Robert Evans

He recalls when he was 11 or so and the war started that he and a bunch of local kids were taken out of the city to this rural camp where they did minor manual labor in order to keep them away from bombs.

Basically, it's a long-term summer camp where, you know, you're working on projects and stuff.

You're helping to build things out in the woods.

And they're just trying to keep you away from where the Germans are targeting.

Yeah.

Now, just based on when things happened, we know Jimmy was 13 in 1939, so he can't have been 11 when the war started because that just doesn't work.

One of the difficulties here is Jimmy gives ages for how old he is when a bunch of different stuff happens that absolutely cannot be true.

And I don't know why he'd lie about it.

This may have just been honestly him forgetting because once you get to a certain age, it's hard to be like, was I 10 when that happened?

was i 12 like i can't tell for myself on some things that happened to me um check your damn memoir though come on yeah yeah yeah but it is a little you do have to like kind of go back and be like no he couldn't have been 11 he was 13 we know when he was fucking born right um

He wouldn't have been worried about getting bombed by the Germans in 1937.

That would have been crazy.

And they hadn't started bombing the UK in 1939.

But I can believe that, you know, maybe that like that era they were getting worried about it and stuff.

So anyway, whatever.

whatever age he is when he gets to this fucking summer camp he's only there for a few months before his parents borrow a car to visit him I think he's there for like six months and then they come to visit him and his mom sees that his camp where he's camping is directly underneath like a massive gasoline tank and she's like well fuck he could get blown up here I'm not gonna let him just I'll take him home right I feel like the odds aren't any worse that he gets blown up in leads than sitting underneath this gas tank um

Um, so his mom takes him back home and this is the moment that Jimmy, you can tell Jimmy says this, thinks this is the moment that his life really begins because once he gets back home, all the men are away at war at this point.

This probably would have been like 40, 41, right?

All of the men are away at war.

And a bunch of the older teenage boys who aren't old enough to have been like drafted yet are working.