AN EVACUEE who was relocated to the Llyn Peninsula during the Second World War has returned to the area where he sought refuge from the bombs and chaos in London.

William ‘Bill’ Saunders was just five years old when he was separated from his parents in the UK capital and sent to live in Abererch with his seven-year-old sister Joyce.

Evacuation was voluntary, but the threat of bombardment, the closure of many urban schools and the organised transportation of school groups persuaded families to send their children away to live with strangers for their own safety.

Bill and Joyce ended up in rural Wales, far form their home and surr­ounded by people they did not know and a language they did not comprehend.

Now 82, Bill has returned to his childhood retreat and shared his experiences with a new generation of schoolchildren, over three quarters of a century later.

Bill and Joyce’s names still appear in the school’s logbook all these years later.

Speaking at Ysgol Abererch, where he first attended in 1940, he said: “We had two spells at Abererch, one in 1940-41 and a second in 1944-45.

“We were evacuated as part of a small group of children to Pwllheli without our parents, arriving late at night.

“We were sent to stay in temporary accommodation with an old man and his wife.

“I can remember how scared I was of them. They spoke in what was to us, a foreign language.

“We were then taken to stay with another group where we were treated as part of the family.

“The father worked on a farm and would every night go out and ‘bag us something for the pot’.

“Occasionally he would come home with duck eggs or seagull eggs. Yes, we ate seagull eggs!

“Looking back I think we may have been staying with a poacher.”

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