The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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1224 James Sinclair McLoughlin On the very first Sunday of the war being announced I was evacuated to North Wales from Liverpool, I was 10 years old, my sister who was 8 and my brother 6 accompanied me. None of us realised that this was a serious event, we thought of it as an adventure, being taken on a trip from which we would shortly return home. I had never been away from home before, the furthest was New Brighton so I was told to look after my younger siblings as we got on the train and departed from Lime Street Station. On arrival in Bangor, N.Wales we were taken in groups around the city to the houses, I felt as if I was for sale but nobody seemed to want to buy me. My sister was soon placed with a school teacher who was very kind to her, but my brother and I were the very last to be housed out of our group. The first thing that happened to us was we were taken straight into the back garden and our heads were shaved and our clothes were burned - as our foster mother said 'just in case'! We were given new clothes from the Mayors Fund. The couple that took us in had no children of their own, their house was clean and neat, but we were kept short of food. We could smell bacon being cooked in the morning for our foster father, but my brother and I were given some bacon dripping with sauce in it and a slice of bread. We never saw sweets at all except when a kind lady assistant in Woolworths sneaked a sweet to us when we were trying to keep warm in the store while doing the shopping for our foster parents. A truck was made for us to do the shopping and in the winter it was converted into a sledge - so we could still do the shopping. Chapel was three times on a Sunday, then straight to bed - no supper. Every night, winter and summer it was bedtime at 7 o'clock. My older brother who worked on the docks in Liverpool gave me a harmonica as a going away present, but when my foster mother saw it she confiscated it until after the war.. Many children from Liverpool were unhappy and tried to run away by getting onto the railway line and following it to Aber, then to Llanfairfechan, hoping to reach Liverpool, only to be brought back by the police the same evening and receiving a thrashing at school the day after. I enjoyed the 'digging for victory' at school, but always ended up with blisters on my hands from using the spade, not ever having done any gardening before. Three and a half years later we left Bangor, but we never returned to Liverpool as our mother had been bombed out of her home twice, so she was re-housed to Nelson in Lancashire. Our father was a merchant seaman all his life, serving in two world wars and peacetime service. I had two sisters whom I had never met before who were born during the years I was away from home. Since I retired I have written a book about my evacuee years, it is called Welsh Scouse and has been so popular with young and old alike I have had three re-prints. James Sinclair McLoughlin Related Content: Evacuees Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.