go together’. I was only 8 when I said that.
We lived near the centre of Liverpool relatively close to the centre. The heavy bombing really began in 1941. In May there were nearly two weeks of continuous raids. We had a little air-raid shelter built in the basement.
During one particularly heavy raid an incendiary bomb fell on the roof of our house. The Air-raid Warden and some young men, students at the university, banged on the front door and rushed in to help. They found the incendiary bomb blazing on the roof and asked if we had a stirrup pump. My mother said ‘Yes’ and called down the stairs- ‘Somebody bring the stirrup pump up!’ which I did struggling with the weight of the heavy hosepipe. We went across to our neighbours on the other side of the road while the young men extinguished the burning incendiary bomb- by spray nozzle of the pump- which was safer than using the jet. Our house was virtually undamaged- we were lucky because many houses around us were destroyed and the centre of Liverpool was completely wiped out by the firestorm.
I and my mother were very lucky – we survived the war – which so many others didn’t.

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