大象传媒

Evacuees to Staffordshire

During the war many children were evacuated from the main target areas to the country. Tony Newman and Pat Bowles, brother and sister, were evacuees in 1941, from Kent. They moved from their family home to Great Haywood, leaving their widowed mother behind. Later on their mother managed to make her way to Stafford, enabling them to keep in contact much easier. Pat and Tony were lucky as they stayed together in this difficult time, however not as many brothers and sisters were this fortunate, and were very often split up. All families had very little to live on, for example Tony's mother had 18 shillings a week but 15 of these were given to her mother to take care of the household.

On VE day, the day peace was declared in Europe, I was walking home through streets filled with people that came out of their houses to celebrate with flags. The main memory that I have is how we stood together and helped each other. After the war ended, great changes occurred in Europe.

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