TWO women who formed a friendship during the Second World War were reunited last week after a gap of 50 years.

Sheila Parry or Davies, as she was known then, first met Ethel Hopkins from Bexhill-on-Sea when she and her sister Olwyn were evacuated to Pen-yr-Heol Farm in the parish of Llangattock Lingoed during the Second World War

Sheila said: "Pen-yr-Heol Farm was a neighbouring farm to my childhood home, Penrose Farm and Ethel and Olwyn had come to stay with their relatives the Ellis family as living very near to the south coast of Britain fast became a place of evacuation at that time."

Before the War, Ethel's father Alfie Hopkins worked in the Hopkins family business of carpentry and joinery at Lower Walson, Skenfrith.

This work entailed making anything from baby cots to coffins. Her mother Jinnie was in service at a farm near Skenfrith. After getting married the couple answered an advert in the newspaper for work with a carpentry business in Bexhill-on-Sea.

But during the early war years Ethel and her sister were sent to stay as evacuees with their grandparents at Lower Walson and the girls attended Norton School for a time. Ethel said the same teacher who had earlier taught her father taught her.

Ethel remembers that at school all the children including boys picked up needles and knitted for the war effort and they made scarves and gloves for the soldiers. Ethel and Olwyn already knew how to knit and so were able to make their contribution towards the wartime effort made by the children of Norton school.

Sheila remembers: "Ethel and Olwyn then came to stay at Pen-yr-Heol and attended Llangattock Lingoed School. To get to the school they had to walk down the country lane past my home and would join up with me and my brother Warren to walk the rest of the way down the lane and across the fields to our school in Llangattock village.

"Chatting with Ethel, who had vivid memories of her time spent with us, was special. I remember her with her bright ginger curly hair and wearing a green school gym slip and she is wearing it in the old photograph which was taken about 1941.

"Ethel being nine years older than me certainly had wonderful memories of friends and teachers at the school during that time.

Ethel recalled: "Mrs Warren, who was the school's head mistress was always addressed as 'Governess' by all the pupils. I can also remember a number of my friends at Llangattock School Ben Tittley and Sally Pollard. Ben always helped me with my drawing as I was no good at drawing and he was."

Ethel remembers how children who had not missed a day off school were given a watch and recalls how one girl had taken just half a day off to attend her father's funeral was denied her award.

Ethel also made close friends with Kathleen and Eunice Bayliss. In later years after her return home to Sussex with her sister, Ethel would from time to time visit her family at Lower Walson and had kept in touch with Kathleen.

"We both remembered when we tasted our first banana," added Sheila. "We also remembered oranges arriving in this country although Ethel did not them. I remembered the soft tissue paper in which the oranges were wrapped. This tissue paper was not thrown away but became 'luxury' toilet paper.

"It was much softer than the squares of newspaper which hung on a nail on the back of the lavatory door.

"We both remembered 'Uncle Will', or William Williams who worked for the Ellis family at Pen-yr-Heol and who had a stutter. I can remember a saying of his when he was engaged in conversation with anyone, if he got a bit confused or thought the other person was, he would say 'Half you, half you, half you a minute'."

Other relatives who Ethel remembered were the Phillips family of the dairy farm, Penrhos, in Raglan. They were her mother's cousins. She remembered the boys Bill, Jack, Eddie and George, the twins, and Trevor.

Today Ethel Burchett still lives in Sussex after losing her husband Fred some eighteen years ago. She has two daughters, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Sheila concluded, "It has been a memorable experience for me to meet up with Ethel again after all these years."