All the family came to our house for Christmas. One year my cousin, who is the same age as me, and I were arguing about who was going to sit next to my father. I said you like to sit next to your daddy; there was a sudden silence and a little voice said “I don’t think I’ve got a daddy any more”. Her father had been killed about a week earlier.

I was four years old, but I couldn't play on the beach - no one was allowed on it, for fear of German invasion. Anti-landing devices were erected on the sand, iron bars 20 feet high, sloping landward.

Being evacuated at seven years old ... removed me at a crucial stage in my life from a family environment where I had been surrounded by love and affection into a world where I had to fend for myself. I couldn’t, when things got tough at my rough school, go crying to comforting parents. I was on my own and, fortunately, learned to cope; mostly by joining a gang. Those harsh lessons helped me deal with difficult times later. For instance, National Service was no problem for a hardened evacuee, whereas some of my 18-year-old companions wept softly in their beds, some went AWOL and one committed suicide by jumping off the water tower.

I was five when the war started. I lived in a farm cottage near the sea in the north of Scotland ... We played in the field in front of our house where the army came to fill sandbags from a dip in the field, creating a small sandy quarry. We watched the seemingly endless Army convoys going to practice for the D-Day landings on our sandy beaches; later great concrete blocks were erected on the sand to thwart any sea landings by the enemy.

I have memories of
· Watching the flame of a doodlebug across the sky
· Seeing exhausted and dirty soldiers lying along the road leading from the station.
Of injured soldiers dressed in a bright blue suit with a red tie
Of listening to the radio announcement of the start of the war.