CHILDREN at Sutton Community Primary School have taken a step back in time - with the help of a real life refugee.

Robin Collins, whose granddaughter Ellie Child goes to the school, fled the Channel Islands at the outbreak of the Second World War.

The then three-year-old Robin spent the rest of the war with his mother, grandmother and sister, moving between Blackpool, Bolton and London.

Mr Collins was invited in to the school to share his experiences as part of a war project by years three and four.

Teacher Liz Hamer said: "He's been fabulous. I can teach the children what I know and what I've learned, but he was there and the children have got so much out of it."

Mr Collins, 69, talked to the children about rationing, surviving the Doodlebugs in London and life in the makeshift air raid shelters in the London Underground.

"I was three when the war started and was on the last boat out of Jersey before the Germans arrived. We left at 4am and the Germans arrived at 8am. They strafed the boat as they arrived and killed 15 people," he said.

The family spent six months in a refugee camp in Southampton before travelling with 2,000 others to Blackpool, where they were left for 24 hours without food or water. And, unlike many children who were evacuated out of London during the war, Mr Collins ended up in the capital where his grandfather lived.

Mr Collins talked to the children at a special assembly and in class, when children dressed up and made their own gas masks and identification labels.