大象传媒

[The Children from St Sampson's School, Guernsey had just arrived in Glasgow after evacuation]

An account written soon after the event by Marie Evans, a teacher at the school

I was the youngest adult so was given the job of doing the children's washing. So I loaded up 50 vests, 50 pairs of pants, 50 petticoats, 50 nightdresses and 50 dresses and took them by tram-car to the nearest public wash-house. I had never used a washing-machine (one didn't have them in those days) and the first wash was not very successful as I came back with most of the clothes a kind of pale navy as I had accidentally allowed some navy pants in with the whites!
Each day we had visitors. Kind people who were offering homes to our children. Not all were taken so when we were down to about 15 to 20 we were taken to another church hall and it went on like that until they were all housed. In the meantime some of the parents had arrived in England and wanted their children so I used to take them one or two at a time down by train to various towns. One very strange thing was that when they met their parents they nearly all cried and so did the parents! Eventually all the children were either united with their parents or fostered by strangers and a number of Guernsey teachers who had accompanied them and looked after them became redundant so the youngest were asked to find work down south. I applied for a job in Coventry where I had relations and when I was called for an interview, I arrived at night during possibly the worst air-raid they had experienced. At the interview (which I attended in order to retrieve my travelling expenses) I was told that fourteen schools had been bombed, so I returned to Glasgow. One of my next applications was to Manchester and again I was strongly advised to think again.
Up until the evacuation very, very few children had ever been on a big boat or even on a small one - people were too poor for holidays, so they had never seen a train or a double decker bus, nor even a sheep. They had never left their parents for a single night. They had never been to a big town or seen any big shops.

Difficulties
1. Pining for their parents.
2. Adapting to a new life.
3. Strange people - strange speech which they could not understand.
4. Different customs.
5. New schools. Strict discipline.
6. Weather different.
7. City life. Noise, traffic, factories.
8. War-time restrictions.
9. Bombing. Air-raid shelters.

March 2005.
Summing it all up, it is obvious that both sides suffered - evacuees and those who stayed. But had the evacuation not taken place, there would have been wholesale starvation - worse than can have been imagined. Let us thank God we have survived!

Marie Evans

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