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This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Three Counties Action, on behalf of Pam Petty, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

As a small child, I found 1940 different and exciting and, dare I say it, fun!

Dad was posted to the Isle of Man and my mother, brother and I followed him a few weeks later. I remember leaving my teddy bear on the train at Liverpool station and howling loudly and bitterly on the walk to the docks through the dark silent streets, overloaded with cases, gas masks, the cat basket and dolls I’d refused to leave at home. My poor mother!

I cheered up on the boat, it was all so new and thrilling. PooPoo was sick and complaining horribly — I put my hand in the basket to stroke him and got bitten for my pains.

With the important-looking plaster on my finger I spent most of the journey hanging over the side hoping to see a submarine periscope. Every time I saw an innocent piece of wood floating on the surface, I yelled a warning to all and sundry — “German submarine!�

The Irish Sea was rough and unfriendly and most of the passengers were being ill. How they must have hated me!

That summer in Ramsey was glorious but my favourite occupation was not swimming or playing on the beach. High barbed wire fences had been put round two hotels on the front and I would spend hours watching the internees walking aimlessly round the grounds.

I was fascinated by their sad faces and the aura of unhappiness, and couldn’t understand why they should be locked up. Someone said that they were wicked Germans but they didn’t look wicked to me and, anyway, Germans wore uniforms and jackboots, they weren’t tired and defeated-looking elderly people.

What a horrible child I must have been, but what a strange world to grow up in.

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