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On Friday 1st September 1939 I found myself walking home . I was within 200yds of hoome and I saw a car come around a corner and stooped outside our house. I saw my father and 4 friends get out. This was very unusual as he was working on a system where he was working for 3 consecutive weekends and on the fourth he had a long weekend free. He was talking to his friends for a while and then went into our house. I followed my father into the kitchen who told my mother that he thought that was imminent and that London would be bombed. He had made arrangements to evacuate the family along with his four friends and their families to near where they worked. He said that by 10pm that evening we would have 20 people in our house and I would have to go with the family. I explained the situation to my foreman who happened to live next door. 10pm that night 3 cars arrived at our house and 20 people were found somewhere to sleep (it was only a 3 bedroom house). They were in the bath and on the floor. At 6am the following morning I got up and went to Martinique barracks in Borden,Hampshire with the 20 people. My mother was found lodgings in Headley Down and stayed there for 6 weeks. On the Sunday my father and I had lunch with my mother and we listened to Neville Chamberlain on the radio.
I was found a job at the camp and eventually we moved to lodgings near my mother. The job was finished and we moved to Honiton in Devon where we built the infantry training camp. We were there for 6 months and then moved to Thorpe Arch in Yorkshire which was a large ammunition factory. As there had been no bombing of London my mother and 2 sisters went back to our house in London. I heard nothing for 2 weeks I became concerned and eventually resigned my job and went to London by train with my bike. Air raid sirens were going constantly and the train stopped frequently. At Clapham common the train stopped because Waterloo had been bombed. I didn't know where I was and I follwed my nose and found my way to Shepherd's Bush from where I knew my way home. I arrived home to an empty house and a neighbour told me that both my parents were in Central Middlesex Hospital. My father had been sent home from York with duodenal ulcers and my mother had epilectic fits. I visited them and found them reasonably well. After a week the hospital sent my parents home as they needed the beds. I found a job and at that point the first daylight raids began. You could read a newspaper at night because the fires from the docks bombing were so bright (and we were 10 miles away). Eventually my father got better, found a job and we all survived the war.
In those days strangers helped me beyond the call of duty and I cannot thank them enough.

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