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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Dorothy MacKenzie for Three Counties Action at the Glen Miller Festival, Twinwood on behalf of Brenda Carmichael and has been added to the site with her permission. Brenda Carmichael fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

When I was 9 years old I was evacuated to Godalming Surrey in late August 1943. I lived for 20 months with Mr and Mrs Caesar who were kind people. When there was a lull in the war, I returned home to my parents. My two brothers had been evacuated to Zeal in the South Downs; therefore the family was broken up. My father was in the police. I spent another 12 — 18 months in East Dulwich at school.

When the doodlebugs started my father sent me to Newcastle to a distant relative who was willing to put me up. I returned to London just before the war was finished. There was rationing then and I sent my clothes in advance to my home address in London. The day I was due to do home to London, a policeman came to see me. He told me that a doodlebug had dropped on my house in London. I stayed on in Newcastle, as I had no clothes to wear apart from what I was standing up in. Luckily my parents were safe. This was the second lucky escape for my parents.

In 1940 we had an air raid shelter in the garden. However during an air raid my parents didn’t go to the shelter as Dad had just come off his police duties. A bomb dropped on our house and on the air raid shelter. However, my parents were standing at the front door of the house and this saved them.

I came back to London before the end of the war and worked in London at the Electric Supply Company at Lesgo House Stamford Street, London. This was near Waterloo Bridge. A VE bomb dropped on a warehouse and we saw lots of paper flying about but also lots of rats came running out. The war ended shortly after this.

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