‘Janet & John’ are an irrelevance to ‘Tommy’. Their world has no meaning for him or kids of his time. Tommy tells his story through an open mind, gaping mouth and the glaring eyes of a working-class kid. It is 1939, he goes where he’s sent and stays with whoever will have him. There is no alternative. Like a Dickensian waif, he is labeled, bundled up onto a boneshaker of a ‘charabang’ full of scruffy kinsmen. Destination-evacuation, the isolated moorland village of Ilsington, Devon. Here his adventures include the brutality by a few, the exuberance of the U.S. Army, sex and violence. When Germany ceases its bombing of London Tommy returns to the city. Hitler revitalizes his attacks with Zeppelin and buzz bomb raids. The second evacuation returns him to the village only to a more Spartan lifestyle than before, cruelty and his mother deserting him. Within this humour prevails and love sustains.