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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Rebecca Hood of the People's War Team on behalf of Philip Doran and has been added to the site with permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in Liverpool on the 14th of 5th 1930 ….I was born in Toxteth a rather poor area, lots of unemployment, but nevertheless a rather happy life in my surroundings. I went to a school Our Lady of Mount Carmel and towards 1939 a lot of talk was going on about the war. This was something, as children we didn’t really understand…but then after the 3rd of September it came home to us as policemen started arriving at the school, fitting us out with gas masks and showing us how to put them on and this all seemed quite a novelty.

After a few months the masks began to shrink and it was very uncomfortable and you were glad to get them off. The children, the babies also had masks which was more like an old fashioned divers suit. The child was placed into it and you had to continually pump to keep it alive. The up to five year olds had a coloured gas mask…and this was known as the mickey mouse mask. It had a blueish colour and reddish nose….but most of the children soon got fed up with this. It was some weeks later when it was decided we would be evacuated.

The place was decided by the authorities and we knew very little about it until the teachers got us together one day and gave us a sheet of brown paper each, a length of string and two labels. The paper was for wrapping your clothes up, whatever you had, tieing them, put one label on the parcel and one label on your coat when you go. Eventually the day came…we all mustered outside the school in twos and this long snake line was marched to Lime Street Station. There were hundreds of other children waiting to be evacuated, and eventually we got on a train …then it came home to us what was happening. There was tears screams, some mothers had made an effort to come down and wave to their children goodbye. Eventually the train pulled out….volunteers aboard the train were going round giving you a couple of sweets, a cup of tea and a piece of cake. When we arrived at Crewe we transferred to a bus and I went to Sandbach - to a village hall. It was rather like a cattle market. People were coming in, examining you, looking at you…how clean you was, how fat you was, how thin you was…and eventually you were chosen and taken away.

I was chosen by a Mrs. Jones and it was on the way home that she laid the law down to me, what I could do, what I couldn’t do what time I would go to bed and I had to be on my best behaviour at all times. On arrival at the house I found she had a son Donald. Donald had the same kind of effect on me….he treated me as a trespasser nevertheless we eventually got settled in and I lived there for quite a few weeks.

And then there was a procedure where we went down to a small farm to buy vegetables for Mrs. Jones. The farmer was a kindly man and he used to give us a couple of windfall apples. One day I was sent on my own — Donald had gone off somewhere — and I went to the farmer, got the vegetables. But it was his wife that served me and I didn’t get any apples. So on the way back home I met a friend of mine, Joseph Ducat and he lived with a kindly old widow on a sort of smallholding and they had apple trees and everything. And Joe was sitting on the wall eating this apple. I got talking to him, and he said, do you want the core. And I took the core of the apple off him and started eating it and then proceeded on my way back to the house. When I got near to the house I just casually threw the remains of the apple away and went into the house. And Mrs. Jones says to me where are the apples. I said the farmer wasn’t there I didn’t get any and with that she went berserk and beat me terribly and my nose and mouth was bleeding and I managed to run out of the house. I went to my friend Joe’s and showed him and he got a cloth and tried to clean me up a bit and eventually the lady who was looking after him arrived and she said….Oh you can’t go back there so I said to Joe “Can you give me some writing paper and an envelope…I’m going to write to my mum and ask her to take me back”. So I wrote this letter, and I didn’t even have a stamp to post it….but I put it in the letter box.
It was in the days when a letter would arrive the next morning…there were two posts during the day and my mother eventually got this letter. And
Mr. Burgess arrived later and begged me to go back…and he said his wife was very sorry. So I relented in the end and went back to the house and went straight to bed. The next day my mother arrived and she told this lady in no uncertain terms what she thought of her and I was taken back to Liverpool.

I spent some time in Liverpool again and with the bombs and seeing quite a lot of action. And eventually it got so bad that they said we’ve got to get these children out of the city again. So there was another evacuation, only this time we went to Central Station, which was for the North Wales area. Eventually we got on the train and arrived in Caernarfon and once again a little village type hall, and everybody coming and picking you out you know. It was getting on to evening time…you know…it looked as if it were getting a bit dark, I remember it, everything was looking a bit hazy…. And there were seven of us left there was five relations of mine, cousins, and two local children from home. Then the door opened and this lady walked in and the WVS ladies was explaining to her what had happened — they had nobody to take these children they’d probably have to go to the hospital and stop there for the night. Mrs. Roberts said “I’ll take the lot”.

She took us outside and she had this pony and trap with a pure white pony. We all got in with our brown paper parcels, and off we went to Pen Llyn farm. When we arrived there the husband Tom, he was flabberghasted — she’d gone to fetch two children, and come back with seven! However he got over this …It was during the next few hours that they wanted to know all about us, where we lived, what religion we were and Terry Ralph wanted to go to the toilet, and he was shown the toilet up in the garden. Terry come back he said “You want to see it Phil, its just a hole in a plank of wood”, he said “And you go on this — and it stinks”. Anyway….we realised then it was the only facilities they had. But we were put in this big room and everyone had their own bed, and it was absolutely beautiful and she was so lovely Mrs. Roberts.

Each Friday night she would take us out to the dairy and she would bath us all in this tin bath and we’d be tucked up, put up to bed so no more talking — and the light would be blown out. But at the same time, although she was lovely she was a bit wily and she gave each of us a job and I was the herdsman although there were only three cattle there. And you know, although I was young, I’d taken to milking you know and I was left to do it — and some of them would put the milk through the creamery…they had a churn there, and we’d all take turns churning this butter. And to Liverpool kids it was just marvellous.

At the back of the house was these small hills. If you walked over them you’d get to Deiniolen. They may have been hills, but they suddenly appeared to us to be the Matterhorn and we spent days climbing these mountains.

Eventually we had some very bad news, the teacher had been there and said they’d arranged for us to go to school in the village. We arrived at the school and were amazed to find they were still using pieces of slate board, and slate pencils….and sometime later a man came there with large parcels …boxes of boots and we were all issued with a sort of canvas mac and a pair of clogs. The macs had these big belts across them, and we all knew about Humphrey Bogart and turned into these Humphrey Bogarts with the collars turned up. And the clogs that we were given …we used to have to go to the local cobbler and have them re-ironed every couple of weeks. We didn’t realise but this was like having a stamp on your head “evacuee” and it was during these times with Mrs. Roberts — I cannot say enough about her she was absolutely an angel — When we’d done all our little jobs every Saturday she would take us to Llanberis to the cinema. I can remember well seeing a film with Paul Robeson there and I think he was singing All Through the Night…it was really marvellous I never forgot it…but one day Mrs. Roberts said on a Saturday…She said: “Come on” she said, “We’re going into town” She took us into town and we got on this train and we didn’t realise but there was a lull in Liverpool in the bombing and she took us home for this day and she arranged for us all to go home to our individual homes and collected us again in the evening and took us back. And her husband Tom was a wonderful man, but the strange thing about Mrs. Roberts husband was he worked in the quarries and he would come from Llanberis on the bus and jump off and come across the farm. But on a Thursday he run across the bridge and he’d be into the house, changed into his best clothes and down into Caernarfon to collect his pension. And then he would go to his local pub and he would come home on the last bus every Thursday night blind drunk and there would be the most horrendous rows in the house …the language was blue to say the least! But the next day Tom was back to normal, you would never know what had happened. And another feature was being all Catholic children, we had to go to Mass on a Sunday and it was arranged that we would go to mass in Deiniolen, in the Snooker Hall. And us seven kids used to cross over these hills to Deiniolen and into the snooker Hall and a Father Coffey who actually died in Haverfordwest,as the parish priest there — many years later I met him in Haverfordwest — he would serve Mass and we’d have Holy Communion. And because we had such a long way to walk back, it was arranged that Dr. Marran, the local doctor would take us home for breakfast. And us seven kids went to this beautiful doctor’s home in the village and there seemed to be no shortage of food, which was natural being a doctor …there’d be a couple of eggs from here, a bit of ham from there …and we were waited on by a young girl you know…and I can only say we all became born-again Christians after that…there was Communion every Sunday.

After the trip to Liverpool you know the yearning got…a bit homesick again. And the others tended to drift away back home, you know. I was the last to leave and as I’ve said before …I was sorry and after I’d got married — I married a Welsh girl, after having been stationed in the army in Wales — and we went to Llanberis again, and Tom had died, but Mrs. Roberts was there and we had the same welcome again….Kisses all round and the best farm meals coming out, best butter and everything….and looking on the shelf I saw this wooden pattern of a swan and it was where you put the butter in this mould and pressed it down with this pattern and when you took the pattern away there was a beautiful swan on the top of it. And it was there, but the days of the butter had gone ….and it was riddled with worm …but it still brough back all those memories.

I remember playing around Lake Padarn near the farm... Tom had a boat, and we used to play pirates in this boat, and more often than not we sank this boat and spent the rest of the time salvaging it again. Another time Ted Ralph and myself was walking on the water’s edge and we found a dead sheep and we touched it and it was warm…and Ted said “I think its having lambs you know” so it didn’t occur to us that it was the heat of the sun that was keeping the sheep warm, and we got a piece of slate and decided to operate and get these lambs out…. We got them out but unfortunately they were dead…..and that’s one of my greatest memories because I always thought I’d end up as a vet afterwards.

But the war… things quietened down and everyone was drifting back home, and eventually I went back home ….and I was left with wonderful memories. And I tell my grandchildren about them, and they say “tell us more, tell us more”….

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