大象传媒

I was six when war broke out. During the war, they came round with evacuees asking if people could take in children. One Sunday we were waiting for an evacuee to arrive to stay. There were only two boys left, but we had asked for a girl so she could share my room. The two boys were brothers, Raymond & Bobby, five and six and a half respectively. We had to ask Mum because I had said we could have them; they had been refused elsewhere. Mum said they could stay, but they weren't allowed to come into our house until they had been given new clothes and my Grandma bathed them and cut all their hair off. Mum was a dressmaker and so found some clothes for them. The boys' mother lived in London but she wrote to my mum to ask her if she had any of the allowance for the boys left for her. They had an older brother who was approximately 14 years old, but he had vanished and we weren't sure where he had gone. Their mother wasn't interested in having them back, but they went back to London anyway.
I often wondered what happened to them because it was I who played with them, but I always remember thinking that they had funny accents. On one occasion we went to the local Co-op for rations and there was a bucket of dog biscuits which they kept eating!

Patricia Clegg
23 July 2005

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