Evacuee- by Catherine Roberts (nee. Bowness) Doreen’s sister Catherine, wrote of her experience as an Evacuee, in this poem published in 2002. The poem meant a great deal to both of them. 

It started with a letter To all the kids at School:
 We were going away to the country Away from Liverpool There were 8 of us in our gang, Only four were sent away- The youngest and the eldest Were all allowed to stay We all trooped down to Lime Street To climb aboard the train, They told us one week only Then we’d all be home again September nineteen thirty nine In Wem we did arrive, We came back home to Liverpool May nineteen forty five I’ve children of my own now And selfishly I say, No matter what is happening I couldn’t send them away


 Note: Doreen amended the last line of her copy of the poem, to say: I’d not send them away.

A poem from A.E. Housman's: A Shropshire Lad. Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

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