´óÏó´«Ã½

The Guernsey Children’s Home evacuated to Bury, Lancs

Mike Chandler interviewed by Radio Guernsey. The recording transcribed and edited by John David

I knew nothing about the actual evacuation itself. As the years went on, and I reached the age of seven when the war ended, form the age of four or five to six or seven, the knowing age, there’s quite a lot I remember during the war years having been evacuated with the Children’s Home that was in Guernsey at the time and remained in Guernsey after the war. Before I get mixed up with where I’m going here if we can concentrate on Bury, Lancashire, we were evacuated to in an area called Chesham.
I………. You were living in a children’s home before the Germans invaded?
Yes, I was sent into the Childrens Home almost at birth, I was born in the Town Hospital which was a workhouse in those days, classed as a workhouse, and transferred down to the maternity unit in the Country Hospital, as it was known then, and when war came about I was transferred from that hospital straight up to the Children’s Home where I remained until the age of fourteen. What I have to say is very significant here, because while people are talking about the Occupation, meeting German soldiers and so on, I saw the other side as well. We were evacuated to a so-called safe area, and it wasn’t all that safe, because I remember in my knowing years, say from the age of four up to about seven, whenever an air-raid occurred it was always at night, and at any time during the night or the small hours of the morning, one, two, three, we would be whipped out of bed, a gas mask sloshed over our face, and sent down to the cellar of this building, this big mansion that had been requisitioned from these industrialists, [ name unclear ] seventy of us children were housed in this building, all the different rooms split up for boys and girls and what have you, and even a nursery I might add.
I………. How many people were evacuated in total?
About seventy-odd people with the Children’s Home.
I………. There were actually seventy people in the Children’s Home here in Guernsey?
No , I can’t say, but children were brought in that had nowhere else to go, that were I suppose displaced people, that were brought in to the Children’s Home and then went back with their parents after the war, and I had a recurring dream, that when the ack-ack opened fire, the three As, Anti Aircraft Artillery opened fire, then they used to wake me up and this recurring dream would come back that I was popping all the time and that would be incorporated into the dream. I would wake up screaming blue murder. Ever since then I was afraid of thunder and lightning, which is understandable, isn’t it. I probably was a child of nervous disposition anyway.
So it wasn’t the safe place that people thought it was, Bury. Chesham in Bury is only about nine miles away from Manchester, and the building we were in had a commanding view of all the flat lands, and I am sure that as you can see Sark nine miles away you could see the areas of Manchester, not that I realised that, but I realise that now, that we could actually see Manchester, and we weren’t very far away from the Manchester Blitz. It was an industrial area, and where I was the rural area and the urban area were connected by a thin lane we used to go along that’s just a footpath, no traffic, pedestrian way, through the rural part and immediately hit the industrial area of Bury on our way to St Paul’s School in Bury. So I can take you back to the building. If it was still standing I could take you right around that building inside and out, I know every detail, and it’s all stored in my memory.
I………. Were you there the whole four or five years, or were you re-located like other families were?
No, we stayed together, all the children that were in that group stayed with the Children’s Home in Danehall. Some were billeted out into a building in Chesham Road when they became school-leaving age and they needed to go out to work, they were moved from Daneshall down into Chesham Road so we never saw them again until after the war

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.