10 August 2013

WW2 child evacuation

An article in my old hometown newspaper Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye ...  describes the evacuation of 3,700 children from Great Yarmouth to Nottinghamshire at the start of the Second World War.

"Hiding their sadness behind a barrage of smiles, Yarmouth’s 3700 evacuee children wrote a never-to-be-forgotten page in the borough’s history on Sunday. With no more tears or fuss than on a Sunday School treat, they bade farewell to their homes and their schools “for the duration,” and were whisked away to Nottinghamshire in four special trains."
One of those children was subsequently evacuated to safety in Halifax, Nova Scotia, under the CORB scheme where he learned that his father had been killed in Yarmouth in a bombing raid.

1 comment:

Ian White said...

My whole school was sent from Newcastle upon Tyne to Berwick and we were each billeted with a family of strangers. The scheme didn't work out as planned and we were sent back home after about six months. This all occurred before I was five years old. I have very little recollection of it, but have ample memories of the bombing of Tyneside after I was back home.