Evacuation Of Children World War 2

[Beryl M]

An excerpt taken from my story

"When I climbed out of bed Friday September 1 1939, German troops were making their way across the border into Poland! September 3 1939 Britain declared on Germany and the horror of parents listening to the news that Germany had torpedoes the 13,.500 ton passenger liner :”Athenia” on route from Glasgow to Quebec, Montreal.1,130 passengers aboard, 118 lost their lives many of them children. This caused such a furor that Hitler ordered there would be no more attacks on passenger ships, no matter what the nationality!

That summer had been a hot one mom took us on a picnic to Stratford where Shakespeare was born and in August a holiday to Seaton a coastal seaside place in Devon, well known for its cider and clotted cream. Dad was away with the Air force, but being in the reserve was called up before things started to happen.

I was relatively a happy child, but life for everyone slowly began to change: Air raids started and the Germans began dropping their bombs, everyone was issued with gas masks, and smaller children like my Mickey Mouse gas masks and in every other garden an Anderson air-raid shelter were assembled. Within a few weeks the evacuations of thousands of children from London Birmingham and other big cities began. It was an operation that would have a profound effect on many of us later on in life. We were uprooted from our homes and dispatched to live with strangers some of us for a few years!

There was abuse not all children were welcome in families that took us in and I certainly had my share of rough treatment from some! However, it must be said, the independence forced on us at such an early age gave us an education - an appreciation of life’s incongruities no school could have provided.

Children with name tags pinned to coats, carrying gas masks, suit cases or shopping bags containing their belongings, teachers carried placards with the name of their school, came from all over snaking their way to bus stops and railway stations Tearful parents saying good bye to their kids wondering where they would be sleeping that night. As I boarded the train biting my lip I waved good bye with my handkerchief like the rest of the children till our parents standing on the platform were out of sight!'

 

[mariew]

It must have been awful Beryl M, I know my mom and her brother and sisters were evacuated, and as you know my mom has passed away and I so wish I could talk to her about her childhood, well she did tell me some but when your younger your not so interested, anyhow I spoke to my uncle about it and he said it was a bit like being in a cattle market standing there waiting for someone to pick you, and unfortunetly my uncle and two of his brothers and sisters got picked by a poor lady who expected them all to sleep in one bed and her husband was on nights and slept in the same bed in the daytime, it wasn't very nice and they cried and fortunetly went back to the hall where they were picked and got took back, but the next family they went to weren't that nice, and eventually nan and grandad had them back home, but he said my mom was very lucky and got chosen by a lovely couple who had a farm and they adored my mom and bought her pretty dresses and spoilt her, but after the war mom went back home and she spoke posh, so her brothers and sisters would keep asking her to say something, just to hear her posh voice.

 

[ChrisM]

Thanks, Beryl, tell us more about where you landed up and what you can remember of it.

The history books tell us that there were three main, official evacuations from the big cities. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the assumption was that any war would immediately result in widespread and devastating aerial attacks on centres of population. That was why the first evacuation took place from 1st September 1939, immediately that war looked wholly inevitable. It was of course a false alarm as the Luftwaffe stayed its hand for many, many months - the period of the "Phoney War" or the "Bore War" - and gradually two-thirds of the evacuees drifted back home over the next two or three months. The second evacuation, more the real thing and longer lasting, started on 13th May 1940, three days after the Germans attacked Belgium, Holland and France, and continued into July 1940. The third significant evacuation started in late June/early July 1944 and was sparked off by the first V1 attacks; it was more of a London thing, compared with the first two which were nationwide, and I assume that it barely affected Birmingham.

These were the official evacuations which involved some 1.5m. people in the first, 1.25m. in the second and around 1m. in the third. Of the three-quarters of a million unaccompanied children who were in the first evacuation, around half a miilion stayed away throughout 1940 and 1941 and their numbers only started to reduce early in 1942. Nevertheless a substantial number of children were still classified as "unaccompanied" and remained absent until well into 1945. Alongside all these childrens and sometimes their mothers and vulnerable adults, there were huge numbers of people involved in unofficial movements when individual families made their own arrangements, whole schools transferred to the countryside and some families even sent their children overseas, to the USA, Canada and Australia. One estimate suggests that there might have been an additional 2 million people involved in this further exodus.

But of course it is the official evacuations which are best recorded: those which involved the movement of children, often unaccompanied, who left their inner city areas, had a label tied on to them, were loaded onto trains and at the other end faced the great unknown. There must be many more experiences of the Birmingham evacuations amongst forum members and let's hope we hear some of them. (And in fact, whilst I have been typing this, mariew has set the ball rolling!)

Chris

 

[Beryl M]

Thank you Chris I will continue my story, but would like to hear from others. Mariew, I am glad your mom was one of the luckier ones.

Looking in retrospect. Although people were paid to take us - they were really forced into it. . Hence you can't expect them to receive us with open arms and give us all the love and kindness that children so desperately need. Consequently, most were not happy so gradually drifted back home to face the bombing. . .

 

[Graham]

Beryl,

That makes good reading, well done! Where can the rest of your story be found?

I was born in Brum during the war the youngest of 5. So in a way I was lucky, I was allowed to stay with my mum. My 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters were evacuated. My sisters went to Swadlingcote, Derby, and were treated very well indeed. My oldest brother was not as lucky as he was very badly abused and beaten, left him scared mentally for the rest of his life.

At Swadlingcote my two sisters woke up in the middle of the night to find their dad standing at the bottom of their bed, it really frightened them. Some days later came the news that he had been killed in action that night.

 

[gingerjon]

Beryl's story in full

 

[RayD]

I was evacuated in 1939 at the age of 7.
We were sent to a small village called Dymock in Glos.
I remained there for 4 years, during which I had 3 foster homes, all of which treated me as one of the family.
I can only remember all the happy times I had, with the war a million miles away.
I have nothing but praise for the people of this village,but,alas most of them have passed away now. However,I do visit if ever in the area, and always leave my thanks in the visitors book in the village church. (Believe it or not I was a choirboy !!)

 

[Graham]

Beryl's story in full

Thanks John.

 

[Beryl M]

Graham it is also on BBC WW2 in a condensed version. Just type in Beryl McMullen on Google

After all these years I remember many events with a sense of pain

We were fed but didn't always get our fair share of food. Some of us were sexually abused though not raped, we were interferred with.

Each time I went to a new place to live the same man would drive me in his car, he would sit me in the front passenger seat, put his hand down the elastic of my knickers and fondle my bottom, I endured this without complant, hating every moment. That sort of thing wouldn't go on for long unnoticed these days

This is just one of my untold stories I have on file

 

[Graham]

Thanks Beryl, I'll give that a twirl tomorrow. :thumbsup:

 

[ChrisM]

Beryl's story in full

And well worth reading too!

Chris

 

[pam1511]

My mother and father were childhood neighbours and were both evacuated from Alum Rock to a small village in Nottingham.Dad hated it and was soon back home with his mom.My mom was taken in by a couple who had no children and were quite wealthy,they bought her new clothes and cared for her very well.Mom was in Erdington homes as her father had died in 1938 so luckily her new home during the war was utter luxury.I remember my parents taking me to visit the couple who cared for mom the village was Clifton Nottingham.I arranged a school reunion 6years ago for mom to meet with her old school pals,when she first went there she wasn't accepted easily by the other children as she was a "townie" but as the years went by she made many friends.It was lovely to hear the stories from the other ladies.

 

[Beryl M]

It is only natural Pam and Ray for evacuees to feel the draw to the place that has been such an important part of their lives. For those who can look back on happier times it can be sweetly nostalgic. But on the other hand for those who have painful memories, have no wish to return, for that part of their lives is best to be buried and left in the past. Many others who have made the pilgrimage, have done so hoping the traumas of the past might be laid to rest for once and all, thus enable them to live the rest of their lives in peace. . .

 

[Beryl M]

Thank you Chris for the compliment that you found my story worth reading

 

[Alf]

Beryl although I wasn't evacuated in the War I did stay in Seaton Devon for a month in 1943/44 with my Sister Mother and Grandmother, this was arranged by Dad who was stationed in a Hotel on the Front. He had arranged with a local couple for us to stay at their Home. For us it was great as kids. We just remember the Sea and Beach and Barbed Wire and Barriers also a lot of Army friends of my Dad who made a fuss of us.

I been back a few times and it still as I remember it as it was.

 

[WINSTON]

Each time I went to a new place to live the same man would drive me in his car.....

BERYL.
I AM SO SORRY TO HEAR OF YOUR BAD EXPERIENCES.I CAN ONLY HOPE THAT THE ....... WHO MOLESTED YOU IS ROTTING IN HELL.
THIS SORT OF THING DOES HAVE LONG TERM EFFECTS ON CHILDREN.
AND CAN AFFECT THEM IN LATER LIFE.I HAVE NO RESPECT FOR THESE PERVERTED PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE . SORRY. DON'T WANT TO SAY ANYMORE.

 

[Beryl M]

Alf it has been seven years since I have been back to England. I loved the holiday we had in Seaton, And would very much like to go back again. However, I don't know if i ever will since Stuart has heart problems.

Winston, thank you for that, I have moved on. but know I will never ever forget. We may have had fear of the bombing, but some of us away from home faced another fear.

The evacuation from one's parents is something which, in my opinion should never have happened. The whole scheme was ill thought out and put into operation - authorities were messing about with children's lives, how could they give it so little thought?

My thought is they wanted mothers to work long hours in munition factories etc, evacuation served a dual purpose, it got us out of the big cities and also provided cheap childcare. . .

 

[ChrisM]

It seems that whilst many evacuees had good experiences which benefited them, others did not and their situation was appalling. For you and others in your position, Beryl, one’s heart bleeds.

It may be a bit unfair, though, to doubt either the need or the motives behind what happened. I think one has to try to put oneself in the position of parents and officialdom in 1939. The experience of bombing in the Great War – the bombing of British cities by Zeppelins and Gotha bombers and the attacks on targets in Germany by the RFC and the RAF – led to the conviction that the bomber would predominate in any future war and that the civilian population would for the first time be in the front line. This view may have been wholly disproportionate to the damage and injury caused up to 1918 but it reflected the terror that attack from the air had evoked in that period. Events of the inter-war years did nothing to change opinions. Aircraft technology developed, the Imperial will was imposed in parts of the world by the RAF bomber, the wraps were lifted from the secretly formed Luftwaffe and the latter was tried out with devastating effect on the undefended populations of Spanish towns.

By the late thirties both the official and the public view was that the outbreak of war would immediately result in widespread attack from the air on civilian populations. And the latter would not “just” involve the risk of being blown up or burnt to death by high-explosive or incendiary, but that of being subjected to poison gas too. As a result much pre-war attention was paid to methods of keeping the bomber out – development of detection devices, especially radar; of Fighter Command and its equipment and procedures; of other anti-aircraft measures; and to mitigating the effects of attack since, as it was said, “the bomber will always get through” – provision of air raid shelters, the issue of gas masks, the development of emergency services such as the ARP, AFS and others involving huge numbers of people, and of course the formulation of evacuation plans.

With all this official and private thinking, helped along by the disaster movies of the 1930s, it would have been astonishing if mass-evacuation had not occurred at the beginning of September 1939. What would have been going through one’s mind then, as a parent of young children in a big city like Birmingham? The only consideration would surely have been just to get them to safety. And that’s why so many parents opted for that. They were under pressure to go along with the official evacuation plans but in the end it was their decision either to cooperate and wave their offspring off at New Street or Snow Hill, or to ignore the offer and hope for the best.

Of course the predictions were wrong and there was no onslaught on 3rd September or for a long time afterwards. But that did not invalidate the thinking itself, just the timing; and when attack again became imminent, the further evacuation of June/July 1940 must have saved the lives of many children. The philosophy of winning a war by the bombing of the enemy’s cities with the side effect of killing its inhabitants of course persisted to the end of the war and the Allies were its most accomplished exponents.

There may well have been families where the absence of their evacuated children was found to be an unexpected convenience. Children being cared for by others far away might well have had the happy by-product of increased availability of city women for war work. And the way it all happened could surely have been better planned in so many ways with more attention paid to the well-being of the children once they were out of the cities – it seems like a good example of the British tendency to “muddle through” and to rely too much on the goodwill and common decency of absolutely everyone. But even so, I should find it hard to accept that the motives of either parents or officialdom was anything other than the safety of the children in desperate, unpredictable times. Many children were got out of harm’s way in remarkably short periods of time and so do not feature in the heartbreaking list of losses in the BARRA records. It’s just such a shame that some of them had to pay a heavy price for survival.

I hope there will be more contributions to Beryl’s interesting thread from those having direct experience of all this or having heard stories from relatives.

Chris

 

[mike jenks]

Hi

Although I was born in 1943 I am in a strange way for a while
an Evacuee. My Dads younger brother Norman was taken out of
Birmingham to live in Stratford upon Avon during the worst parts of
the War. My mom went to stay there for a while to have me.
We stayed there for a while and went back to Acocks Green.
My passport states I was born at Stratford upon avon.
Not bad for a brummie from Acocks Green.

Mike Jenks

 

[Beryl M]

Thanks Mike - Well Stratford would be a nice place to live still.

What a great article and you are absolutely
What went on through my mom’s mind having to make the decision to send my little three year old brother Martyn, out of harms way, for her it was a heart wrenching decision. Yes, my mom felt pressured a registered nurse was very much needed. I can tiell you in later years when my brother died, she felt guilty about sending him away till the day she died

Martyn, was paid for privately. Fortunately, for him he stayed with a couple who didn’t have children, so he was very much loved.

The war and the war effort was paramount in everyone’s mind. I think this is why we only seem to hear the good experiences. I don’t deny some were lucky enough to be well looked after. But there was another, darker side and I think it has been somewhat covered up. And those old news reels showing evacuees with those damn luggage tags still bothers me.

On the positive side I have learned a valuable lesson I will never take an adults side against a child’s at face value. I respect what kids have to say and credit them with much understanding and awareness that is general. I know why abused children never tell

it would be a mistake to generalize about children who were evacuated from the inner cities. Not all were poor, though most of them were. . However, together we were all herded into this dreary hall were we waited to be selected from the cattle market. . .

 

[Alberta]

Beryl, I have just read your story what brilliant power of recall you have.

It was interesting to read about your going to Ravenstone Institute,I hadn't heard of Ravenstone until my son went to live there 2 years ago.

I love the village and my son lives a couple of hundred yards from the Ravenstone Village Institute.

 

[Beryl M]

Believe it or not Alberta - there is still much I have on file that is not in there. Ask your son if he knows Jenny's Lane?

 

[Alberta]

The village shop is in Jennys lane.

 

[Beryl M]

My Alberta the little shop is still there on the corner of Jenny's Lane after all these years - it was a combined post office then

 

[Alberta]

Still is a post office as well Beryl the post mitress is an Asian lady.

Will get my son to take photos for you..

 

[Beryl M]

Thank you Alberta - - The houses on Jenny's lane didn't have numbers - it was called 'Windy Brae' where i first stayed. I remember the Ploughman pub - though I was too young for that - and Snibston School close to where we would cross the fields into Coalville. All Memories.. . so long ago, I remember it all as though it was yesterday. . .

 

[jennyann]

Beryl, I have been enjoying your writing of your War time evacuation story.
It's amazing how clearly many people can remember the past. The war time evacuation for children was not very well planned and although some children landed with great foster parents many did not. Standing there waiting "to be chosen" must have been so awful for children like yourself who had come from a loving home. This was just like the way slaves in America were led to the marketplace on a certain day and then poked and prodded by the men who wanted them for slavery.

I can cry thinking about all of this. The loneliness of missing Mum and Dad and being in a strange place. I avoided this because I was born in 1941
and was just a baby when my Mother held me in her arms in the pantry as the German bombers flew overhead towards the factories beyond our house.
I didn't know anyone who had been evacuated until the late l950's when I met two people who had been evacuated from Brum to Leicestershire. Their Mother, a single Mum at that time was a great cook and so they went to
the house of a nobleman. They were very lucky because they were on an estate. Their Mum was cooking great meals and they had the run of the place. So that was a good story overall. I know that so many children were not as lucky.

I liked the TV Programme called " Goddnight Mr Tom" with John Thaw playing the role of a man in a small English village who takes in a boy who has been evacuated in WW2. I think it is one of John Thaw's best roles.
I am not sure why my older cousins weren't evacuated from Brum I think that their parents just didn't agree with the programme probably.

 

[Beryl M]

Jennyann thank you for that. I enjoyed reading your article.

Parents were not forced to send their children away. My mom was pressured being a registered nurse. Also, women were needed to work in munitions. Everyone tried to what they could to help the war effort.

 

[ChrisM]

I am not sure why my older cousins weren't evacuated from Brum.

I think I remember reading that the take-up in Birmingham was quite a bit lower than in other big cities, for unexplained reasons. It was a minority of eligible children who were evacuated.

Chris

 

[ChrisM]

The Ladywood evacuees

We lived on the fringe of the city, away from the more industrialised and densely populated areas which were most at risk, and so I was never evacuated. (In fact I had never even heard of the term until the summer of 1941 when I was five-and-a-half). I was told later that my sister and I had been offered a sanctuary in the U.S.A. for the duration. This generous proposal had come from a friend of my father whom he had met during a business trip in the 1930s. I don’t know how much heart-searching the suggestion provoked or whether it was immediately rejected but my parents’ decision was that we would all take our luck together. The dangers of the North Atlantic would have been at least one consideration, especially after the loss of many children on the City of Benares. But perhaps the thought of separation, and for a wholly unpredictable period, even for ever, was just too much to bear.

By the summer of 1941 when Hitler’s attentions were focused firmly to the East and we were no longer alone, intensive aerial bombardment and the risk of invasion had both reduced, at least temporarily. My father decided that we should try to get a holiday. Since the mid-1930s, and before I was born, the family had stayed at a farm in the South Hams of Devonshire, an area between Torbay and Plymouth, at that time remote and sleepy and little changed in the previous one hundred years. So off there my mother, sister and I went, to be joined a few days later by my father and elder brother, abandoning their work and Home Guard responsibilities for a short while for the attractions of rest, fresh air and unrationed food. How lucky we all were to have a holiday at that time.

We were not the only guests at Keynedon Mill on this visit. There were three boys there too. Bob was probably a year or so older than I; he had an elder brother of 10 or 11 whose name I can’t remember and so I shall call him Billy; and the head of this family was the eldest, named I think Frank, a remote, grown-up fellow of 15 or 16 whom one saw only rarely. I was told that they came from a part of Birmingham called Ladywood and had been sent here to avoid the bombing. I hadn’t heard of this place before but I was struck by what a nice name it was and had visions of dense foliage and grassy, sunlit clearings. The boys lived in a large, white-washed single room, the loft either of the main house or of one of the outbuildings. They ate with the farmer’s family, at a large table in the entrance hall of the farmhouse. I still have a vision of them sitting there as we passed through to our own room. The meal was presided over by the commanding presence of Mrs. Cummings, a lady of great antiquity - possibly in her late forties - and with a frightening cane lying ready to hand; this was of sufficient length to reach the younger boys seated further down the table in case they required any guidance.

I imagine that Bob and Billy attended the local school in the nearby tiny village of Sherford but it was August and so they were on holiday. Frank on the other hand seemed to be engaged the whole time on farm duties and I know that he got up at some ungodly hour every morning to fetch the cattle for milking. I didn’t see much of Billy and can’t say whether he had his own list of duties but I played a lot with Bob who seemed to have plenty of freedom.

In later years I have often pondered on the mystery of how those three lads ended up in such a remote spot, so far from home. I don’t know whether they were part of the September 1939 evacuation although they probably were. It seemed strange that they were sent such a long way from home from where their parents – assuming they had any – would have found it almost impossible to visit them. And when the threat of invasion loomed from the middle of 1940, lodgings only a mile or two from the South Coast, even so far west, would not have seemed to be the safest of locations. I can imagine them being shepherded on to a train at Snow Hill, labelled and carrying a small package of their possessions and of course their gas mask, as they embarked on the daylong journey into the complete unknown. Memoirs of children in this situation, some of whom had never been out of their cities or on a train before, speak of the wonders of the journey. And so I imagine our trio, gazing out of the window at an ever-changing tableau of meadow and woodland, cornfields and unfamiliar farm animals as they trundled south. In their compartment excitement and wonder at the unfamiliar sights must have been intense but later, as the day progressed and tiredness started to overcome them, that would have been replaced by apprehension and even fear about what faced them. They would have passed through Bristol and Exeter, perhaps changing trains, perhaps seeing, every now and again, many of their companions leaving the train at intermediate stops. Finally they would have alighted at South Brent and clambered aboard a little two-coach train for the last leg of their long journey. A little GWR tank engine would have hauled them down the branch line through the rolling countryside of pastures and red Devonshire earth, where the hedgerows and lineside trees would have seemed close enough to lean out and touch. Quite soon they would have reached their destination, and the very last station, Kingsbridge. What an alien world it must have seemed as they got off the train and looked around them, at milk churns and empty cattle pens, the end of a line which stretched back to the bustle and soot of Snow Hill. And yet they still had another four or five miles to go, almost certainly this time by horse and cart in the gathering dusk, through small villages and finally turning off the road at Frogmore down a lane just wide enough to allow their passing.

Nor do I know how long they stopped at Keynedon. Early in 1944 the farm and the surrounding area was itself evacuated at short notice when the US Army took over the nearby stretch of coast and adjacent countryside as a training ground for the landings on Utah beach. The Cummings family moved with all their livestock into tiny premises in Frogmore. They were still there in August 1945 when we visited them. But the boys weren’t and of course I wasn’t interested enough to ask after them. I have often wondered what happened to them and how much their time in Devonshire, with all its fresh air and healthy food but remoteness from loved ones and familiar city surroundings, affected their later life. And just how that clash of totally different cultures, inner city industrial Birmingham and remote, agricultural Devonshire worked, day in, day out.

My friendship with Bob came to an abrupt and unhappy end. The facilities in the farmhouse were basic in the extreme – candles and oil lamps; an outside pump for water and, inside, ewers and china gesunders in place of any plumbing; and the main lavatory a fruity, fly-blown, wooden structure containing an earth closet and sheets of newspaper. The latter was conveniently located out of the front door, along the lane a few yards, up some steps cut into the earth bank and across a short stretch of grass to near the waterwheel. I was strictly prohibited from going anywhere near it with the mysterious threat of “diphtheria” being muttered as it always was when anything vaguely unhealthy was being discussed. Bob and I were playing near the waterwheel one day, feeding ducks with white berries plucked from a nearby bush. Getting bored with this, although the ducks weren’t, we decided to investigate the little house. And not only that, but to leave our visiting card there too. All of this was of course great fun. But somehow or other the incident came to the notice of my parents and, probably with a bit of assistance from me, Bob got the blame for initiating this crime. It must have been decided that he was not a suitable companion for me and I never played with him again. Nor after our departure ever heard anything further about him.

I hope that he had a good life and that he always remembered, as I still do, a sunny day in Devonshire nearly 70 years ago, a flock of greedy white ducks and a smelly old hut on the edge of a meadow by a waterwheel.

Chris

An image of Keynedon from happier times, perhaps 1936; and of Mr. Cummings.