About the contributor

1st Sept 1939 aged 6.5.
I along with my brother aged 3.75 was somehow dispatched from Carlton Street Infants, Bradford to Todmorden.
Seems to me we were on our own i.e., no mother or father with us. Father went into the Army.
I have a feeling that we were sorted out in Walsden although a photograph shows us in Cornholme c 1939.
However at some point we did end up in Walsden with a family called Lewtas in Chapel Street South. From there we were split up and I must have been delivered to about five different addresses. I know I stayed with the Ivesons and I was friendly with John Cockcroft and his cousins Susan and Peter who lived near St Peter’s CE School but alas I can’t remember the names of other friends.
As Mr Iveson was to go into the Army I was moved to Lord Street where next door was my brother. We stayed there until 1945 when father collected us and we went to Blackpool.
I have been back many times to Bradford and Todmorden and of late contacted schools to try and assess my whereabouts at the time.
So why didn’t we return to Bradford with the rest of those who did? The short answer is we couldn’t, there was no one there. Mother and Father were about to split up and evacuation appears to have been the answer. So we weren’t truly evacuees. But between Bradford Education Director and my father we were ensured of care and protection during the period. In a way we were lucky. Some returned to Bradford to find their parents had disappeared. We were lucky; we weren’t bombed out of home we didn’t lose our parents through enemy action so we were grateful for that.
Can’t understand why we didn’t return to Blackpool in 1939. We came from there when my father was a confectionary salesman and had travelled around quite a lot.
I suppose we, like the older generation that I now belong to, seek answers that we wished we should have asked about sooner.
I went into the Navy my brother became an accountant and went to live in Yorkshire. Thankfully we both married and ended up with a loving family each.