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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer on behalf of Doreen Robinson and has been added to the site with her permission. Doreen Robinson fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Together with my younger brother, Roy (aged 6) and sister Christine (aged 4) I was evacuated from London (Highbury Vale School) on 1st September 1939. We went by train to Hatfield and Roy and Christine were billeted with one family and I was taken by another. After a few weeks our mother came to collect us (much to our joy) and another train journey brought us to Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset. We stayed in a boarding house while our Mum sorted out somewhere permanent for us. Our Dad had been called up in 1938. He was in the RAF Reserve. Mum decided not to stay in London on her own, but to move us to a 鈥榮afe area鈥�. On the whole we enjoyed our life in Weston, although we were all changed by the war and what we went through. It was always at the back of our minds.

I do remember we had air raids in Weston, but the worst thing was that our Grandma was killed in October 1940 in the London Blitz. She had gone to an air raid shelter under Dame Alice Owen鈥檚 School, Islington, which collapsed and buried everyone: about 109 people were killed, 17 of whom were never identified, although some of the children escaped. Our Mum went to London to wait until they got all the bodies out 鈥� it took 13 days 鈥� and went to the funeral. We were all very sad after that as Grandma was a very jolly person. Granddad was an ARP warden. We saw very little of Dad, although he came home on 鈥�48 hour鈥� leaves. But after 1944 he was posted to an RAF station near Weston. Our youngest brother, Robert, was born at a maternity home in Weston in July 1941.

One very strange memory is of a sunny Bank Holiday (Whitsun?) in June 1940, when I went out on my own to walk along the prom to a village called Uphill. I didn鈥檛 expect to see many people about but the prom and beach were full of wounded soldiers. They had all lost arms or legs, some of them both legs. They were sitting on the seats or on the low wall of the prom, looking out across the Bristol Channel. They were all silent; no-one was talking to anyone. When I, a 13 year old, smiled at one soldier he wouldn鈥檛 look at me and looked out to the sea. I suddenly felt I shouldn鈥檛 be there, that this was some strange, secret, grown-up world, and I turned around and went home. I can鈥檛 remember if I told my mother what I had seen that afternoon 鈥� she might well not have believed me. I found out later that they were men wounded in the evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940.

Later on in the war, about 1942 鈥� 44, the town was crowded with GIs (black and white men) who were very friendly. But then they still had to do their fighting on the beaches. They were training on the wooded slopes at the back of the town and so the woods were out of bounds for us children.

We had to stay on in Weston until October 1946 as our Dad was not demobbed until then and we had no home in London. We had lived in rented flats; very few people owned their houses then. Our Dad managed to get a flat by paying some 鈥渒ey鈥� money to an estate agent in Islington and so we were back in London in time for a very bitterly cold winter in 1946 / 47.

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