Doreen Simson had only ever known thick city smog and the hustle and bustle of London until she took a train journey aged four that changed her life forever.

Leaving London amidst the terrors of WW2, this train journey transformed Doreen from an innocent child into an evacuee overnight.

As the 80th anniversary of VE Day approaches, Doreen has been reflecting on her experiences growing up in the countryside with a family that took her in like their own, and regard her as a member of the family to this day.

These figures were Lucy Matthews’ grandmother and great grandmother who, after coming across a crying four-year old Doreen at the evacuee collection point, welcomed her into a life so different from the one she had in the city she had grown up in.

Doreen was one of the 800,000 children evacuated in 1941. She specifically remembers her mother Nell telling her to not leave her brother Dennis’ side, as they were greeted with ‘children holding jam jars full of water for us to drink’ shortly after arriving in Borth. But her brother was picked prior to her and Doreen remembers “crying so much”.

Speaking to Lucy, Doreen said: “My mum had told me to stay with my brother and within minutes of ending up in this new place, he had gone. That’s when your great grandmother Jean Sharpe came along, and I became a member of the family. She took a look at me, saw me crying and said ‘I’ll take this one’.”

Walks down country lanes with Mrs Sharpe were Doreen’s favourite.

“Those walks have played a huge part in helping me become the woman I am today, especially when it came to my career as a florist. I was the first in my family to take up floristry, and this originated from my time spent in Borth in the countryside.”

Doreen said the train journey back to London “is a blur”. “My brother greeted me at Paddington and the next thing I knew, I was being dragged down the stairs and into a house with a new baby. Some things had definitely changed during my time away.”

Nell and Jean never got the chance to meet, but Doreen knows how relieved her mother was for her to be taken into a family that continued to extend their affection towards Doreen later in life, even joining them in the family car for the funeral procession of Jean Sharpe, the woman who took in a distraught four-year old Doreen at the collection point.

“I just know that I was so lucky to be taken in by your great grandma,” Doreen added.

“My sister was one of the thousands of children that returned home due to mistreatment. Being a member of the evacuee association makes me realise my luck with the experiences I had across those four years.”