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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Sue Sedgwick from and on behalf of Doreen Craig and has been added to the website with his permission. M/s Craig fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I lived in Wallasey. I was 5 years old and my sister was 11. She was evacuated to Wrexham with her school. She was with a family she didn’t like very much. On the way home from school one day she was walking past the railway station and she saw the train for Seacombe. Her friend dared her to get in it… so she did. The family she was staying with had the police out looking for her and when she was found the family wouldn’t have her back so she stayed at home, but she had no school to go to!
My brother was 7 and we were both sent to Wilmslow. The lady I was billeted with in Alderley Edge took one look at me and said that she didn’t want me as she wanted a child who could help her, so myself and 3 boys were homeless in the church hall, sleeping on camp beds. The cleaner took pity on me and took me home. She passed me on to a lady she cleaned for who passed me on to another lady. Unfortunately she didn’t tell anybody so I was lost. A fortnight passed before they found me! The people I was with treated me like a princess, but after a year, what seemed overnight, I was sent home with only the clothes I stood up in. I never knew what I had done wrong and my mother wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t let me visit and she wouldn’t let me write. It was only when I was an adult that she told me that they had asked to adopt me.

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