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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Clive Bishop of the CSV Action Desk, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Newcastle on behalf of Keith Bell and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

During the war I was evacuated from West Hartlepool to High Kilburn where I attended the local school.
Whilst staying with the Smith family, at High Kilburn, their son Norman arrived from the beaches of Dunkirk. He was dressed in the same uniform that he wore at Dunkirk.
The village celebrated and I remember we played cricket by the school and enjoyed life while he was home.
Sadly he returned to his unit and was killed in North Africa.
The Smith families graves are in the churchyard, and a commemorative plaque for Norman, stands behind the ‘Mouse Factory’ (Mouseman of Kilburn furniture) where he used to work.

Later I worked on a farm picking potatoes alongside German prisoners of war. My cousin, Donald Briggs, joined the RAF, as a cadet, at the beginning of the war. And spent the rest of the war in Lancasters bombing Germany.
At the end of the war he dropped the ‘A’ bomb on Christmas Island.

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