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This story appears courtesy of and with thanks to The Liverpool Diocesan Care and Repair Association and James Taylor.

I was evacuated when I was thirteen and I went to Bangor in North Wales We were assembled, crocodile filed to Central Station, all crowded into this train, mothers seeing you off, weeping, screaming kids all sorts of things, the place was bedlam. I remember getting to Bangor and again being marched in the street in a crocodile, assembling in a school in Bangor and hanging around there as if we were for sale.
I don鈥檛 suppose it was, but thinking about if, it felt like that. You felt that they were looking at you, all the respectable ladies of Bangor you know. Looking at you, weighing you up 鈥� no I won鈥檛 have him, I鈥檒l have her, I鈥檒l have him 鈥� suddenly when it came to your turn to be chosen there was a certain relief. You had not been rejected I suppose, but that is still a vivid memory. I can remember walking down with my gas mask, it was in a cardboard carton and a piece of string that went over my shoulder, with my possessions in a paper bag. There weren鈥檛 plastic bags of course. Paper bag, couple of shirts and underclothes, couple pairs of socks and that was it and if you had one pair of shoes that was as much as you did have in those days. Fortunately I did have decent digs I am aware. The lady was Mrs. Roberts, a very respectable lady I can remember. She had a son called Thomas Richard, Thomas Richard Roberts, she never called him anything else but Thomas Richard. It was never Tom or Dick or whatever, it was always Thomas Richard. You would hear through the house, 鈥淭homas Richard鈥� and you would guess by the tone of the voice whether it was a good thing that was going to happen to Thomas Richard. But she really took to me because I had a nice singing voice as a boy, and I joined Bangor Cathedral Choir. She thought this was marvellous you see. There was this Liverpool kid, right mucky accent sort of thing, and there he was singing in Bangor Cathedral Choir, she was quite made up really. I was evacuated for about 6 months and homesickness inevitably set in. I went home. That was when I was 14.

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