IN the summer of 1940, two boys left the Channel Islands in search of sanctuary from the war.

Graham Smith and Ted Bevan settled in Burnley, where they began new lives and have stayed ever since.

Graham, 76, who lives with wife Kathleen, 70, in Brunshaw Road, was just six-years-old that June.

He was fortunate enough to travel with his mother Elsie in one of the last boats to leave the island, but his father Charles stayed behind.

He said: “It was a short journey normally, but it took four and a half days, dodging German U-boats apparently.

“It meant nothing to me at the time, it was just an adventure. It must have been nerve racking for the captain and the parents, but nobody could tell the kids.”

Ted had been evacuated a month earlier, aged 12, with his brothers Morris and Ralph. His mother Winifred and father Frederick did not join him in England until nearly two years later.

The 83-year-old, of Colne Road, said: “I remember somebody came round and gave you a pillowcase to put one change of clothes in.

“That’s all you were allowed to take. We didn’t really know what was going on.”

When the Smith family arrived in East Lancashire they slept in Ebenezer Baptist Church, before staying in volunteers’ homes and at relatives’ houses.

Graham’s mother struggled to adapt to life in Burnley, missing his father who sent occasional letters and photographs.

He said: “They billeted German officers in my dad’s house. He said they weren’t ill-treated, they just got on with their lives.”

The Bevan brothers initially went to Scotland, later moving to Burnley to be reunited with their mother and father.

Ted started work at the age of 14 in Harrisons fireplace shop and eventually starting his own fireplace business after a spell in the Army and met a Nelson singer, Margaret, who became his wife.

The grandfather said he even overcame an initial language barrier to enjoy a side career as a nightclub comedian, performing at charity functions and clubs in the late 1970s.

He said: “When I came here I couldn’t understand a word anybody said! But I got used to it and made some very good friends.”

Graham meanwhile returned to the island as a school pupil in 1945.

He found it ‘slightly insular’, and after a spell in the Army, also decided he preferred life up north and embarked on a 28-year career as a policeman.

However, he admits Guernsey will always have a place in his heart: “It still feels like going home.

“It’s made me what I am really.”