On 8 May 1945, the war in Europe was finally over and millions of evacuees celebrated ‘Victory in Europe’ in their local communities.
Marie and Mona Martel recalled that, ‘At long last the great day arrived, the war (in Europe at any rate) was over and there were great celebrations. A huge street party was arranged for everyone, with food appearing from nowhere on a long line of tables.’1 In Nottingham, effigies of Hitler and Mussolini were burned in the streets, whilst in Glasgow the ships of the Clyde sounded their sirens. Winifred West attended celebrations in Blackpool: ‘There were crowds by the North Pier, my sister and I heard Churchill’s speech through loudspeakers and we went absolutely mad and shouted!’2
Lloyd Savident was at the cinema when he heard the news:
I was in the Crescent in Moss Side and they stopped the film to say that Churchill had made a speech and the war was over and the Channel Islands were to be freed. I returned to the Fittons, who were looking after my sister and I. They had already heard the news and there were street parties.3
On 9 May 1945, one day later than Churchill had hoped, British forces began to liberate the Channel Islands. Thousands of Channel Island evacuees enjoyed another day of celebration and the BBC recorded the liberation of Guernsey as it actually occurred. In Yorkshire, Ted Hamel heard the broadcast: ‘To us, this was the greatest broadcast ever! It was moving in the extreme and technically perfect. The lapping of the water could be clearly heard as the launch carrying the German commander drew alongside. We sat there, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.’4
A report on the Pike family appeared in the Burnley Express and demonstrates just how many evacuee family members had been scattered throughout Britain:
The liberation of the Channel Islands came as welcome news to the evacuees of whom there are a good number in Burnley. In our photograph, Mrs Mary Pike and five of her children are seen gathered around the radio listening to the good tidings. Though they will be sorry to leave Burnley and the many friends they have made here, Mrs Pike and her family – her husband is working in Manchester – will be ready to return home as soon as they are given the word. The photograph on the top of the radio is of Mrs Pike’s eldest son, Herbert, who is a prisoner of war. On the left is 4 year old Barry who was born in Burnley, behind him his 9 year old sister Pamela. Alan is 18. Monica, aged 21, escaped with her father, uncles and grandparents in a fishing boat after the Germans had occupied the island. Pearl is only 8 and she can scarcely remember her home. Two other daughters, Hazel and Odette, attend the Guernsey Ladies College, evacuated to Denbigh. Noella is at school in Cheshire, and Ronald works on a farm in Cheshire.5
The end of the war prompted a flurry of thanks from parents to the wartime foster parents and George E. Greenhalgh, writing from 15 Beaufort Avenue in Manchester, sent his thanks via the pages of the Leek Post:
May I express from your column my deep and sincere appreciation of the kindness and affection shown by many people in Leek to my youngest daughter, Estelle, who was probably the youngest unaccompanied evacuee to arrive in Leek at the outbreak of war. She was not quite 4, when she left home with her haversack nearly as big as herself and a determination to carry her own like the older ones. She is now 9 and is due to return home after living with Mr and Mrs Porter of Strathmore, Higher Woodcroft.
Mr and Mrs Porter and their family have indeed done a worthwhile job, and mere words cannot really express our gratitude to them and their many friends who took the child to their hearts and helped to build her up into quite a big girl. She will not forget her Leek friends and will probably pay many a visit in the future to the people she has learned to love. To Mr and Mrs Porter, Joyce and Bert, to her Sunday and day school friends and to all who have helped Estelle in her long stay in Leek. I wish to say a great big heartfelt thank you.
As a group of London mothers and their offspring was about to depart the town of Bury, Lancashire, one of them made her feelings plain:
Leaning out of the train carriage window, Mrs N Percival of Deptford expressed the thanks of the 3,000 mothers and children who came to the town last July when the flying-bomb menace was at its height. ‘Please give our thanks to the Bury people. During the 11 months we have been staying here they have been most hospitable and we shall never forget the many kindnesses they have shown to us.’
When the last farewell had been said the train steamed away with youngsters and parents leaning out of the carriages waving to a crowded platform.6
As shown in this account, newspaper correspondents were often present to capture the emotional moments when evacuees left their foster parents and friends to return home. Their reports also indicate some of the complications surrounding the return home of evacuees. Some had lost their homes or members of their families in air raids. In addition, a new housing act had been passed which dictated the conditions that had to be in place before children were allowed to return to their parent’s homes. A Norwich reporter stated:
The first official party of women and child evacuees belonging to the Metropolitan area to return to their homes left Norwich by special train this morning. They totalled 180 and amongst them were some who had been in Norfolk since two days before the beginning of the war. All in the party were people who had homes to go to. A number of children who came here unaccompanied by their mothers will be escorted back to London a few days later and a number of families whose homes were destroyed will have to remain in Norfolk until the housing situation in their home areas is more favourable. A number of babies born in Norfolk, including six in Norwich, were on a special train which also carried household pets such as dogs and cats as well as a quantity of furniture and personal luggage. A number of the Norfolk hosts gave the party a good send-off.7
An article in the Picture Post described the scene as evacuees left Llanelly, Wales:
Mrs Megan Morton, a mother of three young children, is leaving. She wants to get to her home in Crofton Park, Brockley, to put it right after its blasting, before her husband gets back from Germany so that things will be the same for him. But it is a sad return to London for her; her parents were killed last August by a flying bomb.
The villagers come out to say how sorry they are to lose the evacuees. Some frankly cry, others smile unconvincingly. One of the village men lifts a foster mother up to the window so that she can say a few last kind words as the bus is about to leave, carrying evacuees to the train. Mrs Bessie Jones of Tycroes, wife of a collier, has six children of her own, but saying goodbye to baby Hall of Shepherd’s Bush is painful to her. The baby’s father, now stationed in Egypt, has never seen him. One young evacuee, Anne Burns, will stay in Llanelly for a while but she comes down to the train to see her playmates off. The odysseys of London evacuee families are almost over, except for those who have no homes to go to and those whose homes are not fit for children to live in.
The new Act, which controls overcrowding, forbids more than an average of two adults to occupy one room in any house. 7,000 teachers have been assigned to see that the family homes of unaccompanied evacuee children are fit for them to live in.
There are still thousands of children who cannot return at all, because no one wants them, because their parents have been killed, cannot be found or are involved in domestic difficulties that can better be solved without the presence of a child. There are also more difficult cases, which involve moral and sanitary standards of homes, where parents are entitled to the children if they demand them, but where their children are far better off in their present billets. Fortunately the good people who have cared for them are, in most cases, eager to keep them as their own. And the children of course want to stay. Parental consent however is necessary and in many cases the welfare of the child must be sacrificed to the obstinacy of an unsuitable parent.8
Understandably, there was a delay to the return of Channel Island evacuees. Homes had been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable and the atmosphere of occupation remained with the existence of fortifications, piles of live ammunition and barbed wire. Evacuees were duly informed that, ‘The immediate return to the islands of a large number of persons would create very serious problems of accommodation and unemployment.’9
In the meantime, thousands of postcards and letters flew back and forth across the Channel between evacuees and their families. Tony Blampied received one from his Guernsey grandparents: ‘Dear Tony, I remember a little fair baby, who did not walk. What is he doing now? How does he like school?’ However, these long-awaited communications often contained unwelcome news. Mrs Ingrouille, for example, discovered that her mother had died during the occupation whilst Nick Le Poidevin recalled: ‘Sadly the first letter that I received from Guernsey told me of my paternal grandfather’s death nine days after the liberation.’10
Some parents were afraid that they would not recognise their children when they returned home after five years apart, as one newspaper report reveals:
These are anxious days for Guernsey parents, they fear that they will not recognise their own children when they return after five years’ stay in England. One or two said that they were unable to sleep, thinking that they might be unable to pick their children out ... Some parents have received photographs of their families to help them identify the arrivals. Others have had telephone calls. One father admitted that his son’s voice was like a foreign tongue and that he could not understand what he had said because of the accent his boy had acquired after five years in Scotland. Mr R Bichard pins his faith in recognising his son Roy because of his red hair which he had been informed, had not changed.11
From late July 1945, Channel Islanders began to return home, although some decided to remain in England, as this Lancashire newspaper reported:
Bury recently said goodbye to its London and South country evacuees and within the next few months most of the town’s Channel Island guests will go back to their lovely sun swept homes on Jersey, Guernsey and Sark. In fact the exodus began on Tuesday when three families began the long awaited journey south. About 100 families and other evacuees are awaiting news when they can return, but not all those who escaped before the arrival of the Nazis will go back. For many have gained employment here while others have decided the wider, more active life of a Lancashire industrial town is preferable to life on the islands.12
On 21 July 1945, the Guernsey Star described the arrival of children from England:
They cheered as the ship berthed, promptly swarmed on to the quay, shouting and cheering and talking loudly in North country accents. Some of them carried puppies and one youngster had a hen and brood of chickens in a cardboard box – a present for his family. Customs officials pounced on him, gravely explaining that it was forbidden to import livestock, and took hen, brood and box into their custody. More than 500 people gathered near the harbour Clock Tower where emotional reunions took place.
When child evacuees all over Britain returned home, either at the end of the war or beforehand, they often not only had to reconnect with their families but also had to meet new brothers and sisters who had been born during the war. Many also had to leave behind the foster families with whom they had formed strong emotional bonds.
The situation was different for each family, but was almost certainly influenced by factors such as the age of the child when evacuated, the quality of the relationship between the child and its natural parents, and the quality of the care given to the child by the foster parents. Many evacuees were delighted to be returning to their own families whilst others had mixed feelings. For some, it was effectively evacuation all over again as they struggled to readjust to life at home.
Lily Dwyer did not want to leave her foster family in Gresford, Wales:
Memories of my Liverpool home faded, then suddenly my mother came to take me home. Mrs Bee came to me and said, ‘Your Mummy is coming to collect you.’ She had just bought me a bicycle and I went into the garden, got on the bike and rode round and round, I wanted to scream because I was leaving Mrs Bee and going back to Liverpool. Mum collected me and I wanted to scream as it happened. She was expecting her fifth child and I think she needed me to help with the younger children. I hated leaving Wales and Mr and Mrs Bee and their daughter Mary, but as always, I quietly accepted my fate. Mum took a large suitcase away with us so I assume that the lovely clothes Mrs Bee had made for me were in there. I never saw those clothes again, perhaps Mum had to sell them because she was so hard up? I was back to poverty and a bombed Liverpool. The house I had left in 1939 had been bombed out so we had moved into a place over a fish shop. I didn’t remember my sisters either. The first night I got home I had to get into bed with two sisters in ONE bed who I didn’t know at all. One of them was crying, saying ‘This girl is kicking me!’ – as she didn’t know me either. I became a sort of housekeeper for Mum.13
Keith Llewellyn left his wartime foster parents, Auntie Elsie and Uncle Harold, in Brighouse, Yorkshire, to return to Crayford:
This blissful life eventually had to come to an end and all evacuees in the town were brought to the Town Hall for a farewell tea. We were given an orange and a shilling to come away with. Shortly afterwards I said a very tearful goodbye to my foster parents and got on the train still crying. I now tell everybody that I left Crayford in tears and came back in tears. Looking back, I should have stayed there, but it was not up to me. It was, what J.B. Priestley called, a ‘Dangerous Corner’.14
Adelaide Harris was deeply upset when she had to leave her foster family:
I really loved living with Mr and Mrs Wright and their daughter Renee. Mr Wright worked on the railways and unfortunately he was killed whilst at work. At the time, Mrs Wright was pregnant with her son Arthur, and she still kept me, despite losing her husband. When our school was sent back to Hull at the end of the war I didn’t want to go. I was so used to living with Mrs Wright. When I returned home, I cried for days which wasn’t nice at all for Mum and Dad. I also missed Arthur and Renee very badly.15
Richard Singleton will never forget the day his mother suddenly arrived at his Welsh billet:
She had come to take me and my brother home to Liverpool but we had been happily living with Aunty Liz for four years by this time. I told her I didn’t want to go home. Ron, Aunty Liz and I were crying, so in the end Mam just took Ron and said she would be back for me. I was still crying when Ron left, and I really missed him.
When Mam came to visit again it was just like the last for me, crying and not wanting to go. Aunty gave me a pen and pencil set, plus the New Testament that she had given me when we first arrived. Mam wanted me home because I was coming to the age of leaving school, fourteen. I cannot remember leaving – I was too upset to think of leaving Tancwarel and never seeing Aunty Liz and Uncle Moses and everything that I loved on the farm. I was being taken somewhere that I never wanted to go.16
One boy remembers that the little girl who had lived with them for five years did not want to return to her parents: ‘She had forgotten them completely and was dragged kicking and screaming out of our house. It was very upsetting for us all.’17
A foster mother in Oldham, Lancashire, remembers the day that her evacuee left her home:
When we had taken little George in, years before, I never thought for a minute how hard it would be for us to let him go. We waved goodbye as long as we could and then turned and walked away, neither of us could speak, we were too upset. We went to the pictures. I don’t know what we saw but we couldn’t go home you see, his little room seemed so empty.18
Terence Frisby remembers leaving his foster parents:
When we boarded the Cornish Riviera train for Paddington I was ten-and-a-half, Jack was nearly fifteen. Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack saw us off. Ten shillings a week per evacuee was the official allowance, and in return they’d given themselves without stint. Was there ever such a bargain? They were without guile and without selfinterest. ‘The salt of the earth,’ is the saying. And if ever the earth needed salting, Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack were there to do it. Amid the huffing and puffing of the engine and the stationmaster we said our farewells. ‘Give my respects to your mam and dad, write soon. Oh we’ll miss you boys,’ Auntie Rose repeated.
Doors were slammed, flags waved, a whistle blew. ‘Goodbye, Auntie Rose, Uncle Jack,’ we shouted. ‘Goodbye, boys. Look after your –’ he choked, stopped, tried to grin at us and failed miserably. Unheeded tears ran down his cheeks.
Auntie Rose cut in. ‘Oh, now don’t cry, Jack, for God’s sake. You’ll start me off.’ And she started to cry. The train moved forward. We hung out of the window, waving furiously, and the train went past Railway Cottages above us, where neighbours were waving at the wire fence. We began to round the curve in the line so we could only just see the platform on which Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack were standing, still waving back: last sight of our own Rock of Ages and her bloody-minded bantam. Soon we were in Plymouth and on our way back to our half-forgotten home.19
James Roffey, who later formed the British Evacuees Association, left the West Sussex village of Pulborough, in his case in 1943, well before the war’s end:
I received a letter from my parents saying they had decided that I could, at long last, return home. This was the news I had eagerly awaited for the past four years … I rushed around the village telling everyone my news, but on the actual day of leaving I experienced feelings of sadness which I did not understand. Within days of returning to London I was missing Sussex. Very soon I was expressing my total dislike of London and its way of life.
In retrospect I realise I must have been a real pain to my parents and I feel guilty about the way I treated my mother. Ever since evacuation day in 1939 she must have yearned for the moment when her family would again be reunited. She probably remembered me as her little eight-year-old boy who used to run around the house singing, but he had gone forever and in his place had come a rather serious, self-reliant boy of twelve who made clear his dissatisfaction with his home and surroundings; who often would say that as soon as he could he would return to Sussex.20
During her evacuation, Mavis Robinson’s parents had moved to nearby Newport where her father had found work at a munitions factory. For a time, she lived with both families on a rota basis:
I was not able to live with my own family at first. We had an interim period of time-sharing – weekends here and there – so that my wartime foster parents could get used to the idea of my leaving them. Eventually I did go to Newport to live with my family. By this time all of my family felt that we were part of my foster parents’ family and stayed in touch with them until they had all passed away. When my husband and I visited their grave recently, I grieved over their loss but rejoiced that life had become richer for us by knowing them.21
Douglas Wood recalls how he did not want to return to his family in Birmingham:
During my evacuation I had only seen my mother twice and my father once. On the day that they visited me together, they had walked past me in the street as they did not recognise me. On 23 November, 1944, a taxi arrived in Rolleston to take me home to them in Birmingham. It was a very tearful farewell indeed. I did not want to leave my aunts and they did not want me to go. Going home was a very traumatic and sad experience. I no longer had a Birmingham accent and this was the subject of much ridicule. I had lost all affinity with my family so there was no love or affection. When my father returned home from war service the situation become worse with some violent domestic disputes.22
In Portrush, Northern Ireland, William Crawford received a telephone call from his father’s friend, Uncle Hubert, in Belfast. William’s son, Bruce, shares the family story:
Dad was told to get himself to Belfast as quickly as he could, and to get ready to meet his parents. He didn’t really know what the message meant, but was granted permission from his housemaster. He took a train to Belfast, and then trolleybus to Uncle Hubert’s house near Stormont.
Dad was met at the front door by Uncle Hubert who urged Dad to be quiet, and to make his way into the living room. As he went into the room Dad saw two people, a man and a woman, his Mother and Father who had his head turned away in conversation with someone else. Dad says he was quite dumbfounded and quite overcome, and recalled tears in his eyes (indeed as he spoke about the reunion meeting his eyes were quite red.)
The woman, his Mother, asked ‘Are you William?’ Dad doesn’t really recall answering as such, but probably just nodded through his teary eyes.
His Mother then said ‘Matthew, are you going to say hello to William?’ Matthew turned away from his conversation and towards Dad and said, ‘Are you my son?’
Dad and his Father shook hands, Dad didn’t want to let go. He said that in that moment a void that had been in his life, one that he hadn’t really understood, was filled. He sat next to his Mother who held his hand as if she would never let him have it back, and so tightly it hurt Dad, but he couldn’t say anything about the pain. He was allowed a few days to stay with his parents, and they all went to Dublin to meet his sisters again. Dad said there were a lot of silences, often quite awkward. I think no one knew what to say or how to say it. There was no counselling for these sorts of events in those days.23
When the war ended, Alderney evacuee John Glasgow remained on the mainland, with his foster parents, for a little longer:
My father was demobbed from the Army and came to Winchester to be near me. He lived in lodgings and worked in the Prison service and also carried out sign-writing for a coachbuilder. I remained in the home of my wartime foster parents, Mr and Mrs Grant. I think father felt his war was lost, having lost his wife and home and perhaps felt it too painful to return to Alderney. He then went to Guernsey lodging with people he knew at St Julian’s Cafe, St Peter Port. He began working again, as an artist, painting and sign writing and then moved to a single storey chalet style bungalow on the Esplanade. Once settled there he thought I could rejoin him. In the Spring of 1947 I left my foster home and returned with him to Guernsey. My foster mother was heartbroken.24
Mrs Ursula Malet de Carteret returned to Jersey to discover, as did many of the returning evacuees, that things were, putting it mildly, a little different than when they had left. Ursula, for one, found that her home had been ruined:
In July 1945, Guy and I got permission to go over to Jersey. We stayed in the Manor which was completely empty except for the Turkey carpet in the Big Dining room. Apparently the Germans came into the house soon after landing in July 1940. It was used for troops but there were officers in charge. The house was dirty, gun racks, bunk beds everywhere upstairs. What happened to all the small pieces, curtains, carpets, linen etc – we shall never know.
There were dumps in the town where items from many houses were taken for people to claim. We only found one picture. In 1942 there had been a fire in the White drawing room, the whole of that wing was gutted. When we had left the island in June 1940, we had left our Ford car at the pier then boarded the boat. During the war it had been used by the Germans and we now had to buy it back from the British!25
For Dorothy King, the return home to London in 1945 was an unexpected disappointment:
It wasn’t the joyous homecoming I’d waited for over all the years. Our school building had been bombed and we had to make do with inadequate patched up classrooms. Our homes were shabby with war damage and neglect. The London suburb I returned to could offer none of the entertainments and activities I had enjoyed in Bedford. My mother was still working and, worst of all, I missed my friends. It had taken me four or five years to adjust to being an evacuee. Now I found the readjustment just as difficult!26
Some evacuees who were now in their teens were disappointed with their prospects when they returned home. Janet Day was unhappy with employment prospects in London: ‘For six years, I had been growing vegetables in my country billet and loved working in the fresh air. When I got home there was only factory work.’27
Irene Hawkins was another disappointed former evacuee. ‘After all that education in England I ended up scrubbing floors! Guernsey seemed so small after the wide roads in England and the wide open spaces of the Cheshire countryside. After six months I returned to live on the English farm where I had been billeted!’28
Peter Aves recalls the uncomfortable two day journey home to Guernsey:
On 24 October 1945 my mother and I, plus her sister Daisy, caught the Boat Train to Southampton - we were booked on the Isle of Jersey. When we boarded her we heard the Hantonia that had sailed the previous night had returned to Southampton after suffering damage from a large wave. Her 336 passengers were transferred to the Isle of Jersey.
We sailed at 10 pm but with conditions deteriorating, the captain decided to anchor in the Solent until daylight. At 6.30 am she ups anchor and steams into the Channel but a decision is made to divert to Cherbourg because of the dangers of trying to enter St Peter Port harbour in such bad weather.
On 26 October at 11 am the anchor was raised and the ship headed to Guernsey in difficult conditions making only six knots at best, she arrived off St Peter Port and berthed some forty-two hours after leaving Southampton. During that time I couldn’t eat and any fluid I drank quickly ended up in the scuppers!29
Guernsey teacher Ruby Nicolle returned home after an anxious fourmonth wait:
In September 1945, we were asked to take back fifteen boys and girls who had left school during the past five years. They were scattered around the Manchester area and we all met at London Road station, as well as Wally, our cat, in a wicker basket, to start our journey back to Guernsey. We stayed the night in London in a church hall and went on to Southampton the next day, arriving in Guernsey at 3.30 on September 21st. There was a joyous reunion at the harbour, my fiancé, relations, children’s’ parents etc – a wonderful day.30
Bob Cooper returned to his family in Islington in 1943. ‘Our old house had been damaged by bombs so we moved to Dalston. I attended a new school and because I had picked up a Cornish accent, I stood out a bit, but I was able to stand up for myself and soon lost the accent again.’31
John Noble had a similar problem when he returned home to Lewisham: ‘I went home and discovered that I spoke differently to the local children. I was a little Yorkshire lad in South East London and had some playground fights as a result.’32
When Jim Marshall returned to Rochford, he left behind the luxurious surroundings of a manor house in Bream: ‘It was very difficult. I was now fourteen years old and Rochford was unfamiliar to me, as were my parents. It was a life changing experience as during the war I had lived in the lap of luxury, but in 1945 I had to return to reality.’33
Lily Dwyer had also lived in luxury. ‘When we left Lady Partington’s huge house to return to Lowestoft, it felt awful,’ she recalled. ‘Mum and Dad felt like strangers and the house was so small, like a rabbit hutch! Worse still, we had to go outside to go to the toilet.’
Lourdes Galliano’s family endured a difficult journey back to Gibraltar, only to discover that most of their possessions had been stolen:
On 23 December 1944 the best Christmas present of the world was given to us. We were on the list for the next boat which sailed to Gibraltar in the New Year! We spent the next few days in a state of euphoria, happily making plans for our return. We packed our shabby clothes, scruffy shoes and a few meagre belongings and left to board a ship called the Cap Tourain. We had been out at sea a few days when it was suggested that I should keep my life jacket close to me at all times as there were a number of enemy submarines patrolling our route. We were part of a small convoy and one night, off the coast of Portugal, we were all asleep in our cabins when there was a horrendous crash. The ship jolted and I fell out of my bunk. The lights went out and there was a lot of noise, sirens wailing, babies crying and everyone wanted to know what had happened. We thought we had been torpedoed!
The ship was listing as we groped our way to the saloon which was our meeting point in case of emergency. Some very dim lights came on and an officer appeared to guide the way and to reassure us. He then told us that, sailing in the dark, another ship had collided into us. It had made a large hole in our side near the bow and they were trying to assess the damage. Luckily the hole was just above the waterline and it took twenty-two mattresses to fill it up! When at last we were able to move again, we found that the rest of the convoy had gone ahead. We had to follow them slowly to avoid the water getting into the hole. Would we make it to Gibraltar?
Dawn broke and eventually we saw land through the mist. Excitement mounted as we waited for our first glimpse of the Rock after four long years. It was a most emotional moment. A shout went up and we all exclaimed ‘There it is, at last, there!’ We jumped for joy, embracing each other and laughed and cried at the same time.
When we had left Gibraltar in 1940, we were told our flat would be requisitioned by the army and to place all personal belongings and small pieces of furniture in one room. This was locked and officials came and put a seal on the door. We were assured that nothing would be touched. However when we returned home, we discovered that the sealed door had been forced open and most of our things had disappeared. There were no sheets or blankets and there was not a single toy or game or book.
Gone was the beautiful doll’s house which my grandfather had given to his first granddaughter and to which we had been adding carefully over the years. My parents’ bedroom furniture was made of mahogany and we found the dressing table and wardrobe were stuck with huge nails where the service men had hung up their helmets and gas masks. Everything looked shabby and worn out but we were just happy to be back. We had lived through so much hardship that we were ready to accept anything. So we cleaned and polished and put up curtains and started to learn how to take up our lives where we had left off.34
Brian Russell’s mother had died three weeks after their arrival in England and six years later he and his brother returned to Guernsey with their father:
It was not until 1946 that Dad came to Dorset to collect us, with a lady friend who he later married. They came in the dead of night and they were strangers to us. They took us back to Guernsey where we were introduced to grandparents and aunts that we did not know. It was so confusing. I would ask Dad questions about our Mum but he had no interest in talking about her – and he was suffering from shell shock as a result of the war.35
George Osborn returned to his mother in Portsmouth without his sister, who had died of blood poisoning during their evacuation:
Mother mourned Brenda’s death for the rest of her life, which I could understand. But my mother, in her worst moments, blamed me for being alive instead of Brenda, which doesn’t make for a close mother and son relationship. I found Portsmouth to be a city almost in ruins and I was a virtual stranger in my own city. I could never do anything right, according to my mother. This undermined my already low esteem and confidence. ‘You’re just like your father’ (he was in a psychiatric hospital) had undertones of accusations of insanity. If I offended her in any way, she would not speak to me – sometimes for weeks on end. I remember on one occasion she never spoke to me from Easter to Whitsun, and that was six weeks.36
John Martin’s mother was horrified by her son’s appearance when he finally returned home to Dagenham:
In my final billet, I had lived in Burnley with people who didn’t seem to know how to look after children and I didn’t see my parents at all. When I returned home, my mother didn’t recognise me and said that I had turned into a ‘dirty, scruffy street urchin’. I also spoke in a way that she couldn’t understand as I had developed a North Country accent. The first thing she did was to put me in the bath then she threw away the scruffy old clothes I was wearing and cooked me a proper meal. I had been away for two years.37
John Mallett remembers seeing his parents after five long years of separation:
I was shipped back to Guernsey and upon arrival at the quay we had a long walk from the ship to where the awaiting parents were, behind barbed wire barriers. These had been erected by the German occupiers and had not yet been taken down. When I was about a hundred metres from the meeting point, I could recognise all my family. My Father, who had never been a hugging, cuddly person, somehow got through the barbed wire although he tore his trousers. Then he started running towards me and I started running towards him. I was home.38
Many British evacuees never returned to their family homes. Those who had been evacuated as adults decided to remain in the communities in which they had settled. Child evacuees remained with their foster parents because their own parents had passed away or could not provide a secure home for them. Many child evacuees were now in their teens and had found promising employment or become engaged to local people. The Ministry of Health took note of this, stating:
These young people may be eligible for maintenance grants, or billeting allowances may continue for the present. Authorities should arrange for friendly supervision by some appropriate organisation or individual after this boy or girl becomes financially independent; it is undesirable that young people earning relatively high wages should be left without some guidance.39
Peter Hopper did not return home when the war ended. His mother had died when Peter was six months old:
My father was invalided out of the RAF with tuberculosis, so at the end of the war it was decided that I should continue to live in the Willis household as a foster child. Rose Willis and I always had a good relationship. Her husband, Ted and I had a reasonably good relationship in the early years, but I felt a growing resentment as I grew more independent and rebellious in my teens.
It came to a head when he made a violent attack on me, because of a remark I made in trying to defend his wife (Auntie to me) from verbal abuse. I realised later that I should not have tried to intervene between a man and his wife. However, his behaviour gave me cause for concern and certainly would not have been tolerated in today’s society. Ted Willis was bigger and stronger. He pinned me down on the bathroom floor, putting his hands around my throat, throttling me. I could not fend him off, so his son, Douglas, then in his early twenties, intervened to save my life, pulling him away.
The police were not called, but had that incident occurred today, my foster father would have at least faced a charge of assault on a minor. As it was, I was the one unfairly banished from the house for three weeks, staying with a friend while things cooled off. Although I was eventually allowed back into the foster home my continued presence in a house with Ted Willis was a fearful one. There was no apology for the violent incident; somehow it was deemed my fault. Unfortunately, there was worse to come. Auntie was to die, tragically, at the age of sixty-two, taking her own life after husband Ted left the family home following a break-up of the marriage, the result of his physical and mental cruelty and infidelity. A court case was looming in the very week of her suicide.40
When John White and his brother were evacuated from London to Essex, they never saw their parents again:
It was a great life in Rayne, a lovely, warm cottage in the countryside where Fred and I were always out roaming and soaking in Mother Nature. To us, animals were things we had never seen before. In London we had only seen dogs, cats and pigeons but in Rayne it was a like a different world. When the war finished I was eleven and Fred was twelve and whilst most evacuated children returned back home, that idea was not one that we were too keen on getting on board with. For me, the thought of going back home to Edmonton never arose. I didn’t want to go back. I also felt that my mother never wanted to have us back either.41
Channel Islander Mr Rumens decided that his family should remain in England as he had a good job with a detached house and garden. In late 1945, they briefly returned to Guernsey to collect their belongings. They found the house intact, containing all their possessions. However, their neighbours asked Mr Rumens for payment for this five-year ‘caretaking’ service. He had to sell some of their possessions to pay this.42
Marion Wraight remained with her foster family after the war:
When the war ended, I was twelve years old. My brother Bill went back home to Margate but came back again after a day or so, as our Mum couldn’t afford to look after him. I didn’t go back to Margate in the end as my wartime foster mother, Auntie Millie, asked Mum if we could stay with her. I was fine about it all, they never officially adopted Bill and I; Mum wouldn’t consent to it.43
John Payne’s family never returned to London:
When the war ended my mother and I and my siblings stayed in Stanton as our home in London had been destroyed during an air raid. Mum did consider going back but decided that Stanton was the best place for us. We were all happy and had more or less adapted to the country way of life. In 1950 we moved to Shepherd’s Grove aerodrome where our accommodation was disused Nissan huts made from galvanised tin, very cold in winter. We remained there for seven years then moved into a brand new council house. I am glad my mother made that decision not to return to London but she never got to enjoy life in our nice new house as she died shortly before we moved in, just forty-nine years old, after a short illness.44
Richard Smith had been evacuated from Guernsey to England with his mother’s friend, when he was sixteen months old. He was another who never returned to his Guernsey home.
My father, who was stationed in the Isle of Man, had found me in England so during the war I was cared for by his ‘lady friend’ and her parents. I was too young to remember my mother, and I had always been told that she was dead. Years later, in England, when I was married, my father, who had rarely contacted me, told me that my real mother was alive and living in Ellesmere Port! She and I met in Chester where I discovered that I now had a sister.45
Derek Dorey was also adopted by his wartime Lancashire family:
I then became Derek ‘Pilling’ and I had everything in Bury with the Pillings, a better life than I could have had if I had gone home to Guernsey. I think that’s why my mother allowed me to be adopted by them at the end of the war. Sadly, the law said that I could not contact my birth family again, once I had been adopted. I was only young so I hadn’t realised that this would be the case. I never saw my mother again.46