HelloStoriesfromthePast.com Special thanks to the Clydebank Library, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, for the use of its archival photographs. This memoir, just released in January 2, 2012, is about a child growing up in the duration of World War 2. It is rare because people of that era are dying off rapidly, and their stories with them. Elizabeth O’Neill was born in the Glasgow Maternity Hospital in 1934. She grew up in industrial Clydebank, Scotland. One of her earliest memories is of the great ocean liner, built in Clydebank, the RMS Queen Mary, going down the river Clyde in March of 1936. The child knew poverty, abuse, neglect, and illness. Evacuation in 1940 proved to be a blessing and ended too soon when her parents brought her back to the danger zone in time for the Clydebank Blitz in March of 1941. She and her family were made homeless, and her mother deserted the family a few months later. In early December of 1941 Elizabeth saw the newsreel of the Japanese bombing of the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. She wondered how much pain a child could bear. In the ensuing years Elizabeth attended thirteen different schools; her little brother attended eleven. The school leaving age was 15. Stability came for two years when they lived in a childrens’ hostel, and for another two years when they lived with the Doherty’s. Now a teenager, Elizabeth, her father and brother rented a new Council house of their own and found stability again. There were still disappointments …