How long were evacuees evacuated for

If you ask Don Bayley about his past he immediately talks about his evacuation to Lichfield, just 20 miles from his home in West Bromwich. It changed his life and that of his younger brother, Phil. Mrs Coles, their foster mother, gave them something their own mother could never have done: a love of books and learning. And it was not one-sided. Twenty years after the war, Mrs Coles wrote to Don to say that she felt the children had been sent "to cheer her up".

I learned to appreciate all these different things from Mrs Coles. I learned how to talk to people and to address them properly and with confidence.

I developed a different accent, dropping my Black Country slang. In fact, I have to say that Mrs Coles changed me completely and she loved me — I'm ashamed to admit it — more than my mother ever did.

She made me feel wanted. She called us My Boys and that really meant something to us. When the boys went back to West Bromwich after the war, Don was dismayed by his mother's reaction to his new found interest in books and education. She cursed him for being "a bloody big 'ead" and was constantly nagging him to "shift yer bloody books". Even parents who were delighted that their children had had life-enhancing experiences and opportunities, found it hard to adjust to the changes.

Fathers, often forgotten in the evacuation story, also felt they had lost out. In , Ted Matthews wrote to one of his four daughters whom he sent to America in "Sending you away has been, in some ways, a tragedy. I still think it was the right thing to do, even though events proved different from our fears. But it has been heartbreaking to miss these years of your lives.

We shall meet again as almost strangers. Michael Henderson and his brother, Gerald, were sent to Boston in , aged eight and six. They lived with a loving family and completely absorbed the culture, education and American way of life. Now, as then, it felt like a positive gain on every level. Yet he wrote: "Returning home, it was hard for us to step into the lives of parents who had survived the bombing — and more recently the V1 and V2 rockets — and would jump at any loud noise.

Our parents' admonishments were met with, 'We don't do that in America. It took months for the four Hendersons to re-establish a family relationship — a lot longer, Michael notes wryly, than it took to remove the accumulated dirt they had acquired on the aircraft carrier en route back from the US. Sometimes children observed their parents afresh and found their way of life different from what they had grown used to with foster parents.

John Mare, who had been evacuated to Canada aged seven, was horrified, as only a child can be, by what he found on his return to Bath. He told his friend Penny: "My mother wears lipstick and powder. They drink and smoke, and even the dog is called Whisky!

The gulf in experience was not just felt between the generations or within families in which some children had been evacuated and others had not. Nigel Bromage and his twin brother, Michael, spent two years of the war on a farm in south Wales. They shared a room, they went to the same school, experienced the same foster family and saw the same sights in the countryside.

They were seven when they arrived and nine when they left. Yet they had two opposite responses to their evacuation. They had 20 cows, all of which had to be milked by hand, and the only aid was a horse. For Nigel, there was no down side. It is not perhaps surprising. Bristol later suffered severely from Luftwaffe air attacks. The return of evacuees to London was approved on June , but some began returning to England as early as The evacuation was officially ended in March YouTube features a number of videos about the evacuation.

One such video is a mixture of posters, photographs, and Imperial War Museum footage. Another video features a young schoolgirl interviewing her grandmother about her evacuation experience, part of a class project. By Dwight Jon Zimmerman. Michael A. Advertise with us.

Like this: Like Loading Sharing Options:. Facebook Comments 27 Archived Comments. Your source for trustworthy defense news Read more about our mission info defensemedianetwork. Popular Articles Michael A. Two hundred children, aged from three to 13, assembled before dawn.

Each child carried a gas mask, food and change of clothing and bore three labels. Freda Skrzypee, nine, who arrived with her parents and brother from Danzig on Sunday was among them.

While waiting to be taken away - they did not know where they were going, except 'to the country for a holiday' - the children had community singing. As dawn was breaking the children marched to Aldgate Metropolitan Station, where they entrained. At the Ben Johnson School, Mile End, E, mothers were allowed into the playground where boys and girls said a bright 'cheerio' to their mothers.

Remember Mr Morrison's message and smile! A teacher cheerily told a father: 'We'll be back in a week. The weather's glorious for a nice holiday. Organisation was so good that a quarter of an hour after the assembly the children were ready to move.

Once inside their buses they talked happily with their parents through the windows. Bert had them all right, with his gas mask. Within eleven minutes after the arrival by District Railway at Wimbledon, children from Merton Road School Southfields and Wandsworth School were in a main line train station on their way to an undisclosed destination. One thousand children are being evacuated from the Chelsea area.

The dexterity with which the children were shepherded through crowds of morning workers at Waterloo Station was a perfect piece of organisation.

Police wearing armlets and LCC school officials saw that an avenue to their platform was kept entirely free for the children. Little tots smiled gleefully and boys whistled and exchanged jokes. One boy, carrying a kitbag over his shoulder in true military style, kept humming to himself as he marched along. Your children are going to have a happy holiday and don't worry. One little boy at Ealing Broadway Station, where 50, children entrained, had a bucket and spade with him. To cheer him up his mother had told him that he was going to the seaside.

Actually, she did not know his destination. Mr E Kingston of Vansittart Road, New Cross, who saw two of his children leave on the train said, 'It is the only sensible thing to do. I am not worrying. Hospital evacuation too, went off smoothly.

Along the blue-windowed corridors of Saint Thomas's Hospital, past the carriage which Florence Nightingale used in the Crimea, teams of medical students wheeled patients who still require medical treatment but are not seriously ill in their beds to two centres, where they were transferred to stretchers.

Two fathers arrived and carried their newly born babies from the wards to the ambulance. Bernard Cooke of Cornwall Street, Victoria , proud father of Patrick Joseph, who weighed 9lb, 14oz at his birth a week ago, said:.

It's my first baby, you know, but I think it's wiser that they should go away. The bed patients - 70 in number - were evacuated from Charing Cross Hospital in an hour. I'll see you soon,' called one of the younger women. You will be back next week,' was the nurse's rejoinder. Many babies were among the first batch of patients removed from Guy's hospital. Great progress has been made with the first part of the Government's evacuation arrangements in England, says a statement issued by the Minister of Health.

The statement goes on: 'The railways, road transport organisations, local authorities and teachers and the voluntary workers in the reception areas are all playing their part splendidly. It has already been possible to extend the arrangements to a few other areas. As a further precautionary measure the Minister of Health has sent instructions to hospitals in the casualty organisation to send home all patients who are fit to be sent home.

Similar arrangements have been made in Scotland.