大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sue Smith on behalf of Iris and John Cooper and has been added to the site with their permission. Iris and John fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
Our experiences of the war years were very different but the army brought us together. I was born in Hull and when I was four and a half I was evacuated. I can remember travelling by train to Selby with a number of other children, accompanied by volunteers. When we arrived we were in a room waiting to be chosen by host families and I and a little boy were left till last feeling very lost and lonely. An unwilling family took me at first but later I transferred to the Morin family who treated me as their own and kept me till the end of the war. They were an older couple and through my mother鈥檚 visits a friendship formed which lasted for life. My father had volunteered and was one of the first to sail for Dunkirk but the war had such an effect on our family that my parents separated and we never lived together as a family again.
John, meanwhile, joined the army in 1942 as a boy apprentice technician and was stationed at Arbourfield near Reading. When peace was declared he was at sea heading for India but as the army was not needed there they were diverted to Egypt. From there he was sent to Palestine and then to the British Embassy in Istanbul training the Turkish army, so he was away from home long after the war ended. Eventually our paths met at Chilwell Barracks and we were married.

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