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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bernie Hawkins and has been added to the website on behalf of Sheila Ball with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was eight years old and living in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, when the War started. I remember in about 1940/41 the evacuees arriving from London. All three railway stations in our town were absolutely packed.

I was playing the street near the evacuees’ reception centre when I came across a small boy sat on a step with his two sisters. The two girls had both been allocated a place to stay but the boy, who was about three years old, had not. Without seeking my mother’s permission I invited him to come and live with us. A lady from the reception centre accompanied us back to our house and asked my mother if this would be all right. Our house was only small, but the boy, whose name was Fergus Carey, was allowed to stay. Fortunately he had bought his own camp bed with him. His sisters were living in the next street. I remember him being scared of bombing at night.

It turned out that our new guest’s mother was Mercedes Gleitz, the first woman to swim the English Channel. I remember reading about her in “The Girl’s Book of Heroines”. She came to visit Fergus but later had to go into hospital. She was unable to swim during the War because all the pools were closed.

All the family returned to London before the War ended. Let us hope they all survived the bombing.

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