Wartime heroes

I read with interest the article about James Roffey in the Summer 2018 issue – a Silver Cross of St George for a champion of wartime heroes. What an amazing man, and a cross well deserved.

My brothers and sister were evacuated from London to live in a village named Yeoford in Devon. When their assigned guardians changed their minds, Mr and Mrs Hawkins decided they would take them despite having two boys of their own, after my brother’s smile melted Mr Hawkins’s heart.

After the war my mother caught TB, and further situations for my parents were rather grim. Mr and Mrs Hawkins decided they would keep my siblings until my parents were ready to receive them, which was several years later. My middle brother affectionately called his guardians “Mother and Father” until their deaths. To my other brother and sister they were “Aunt and Uncle” and later I also called them that.

My siblings kept in touch with the Hawkinses, and treated them as their own relatives all their lives. Although I was a lot younger I stayed with them in Yeoford on two or three occasions.

If I could give out medals to heroes, that is one family I would include for certain, for the love and financial sacrifice they gave to my family, especially when they were not obliged to in any way.

My brothers and sister are now all deceased. However, at the funeral of my oldest brother a couple of years ago, I met the granddaughter of Mr and Mrs Hawkins again, after losing touch with her.

We now stay in contact with one another, having met up twice again already, including a three-day stay.