大象传媒

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I was 5 when I was evacuated from London to Hertfordshire. We were put on a bus with a gas mask, label on our collars and a packet of nuts and raisins in our hands. I didn't go home until I was 11.

Now I'm grown up I can see it was only a short distance but to me then it was forever. I saw my parents just three times during those six years. I'd been away longer than I had known them and needed to get to know them all over again. This was inspite of writing every week to my mother.

I spent the first two years in Hertfordshire with horrible people who picked on us because we were evacuees, but the last four years I was very happy in the countryside with a lovely elderly couple and their ex nanny who cared for is in Brookmans Park.

We used to go to the underground shelters in Hertfordshire. We'd been down one lunchtime and when we came back up in the afternoon for some unknown reason I burst into tears for my Mum and Dad. The next day my brother told me they'd been bombed out of their house on that same day. What a weird feeling.

My father was in the police reserve and my Mum worked day and night in North London in munitions. They simply didn't have enough time to come and visit as they were always being bombed out and working. The Morriston shelter under their table saved their lives during one bombing.

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