Introduction

I have always had a passionate interest in social history and during 2013 I started to collect stories of evacuation from those who spent the war years away from home as evacuees in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Within this book, 100 of these moving stories are accompanied by photographs, many of which have been rescued from old suitcases and attics.

Prior to commencing work on Evacuees, I spent four years interviewing hundreds of evacuees from Guernsey for my first book, Guernsey Evacuees: The Forgotten Evacuees of the Second World War. Over 17,000 evacuees fled from Guernsey to England in June 1940, just weeks before the five-year occupation of their island by German forces began. Sadly, many of those I interviewed have since died and, in common with the aims of the Evacuees Reunion Association, I feel that it is vital that the memories of Second World War evacuees are recorded now, before they are lost for ever.

During the past year, I have interviewed people who were evacuated within Britain as part of Operation Pied Piper and discovered the stories of others who sought sanctuary in Britain from war-torn Europe. I also came across the memories of those who, in 1940, found refuge in England from British territories, like Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney and Gibraltar the majority were not sent to the safety of the countryside.

The aim of this book is to provide a particularly memorable incident or story from each evacuee’s reminiscences, encapsulating their personal experience of evacuation. These are presented together with a wartime family photograph, allowing an intimate glimpse into 100 lives affected by war. Several of the evacuees did not have the luxury of a camera during the war, but local history societies, newspapers and members of the public have kindly allowed me to use relevant photographs to illustrate their stories.

It was difficult to choose just one extract from each of these stories, as all represent a compelling and important part of British wartime history. Whilst preparing the stories for publication, however, it seemed natural to split them into five themes: ‘Arrival and Departure’ depicts the initial upheaval of evacuation; ‘A Different World’ reveals the culture shock for evacuees of finding themselves in a new environment, often completely dissimilar to their family home; in ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ stories focus on the bonds forged between evacuees and their foster parents; ‘Suffer the Little Children’ demonstrates that not all evacuees had positive wartime experiences; and ‘We Were with the Children’ tells the foster parents and care-givers’ side of the story.

I have included stories from mothers and teachers who travelled with the schoolchildren and took on a huge responsibility. We tend to hear their stories far less often than those of child evacuees, yet they played a highly significant part in evacuation and it seems important to recognise this. In some cases schools were kept together as a unit and so the teachers became their pupils’ guardians for five years, in a move unprecedented in educational history.

Another theme running through many stories shatters the myth that most evacuees were deprived city children who left the slums for pristine homes in the countryside. Many of the former evacuees I spoke to recall being shocked when they were placed in country cottages with no running water, gas or electricity. Others discovered that their foster families were less than enthusiastic about their presence and endured severe homesickness.

However different, all of the stories in this book underline one thing: that there is so much more to the history of evacuation during World War Two than the images of children arriving at railway stations, clutching gas masks and with labels tied to their coats, which have entered the popular imagination. Hopefully, this book, with its combination of stories and family photographs, will paint an intimate picture of the different ways in which the British people opened up their homes to evacuated children and adults during the dark days of the Second World War.

Gillian Mawson, 2014