AN evacuee, sent by his parents from the London blitz to spend most of the war years with relatives in the place of his birth and early childhood, Worcester, has put together some memories of those difficult days.

Maurice Darling recently decided to record his boyhood recollections of wartime stays in the Faithful City - home to generations of his forebears, the Darlings and the Birds.

He has now lived in Swindon for many years but wrote to us wondering whether we would be interested in his wartime memories of Worcester, and I asked him to forward them to me, which he kindly did.

Maurice was born in 1932 in one of a cluster of six small rented cottages in Hylton Road. His parents were Horace Darling, whose family lived for a long time in the Carden Street area, and his wife Hilda, who was from the Bird family of Hylton Road.

Her father, Alfred, known to Maurice as "Granddad Bird", was a wholesale fruit merchant who kept two cart horses and a dray in the same Hylton Road stables as the black funeral horses of Mr Wootton, the undertaker.

Maurice Darling spent his first six years with his parents and two sisters in the Hylton Road cottage which had one room downstairs, plus a larder, and two rooms upstairs. Outside was a yard with a toilet and washroom shared by all the occupants of the cottages.

Since dispatching his wartime recollections, Maurice has also sent me several pages recounting his first six years of life amid the shops, pubs, characters and businesses which then thrived in a well-populated Hylton Road. Alas, space does not permit me to include those memories too, save to say that Maurice calculates that, at the time, 14 relatives were living in the Hylton Road area.

It was in 1938 that his family was uprooted and moved to Cricklewood in London where his father had got a job in the Handley Page aircraft works.

"But when war was declared the following year, our parents sent my sister Sylvia and I back to stay with relatives in Worcester, the Kellys - Aunt Phoebe and Uncle George who lived with their children in a two up, two down cottage in Chequers Lane off Hylton Road.

"I went initially to St Clement's School but later had lessons in makeshift places such as my grandfather's loft over his stables in Hylton Road and in the front room of Mrs Wootton, the undertaker's wife.

"Sylvia returned to London and I later went to live with Granddad Bird's brother George and his wife Annie in Boughton Avenue. I well remember the Meco factory bombing and have a clear memory of the German plane flying over our street. Quite distinctly, I saw a bomb being released, and dashed through into the back garden and saw the explosion as the bomb went off.

"I wanted to go and see what had happened but my aunt Annie insisted we got into the Morrison shelter in the front room. I remember my Uncle George, a veteran of the First World War, telling her it was too late, now that the bomb had already landed. I managed to slip away later to look at the bomb damage," writes Maurice.

His younger sister Mavis was also sent to Worcester around this time and went to live with relatives named Waldron in Victoria Avenue.

Maurice's next temporary home was in Stallard Road with his Aunt Nancie whose husband Ralph Bird - brother of Maurice's mother - was on active service in the Army.

"Afterwards, I went to live with my other grandfather, Walter Darling and his second wife Alice in St Paul's Street and was sent to St Paul's School where the headmaster was a Mr Darke who was also in the Home Guard.

"There was an air-raid shelter in the school playground but I can't remember ever having to go into it. We had to carry gas-masks at all times and had collections at school for war savings. When you had collected 15 shillings, you went to see Mr Darke who would give you a savings certificate. We also went pea-picking from school because of the wartime shortage of labour on the land.

"We had gardening lessons too on land at Stanley Road with a teacher named Hicks or Higgs, and one day we went up to nearby Shrub Hill Station to see an ambulance train pulling out for the south coast. After the Normandy Landings, Ronkswood Hospital was used for wounded soldiers, and there were lots of them. You would see them around the city in their blue outfits, and seats were placed at strategic locations with notices saying 'Wounded Only.'

"My Uncle, Ralph Bird, a sergeant in the Royal Warwicks, had been wounded and was sent to Ronkswood Hospital, and I walked up there in the hope I might see him, but there were hundreds and hundreds of wounded servicemen.

"Among my other Worcester wartime recollections are of seeing lines of soldiers marching along, passing a cigarette to each other, and of Tiger Moth aircraft flying to and from the airfield at Perdiswell - the sky seemed to be full of them.

"On the Cathedral side of the river, there were some big concrete blocks which, we were told, would be moved into place, if necessary, as enemy tank traps. Later on, when the United States entered the war, Worcester seemed to be full of American soldiers.

"The city, like the rest of Britain, was in darkness at night, and we all had torches to see our way around. Metal bins were in the streets for people to put their scraps in for pig food.

"In all, I spent three separate spells in Worcester, and each time I came back from London things had changed.

"The only news we had about the bombing in London came on the wireless. Whenever the announcer said 'there was air activity over southern England last night,' we knew the capital had been under enemy attack again. I did worry about my parents and family in London every time I heard that statement and obviously looked forward to the next letters from them to know that all was well with them.

"During one of our stays back in London, a V1 just missed our house and killed 10 people in a nearby street. Mum immediately decided Worcester was the best place for my sister and I, and quickly dispatched us back.

"Then one day I was in the street outside my grandparents' house when a couple of chaps, coming home from work, quipped to one another: 'See you after the war!' I was mystified by this strange comment as the war had been raging for nearly six years, and went inside to find my grandparents listening intently to the radio. The news had just come through that the Germans had surrendered.

"We had no school next day, and that night I went up to the city centre, where the thing I remember most was all the lights. It seemed every house had the curtains open and their lights on. Every street was a blaze of light - such a sharp contrast from all the years of blackout.

"Through the Cornmarket, up to the Cross and along High Street to the Cathedral, people were shouting and singing - it was a great feeling. People went wild," says Maurice. "On that first day after the war ended, I remember seeing a man selling flags outside a pub in the Cornmarket square.

"I felt so good, and later there was a street party with tables laid out along James Street. The adults put on a good spread of food which must have meant a lot of going without on their part in those times of strict rationing. There were flags hanging all over the place along the street and out of windows.

"Then one day I came back from school and Gran told me I would be going home. We were given a label with our name and destination on it and went one afternoon to Shrub Hill Station to catch the train. I was surprised to see how many evacuees there had been in Worcester. The station was full of children on their way to London. Coaches picked us up at Paddington and dropped children off at various places. Our parents were waiting anxiously but joyfully outside a school for my sister and me.

"I enjoyed my wartime stays in Worcester - but then I was with relations. It must have been harder for my younger sister Mavis who was aged about five when she came to stay with relatives in Victoria Avenue. She went to Stanley Road School, and I kept in touch and met up with her as often as possible. We were treated very well in Worcester but, of course, missed our parents," writes Maurice.

He tells me he still has relatives living in Worcester - "lots of them, in fact."

He adds the information that his father's mother, Mary Darling, died aged 39 when he was only two as a result of a miscarriage after seeing the horrific aeroplane tragedy on Pitchcroft in 1910. More than 14,000 people had gathered on the racecourse to watch a flying display by a light aircraft, but as it taxied for take-off it veered into the crowd, killing one woman and badly injuring several others. Maurice's ill-fated grandmother was a belated victim of that incident! I have previously given full details of that 1910 tragedy in Memory Lane. Horace Darling, Maurice's father, died only two years ago, aged 92.