´óÏó´«Ã½

(This story has been submitted to the People's War website through the ´óÏó´«Ã½ East Video Nation project on behalf of Louise Milburn and has been added to the site with her permission).

"When Louise was sent to Philadelphia as a wartime evacuee, she had to settle into a new family".

Louise’s story
It all was a bit of an adventure to start with and they made quite sure that we felt at home.
I remember the first Christmas we had in America, I remember what fun it was and we were deluged with presents from everybody to make sure we didn’t feel homesick, and generally we did not feel homesick.

We wrote letters and in fact my mother kept all the letters and I have them and it gives a really good view at what was happening at the time and over the years because we were there for 5 years are inclinations to write letters became less and less because England became further and further away as we became young Americans.

When we were in America we were the strangers because we were the little English girls — 5 years later when we came back to England and this was austerity Britain that we came back to we were again the odd ones out. We were the Americans. We had broad American accents and American clothes with us so in a way I became used to being different and this gives you a certain strength of character because you can’t disappear into the background, you have to become your own person.

Not surprisingly it was difficult to get a relationship back with my mother and father. My mother particular because she found it hard to accept the consequences of what they had done where as father accepted us as we were and took our life forward from there. I felt my mother was still trying to make us back into English as fast as she could.

I continued to be a dutiful daughter but tended to rebel right through my teens and continued to do what most teenagers do and kick the traces as hard as one could, but in the end one comes back and becomes a normal human being.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.