Personal Memories - Paul Fitton

“I was six when the war started. My mother told me a little girl would be evacuated with us and that she would be a playmate for me. Being an only child I could hardly wait for her to arrive at our house in Browning Drive.

One morning I came downstairs to find a young man, 15 years old, sitting at our breakfast table and my mother told me he was Paul Fitton, our new evacuee from Roundhay School in Leeds.

I was so disappointed that he wasn’t a girl I almost immediately made up my mind to have nothing to do with him and that I wouldn’t speak to him, and I didn’t for about a week. Eventually I realised he was a good playmate after all and we were to become the best of friends.

My mother told me some years later why Paul had come to stay instead of the girl she had promised me. Apparently at about 11 o’clock one night a man had knocked on the door asking if we would take a boy from Leeds. My mother immediately said no and explained that she had requested a girl. However the man persuaded my parents to step outside to see how many boys they still had to find places for. They were never to forget the sight that met their eyes. About 30 boys sitting or lying on the pavement, some were even asleep - they had been trailing the streets of Lincoln all day looking for someone to take them in and they were all exhausted.

Paul stayed with us for about three months and then returned to Leeds.

He wrote to us that Christmas…..

Paul continued to keep in touch with the family afterwards.”

Pat Sharp, Lincoln
Extract from Call Back Yesterday - People of Lincolnshire remember the war. Lincolnshire Books, 1995.