An enigmatic smile playing on her lips, one can only wonder what's going through the mind of this little girl as she awaits evacuation from Liverpool in September, 1939.

She was one of the hundreds of children and their teachers who arrived in Ormskirk; local folk opened their homes and their hearts to the evacuees, as members of the Ormskirk Historical Society heard at their February meeting in Bickerstaffe on Monday evening.

Drawing on his extensive local knowledge of the subject, Roger Blaxall spoke for over an hour on some of the wonderful tales he picked up from yesterday's evacuees who back in 2005 enjoyed a grand re union in the town organised by national charity The Dark Horse Venture - back then Blaxall was its regional development officer in the NW.

Amazingly, he tracked down almost 100 evacuees with 65 of them meeting for the reunion.

And on Monday evening, three men from Maghull, Aughton and Ormskirk spoke movingly of their own evacuation memories - two to Wales and one to Long Lane, Aughton, adding yet more 'colour' to what Blaxall described as a 'living history lesson.'