By Patricia Canon Fitzpatrick from Aberystwyth:

"When the Americans joined the war they came to Ansdell and they were very good to the children. I think they had bottomless pockets because whenever you saw an American they had their hands in their pockets ready to give you chewing gum. They were very good in the way that they used to give parties for the children at Easter and Christmas Parties. They were fantastic.

We had a little trick living opposite the Lytham St Anne's golf course. The Americans used to play on the golf course so we used to go we used to go over into the bushes and when they hit the balls over we would run out and pick up the balls come back into the bushes and then we'd say we found your ball. Well I had to be a child some times! They knew very well what we'd done but then they gave us chewing gum and I think they were very tolerant with us.

We'd go home with chewing gum and a favourite thing of my mother's was to say, 'Don't you dare eat that chewing gum, if you swallow it, it'll stick to your heart.' I know better now of course but we believed her then.

Evacuees

After that we had evacuees. I remember there was a hall at the end of the golf course where they were collected. I felt so sorry for them with their gas masks and their little buttoned up coats and little short trousers with tags on them and they were distributed around.

We weren't allowed to have any because there was only my mother who wasn't very well and us. Some people in our road did have them and the majority of them were very good but one lady had two boys and one day when she went out she came back in to find that her banisters had all been chopped up. They didn't stay there for very long!

We had a good time. For children generally the war years weren't bad years. People pulled together, there was no quarelling with neighbours, there was no fighting no stealing. You'd think with having chickens like we had them, on a piece of spare land away from the house where we couldn't see them, that one or two of them would have disappeared, but they didn't do those things in the war years. Everybody respected everybody else.

Moving to Wales

We came to Wales because my Father came to open the Ministry for Agriculture Food and Fisheries in the Trawsgoed mansion. He was the first one there and I played in that mansion. There were only six people working there and he came straight from London in 1946 to open that as a ministry department. I spent a marvellous childhood there. Well I could be a child there couldn't I whereas before everything was on me because mother was ill."