WW2 evacuee asks others sent to Minehead to get in touch
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Kelly Withers
BBC News, Somerset
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Albert Butterfield
Bert Butterfield (circled) with fellow evacuees in Alcombe village hall
A man evacuated at the start of World War Two is hoping to make contact with fellow evacuees in memory of VE day.
Albert 'Bert' Butterfield, 92, left London two days before Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939.
Evacuated with teachers and children from Gainsborough Road School, Mr Butterfield, then aged seven, travelled on a train to Minehead, Somerset before being sent to live in nearby Alcombe.
Mr Butterfield said: "It would be interesting to know how people have made their way since then, what's happened to them."
Mr Butterfield and his brother Jack, who also travelled with him to Somerset, were part of the biggest mass movement of people in Britain's history.
Operation Pied Piper, initiated on 1 September 1939, saw people, mostly children, evacuated to the country from towns and cities at risk of being bombed.
Over the course of three days, 1.5m evacuees were sent to rural locations considered to be safe.
Evacuations, which were voluntary, took place in waves, with another 1.25m leaving cities during the Blitz.
Albert Butterfield
Albert Butterfield wants to get in touch with fellow evacuees
Mr Butterfield lived in Alcombe for more than three years, staying in five different homes during that time.
"We attended a school that was set up in the village hall and in our free time we would roam the countryside," he said.
"We woke up on the first morning hearing crows and we had never heard that before when we were living near a railway line in Canning Town."
He said his mother would visit by coach and sent spending money in the post.
"Our family didn't know where we ended up at first. Nobody knew where we were going. We were given a postcard to send them an address."
Mr Butterfield returned home to be treated for scabies and then spent the rest of the war at his aunt's house in Staines.
He is now asking for help to find some of those sent to Alcombe with him.
"It's amazing how time passes, isn't it? I just want to make contact, to find out what their lives are like now."
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