Mike Smith continues from the post on 7 November.

Finally I agreed to go away. My mum and dad drove me to Bluntisham in Hertfordshire. They had a petrol allowance for the business. Not many people did. I went to stay with a couple of farmers also called Smith. Ethel and Alfred they were, but children never called adults by the Christian names back then. For me and the other two evacuees, they remained Mr and Mrs Smith. They were lovely.

The house was tiny, had no bathroom. The outdoor privy was stinking, squares of newspaper served as toilet paper; the night soil man came on Thursday to empty all the privies on his open cart. I had to share a bed with another evacuee.

But there was some peace, freedom, loads of fun and skating on the flooded fens in the winter. It was bliss. I stayed there for five years.

It was the day of my ninth birthday. When we got to Windsor Station we were herded together. It was a bit like a cattle market. The locals, they walk round and select who they want to take home. The people who took me in were not too bad. They had a lad roughly my age. But come Christmas I wanted to come home. So that was it. My mother came to fetch me and I didn’t go back.

TED GARNETT