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My maiden name was Bewick. I was born in Southern Ireland, and my father was in the British Army. We were in Cairo, Egypt, when war broke out. My sister Jane was born there.

One day I remember there was a panic, and we were given 24 hours to leave for South Africa. They thought Rommel was on his way to Cairo and would be there within days. I remember we were told we couldn’t take anything with us, other than maybe a change of underclothes; I was crying to bring a toy, and I was allowed to take only one toy and I took a lamb. Jane was allowed to take one of her toys too.

We were given brown paper bags with chocolates and hard boiled eggs, and put into lorries for the trip. We were in the desert for a while, but after that I am not sure — I know we arrived in South Africa, but I don’t remember the journey although we were on a train for days.

We settled in in South Africa where I started school, and the next thing I remember was travelling back to England on the Empress of Canada — a big ship with four funnels. We did boat drill while on-board, and one day we got the message over the tannoy to get our life jackets and go to your boat station. Only this time, it wasn’t a drill — the ship was zig-zagging all over the place. We were up on deck, all the time there was siren sounding and the ship was zig-zagging in the water. I remember being very scared, because my mother wasn’t with us — we were coming back with other people, and I remember thinking that they would save their own child rather than us and this was terrifying. There were a lot of troops on the ship, but we didn’t know at that time that my father was also on-board.

I saw the torpedos coming towards the ship — two of them, and it was the first time I had ever seen them — but they just missed. I won’t forget that.

In South Africa we had been protected — life had gone on as usual, with no rationing, no air raids — other than having to leave Egypt quickly, we had continued as normal. The torpedos were my first real taste of war I had had.

When it was all over, one thing I remember is the broken crockery everywhere on the ship.

I remember seeing the barrage balloons for the first time when we docked in England, and they were really terrifying. We then got onto the train — before it pulled into the station I heard an air raid siren for the first time in my life. When we got off the train I looked up and saw rockets — like Doodlebugs — and then I remember hearing the noise cut out and then you could hear them dropping after that. We didn’t have time to find the air raid shelter — we didn’t even know where it was — and I remember my father putting us in front of the big pillars in the station and putting his arms round Jane and me. The ground and walls were shaking, because the attack was very near.

We went to live with relatives — and I saw my first rhubarb! We moved to Southern Ireland. I remember one day in Cork City seeing a man in a RAF uniform — my uncle John — and this was an unusual sight in Southern Ireland. My uncle Paddy had also been an ambulance driver and we had seen him in Egypt — he suffered shrapnel wounds which lodged a piece in his head, and eventually it killed him as it was too close to his brain to move.

I remember the wireless being on, and everyone singing, dancing and crying — the war was supposed to be over, and we moved back to Belfast and rationing, which went on for years after the end of the fighting.

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