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My name is Dilys Davies, and I’m 74 this year.
I still live in the same house in Denbigh that I lived in as a child, during the war. I live at the bottom of the town, on Vale Street.
We had some evacuees from.. I think it was called Holy Lodge school in Liverpool. They were two girls. Unfortunately, we lost contact with them. I think they went to Howells School in Denbigh, but I don’t remember for how long.
But a mother and daughter came up from Hornchurch in Essex, and they came to Denbigh, to the house, for a couple of years. And I’m still in contact with the daughter. Her name is Marian Mortimer. We’ve only seen each other a couple of times, but we’ve kept in touch, and we phone from time to time. And she went to school in Fron Goch in Denbigh, with me. Now it’s the County Court offices. We used to send Christmas presents to each other, but we stopped that, but we still ring every couple of months. I’d say she’s quite a good friend, in a distant sort of a way.
They came.. I think it was through a contact. They had friends down in Essex who had family in Denbigh, and they came to Denbigh.. through more of a private situation, not the government. The father worked in the Smithfield in London, and he used to come every couple of months to see them.
We did have some American soldiers in Denbigh, and they used to march up and down the town. They’d adapted the town hall, and they stayed there.
There were these Nissan huts along Rhyl road, and I don’t know whether the Americans were there, or if our lads were billeted there.
The other thing I remember is that my father joined the fire service, so he was called out if there was an emergency. We seemed to manage amazingly well.
A lot of evacuees came to the town. Quite a few came from Jersey, and I don’t know which school they all went to, because they didn’t come to mine. They possibly went to Howells School too.

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