There was plenty of fun and laughter when Joyce and Peggy Foster came to Oxfordshire as wartime evacuees.

But they were also expected to help with the household chores.

The two sisters, aged eight and nine, arrived in Garsington on September 1, 1939, two days before war was declared, and remained in the village until 1945.

Joyce, of Iver, Buckinghamshire, writes: “We got off the coach outside the village hall and were marched down to the village hall where the billeting officer told us about our living accommodation.

“We were sent to stay with Mrs Woodward in The Alley, Garsington.

“The house had no water or electricity, only oil lamps and candles. The only water supply was an outside tap which had to be thawed out in the severe winter weather.

“There was an outside toilet in the garden — no toilet paper, only squares of newspaper.

“Mrs Woodward kept chickens and rabbits and we were sent out in the fields ‘gleaning’ for maize to feed them. We also saved potato skins to feed the pigs.

“Summer holidays always seemed warm and sunny when we could spend days with friends in the fields, making our own fun and enjoyment without worrying about being unsafe.

“We would go to the allotment each week to get fresh vegetables and play there all day.

“We enjoyed picking fruit (various varieties of apples and plums) and there always seemed to be a glut which we would take in washing baskets and hand them to columns of soldiers on manoeuvres through the village.

“In the spring, we would help with potato planting and in the autumn, with the picking up.

“Winters were very harsh, with thick snow and exceptionally ice conditions making it difficult to get around.

“We would say, however, that none of this would have been if not for the folk who took two little girls into their home and loved and cared for them as if they were their own, and the people of the village who took us into their lives.

“Aunt Amy, Uncle Walter and Aunt Edie treated us as family.”

Any more evacuee memories?