EVACUEES stories of the Children

Joan's story The hall was filled with local people and us children. Ten children were told to stand on the stage whilst the local people chose the children they.
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Sitting suitcases, and one girl standing, these children wait nervously to find out who will take them in. Sixty or so of us were herded into the main schoolroom and the villagers crowded in after us, slowly circling, picking out the most likely candidates. This auction of children, with no money involved, seemed almost medieval, but I can think of no better way of dispersing us and a good job was done because no brothers and sisters were split up that day. I cannot be quite sure about my first reaction to this person, older than my mother, who laid claim to me in such a way. The man, bald, tanned, rotund, like a hard rubber ball, was much shorter than his wife.

You call him Uncle Jack. And I'm Auntie Rose. We got out of the taxi in a village called Doublebois in front of a terrace, railway cottage. Neighbours looked out of doors at us. Child evacuees board a aboard a train as it leaves London, where they are handed refreshments. That night on a shared mattress in the passageway, we stared at Mum's postcard and considered our code.

We had been in Doublebois about a week when we spotted the Plymouth train pulling into the station. I stared in wonder. My mother - my mother, lugging a heavy suitcase - was actually trudging up from the station towards me. She had received our card all right, but had turned up anyway.

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I have no real idea of how our city-dwelling, middle-class mother got on with Auntie Rose, who came from a Welsh mining village. But that first meeting must have gone well because Mum told her about the kisses code and our judgment of her. I hope it gave Auntie Rose the pleasure she deserved.

School was a good mile's walk away. No one gave it a second thought and I don't think there was a single fat child and few, if any, adults.


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Wartime rationing had nothing to do with it: Us vackies and the local children looked at each other and it was instant war. They only had to open their mouths to be objects of ridicule to us. A cricket match was organised: A football match followed: Vackies versus Village kids: Queen Elizabeth visits London children at an evacuation school in Sussex. Who called who names first? This was lost in the mists of time. He put his arms round us confidentially. Listen, boys, try to make friends with 'em.

We're fighting the Germans, not each other. Elsie Plummer was another vacky, from Plymouth. Ripe with imminent puberty, one of her regular games was executing high kicks at the entrance to the local army camp, affording every child and soldier frequent glimpses of her knickers. Elsie was billeted with a zealous Methodist spinster called Miss Polmanor, who regarded Elsie as her cross to bear. It must have been one of the most mismatched billetings of the whole war.

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But whatever anyone said, Elsie was in my head, indelibly. Months later, she and I were playing in the woods. I don't think it works till you're married. Your mum and dad did it to get you. I don't get it. The woman screams, so it mustn't half hurt. I don't think I want babies. Like every other child learning the facts of life unofficially, I thought of my parents doing it: It was all too grotesque.

I stared at Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack, who had three children, and tried to imagine them engaged in something so rude. Once a week, Jack and I used to go shopping with Auntie Rose. The great event, which filled us with excitement, though, was the much rarer mile train ride to Plymouth. The warships, indescribably menacing, lying in the Tamar Estuary and Devonport Docks, were a sight to behold. One evening we were waiting, laden down with shopping bags, for the train home. Jack had bought a miniature sheath knife, something he had been saving for ages.

The date was March 20, , the first night of a Luftwaffe bombing raid that annihilated the centre of Plymouth. Suddenly the heart-stopping wail of a siren started up close by. We all hurried down to the station subway as the sound of gunfire was clearly audible some way off. Just then, Jack realised his new penknife was gone. He raced off back to the platform, leaving Auntie Rose distraught. I found his knife in one of the shopping bags and ran after him, ignoring Auntie Rose's agonised voice as the tumult outside grew louder.

There was an even louder bang and bits of glass and debris flew about. Terrified, I stood bawling, afraid to move, when hands grabbed me and pulled me back round the corner. Jack's courage, like mine, had failed at the sight and sound of the real war. Auntie Rose enfolded us both in her arms.

We spent the night sitting huddled on a bench while the inferno raged above us. The next morning, a train took us across the miraculously unscathed Saltash Bridge. There at the end of the platform at Doublebois stood Uncle Jack, his shut face burst open into a grin that threatened to tear it in two when he saw us. He hurried down the platform and hugged Auntie Rose. I thought I'd got rid of you all at last.

Meet some evacuees

But there's no peace for the wicked, is there? The soldiers stationed in nearby Doublebois House were always being replaced. One day, the roar of different motors was heard.


  • Ratgeber Autistische Störungen; Informationen für Betroffene, Eltern, Lehrer und Erzieher (Ratgeber .
  • Children of the wartime evacuation;
  • BBC - WW2 People's War - An Evacuee's Story.
  • 40 Puzzles and Problems in Probability and Mathematical Statistics (Problem Books in Mathematics);

    • Vast, high-bonneted, high-sided lorries with names like Dodge and Chrysler arrived. Yes, the Americans were here, and that wasn't all: Many in the village had never seen a black man; I don't think I had before. Although we were at the centre of the British Empire, populated with millions of every colour, this was a remote part of Cornwall in And we kids loved them.

    We wore their hats, chewed their gum, ate their candy and learned their slang. I had a tap-dancing lesson on a sheet of plywood from a man from New Orleans itself. Many young evacuees were captivated by the American soldiers. Then their jazz band played for us. I had never heard music like it. But when GIs started jitterbugging with each other and the few local girls who were present - their dresses swirling up above their waists - it went too far for most. And these smiling, gentle men let us pat and pull their hair, rub their skin to see if it came off, examine their pink palms, marvel at their very existence - and then they were gone just as suddenly as they had appeared.

    A while after they'd left, Jack and I were doing our homework one evening when Auntie Rose banished us to the front room. Uncle Jack came in from work. The radio was turned up, but we easily heard why we had been sent out. She said, quite quietly: Uncle Jack's footsteps were taking him to the back door and the washhouse. She said she loves me.

    The story of two frightened evacuees taken to the country to escape Hitler's bombs

    Later, Elsie and I giggled over her rounded tummy. They was best,' was a remark she often made to my shocked ears. Our three-year 'other childhood' was coming to a swift climax. With air raids more or less over, Jack was to return home to go to Woolwich Polytechnic and I had sat the entrance exam for Dartford Grammar School. One morning, the postman handed me two envelopes. As I separated them, I saw that the one underneath was a telegram, from the War Office. Even I, at ten, knew the dread import of one from such a sender.

    Auntie Rose sank down in a chair and asked me to read it aloud: There was no sign of weeping.

    I did as she asked, though she scarcely seemed to notice that I was there. After a while I said: Jack and I watched Auntie Rose and Uncle Jack for two days, their palpable misery a bond between them that excluded us. Jack and I crept about not knowing what to do till we went outside and climbed up into the big beech tree to discuss it. We wrote to our parents with the result of our deliberations. They are very unhappy. Auntie Rose cries and Uncle Jack sits in the garden.

    We thought it would be a good idea if one of us stayed here with them and became their son. Then you've both got one each. We were going to toss for it, but Jack said I've got to go to grammar school. Two days later, Auntie Rose looked stern. Letters and cables from summer between Beryl's parents, Tom and Emmie, and her aunt and uncle in Winnipeg, Canada, refer to her as 'very sociable' and 'very fond of reading'. On 9 September, a letter arrived for her father. The ship was carrying 90 child evacuees, accompanied by adult escorts, as well as other passengers. It was part of a twenty-vessel convoy, which would be escorted for the first part of its journey by a Royal Navy destroyer and two sloops.

    With bad weather, many of the children were seasick. That night Bleichrodt fired a torpedo that penetrated the ship's hull and exploded, filling the ship with the acrid smell of explosives. Captain L Nicoll gave the order to abandon ship. Children, escorts and passengers started boarding their lifeboats, a process hampered by the bad weather and the ship's loss of power. Hurricane picked up survivors in lifeboats and clinging on to rafts. In addition, of the 90 children who had been aboard, 77 died in the sinking.

    Among the dead was Beryl Myatt. The news of the sinking took some days to reach the families of those lost at sea. Unaware of her death, Beryl's parents Tom and Emmie wrote to her on 21 September, saying 'we expect that you enjoyed your voyage on the boat across the wide Atlantic Ocean' and reminding her to be a good girl for her aunt and uncle.

    Her parents marked the letter with the muddy paw print of the family dog, Chummy, and signed the letter 'with tons of love and heaps of kisses. Tom and Emmie Myatt's letter to Beryl, 21 September Chummy's muddy paw print can be seen faintly at the top of the page. He wrote 'As a parent I can realise the anguish this letter must cause you, and the great sadness that will be brought into your home'. Shakespeare's letter must not have arrived before Beryl's parents wrote their letter to Beryl on 21 September.

    On 23 September, reports of the sinking reached British newspapers.