Hi gang, Something has just happened to me that I know, with our shared experiences as evacuees, will interest you all. Some of you will already know, from my earlier emails, that I was evacuated from London to Barnsley in South Yorkshire sometime in 1944. When we arrived at the station, a number of us were loaded into a truck and taken out of town to Smithies, a small coal mining community, near Barnsley.

When we arrived at Smithies, the truck stopped in the street and as our names were called out, we were handed over into the care of our new, "Mums". Myself, and another boy, were still in the truck after all the names had been called out. Somehow, we had been mistakenly put into the truck and there was nobody waiting to claim us. When this became obvious, one women, immediately, stepped forward and said she would take us both. And that;'s how I first met my new, "Mum", Mrs Perkins.

I have already told you what a wonderful, kind and loving family I had been taken into and describe, the 'trauma' of my first bath in the living room, with Dorothy, the young daughter of the family, sitting next to the bath, waiting patiently for me to get out of the tub. With the top half of my body getting hotter by the minute from the heat coming from the hot stove and the part of my body, below the bath water line, getting colder and colder by the minute, as the bath water cooled, it was a tacticle battle she knew she would win and did.

Well to my utter astonishment, I have just heard from a reporter of the Barnsley Chronicle, who I had recently written to, that she has found Mrs Perkins, who is now 86 and Dorothy and has told me that they are as delighted as I am that we are in touch once again, after more that 50 years of being out of touch. I am still in a state of shock and can't wait to talk to them on the phone on Sunday.

Actually, the whole series of events, leading up to this miracle of discovery, had, in retrospect, a, "it was meant to happen" feeling about it. I had written recently to the Barnsley Chronicle to ask them if they had any records of the arrival of the evacuees from London, during the war. and received a reply from one of their reporters who had herself been evacuated to Barnsley from London as a child and stayed there after the war. She sent me a copy of her own story, which had been published in the Chronicle and mentioned that she had just recently found the family of another London evacuee who had lost contact with his, "war time family". Little did I know then, that she was going to do the same for me.

She, herself, was evacuated from the Clapham Commom area in 1942 to Barnsley where her mother had originally come from. After the war they stayed in Barnsley. As things turned out, I could'nt have chosen a better person to contact, when I wrote to the Chronicle, even though I had no idea that she existed when I wrote to the newspaper. That's why I have this feeling, it was meant to happen. She says, that she will now write an article for the Chronicle about the series events I have just told you about. I'm still feeling, "Gob stopped" by all that has happened.

Bye for now,

Patrick

Can anyone add to this?