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SHOULD WE EVACUATE?

My school evacuated en bloc, as did some other schools. Parents had the choice of sending their children with the school or keeping them in the island, if they intended to remain themselves. I was 8 ½ and it was on a summer day when our form teacher announced that the holidays were to start early this year — in fact this week. Before she could explain the reason a cheer went up I remember, especially from the boys — but the teacher then explained as best she could that it was a very serious and worrying time for everyone and we must try to be as helpful and obedient as we could. I remember the silence that fell on the class and we filed out in a whispering line — and did not return — for 5 years. Well, some of us returned after 5 years, others whose parents had evacuated and made a new life in England remained there.

My mother asked me if I would like to go with the school to England while the ‘trouble’ lasted, but I said I wanted to stay with my parents. I was an only child in a very sheltered home and just could not imagine leaving it for any reason. My mother was English and naturally would rather have gone to England to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort, apart from the fear of being ‘trapped’ on the island by the advancing German Army, but my father was a Guernseyman and very reluctant to leave behind all he had worked for over the years, the house he was buying, etc. His mother was over 80 and she had no wish to leave the island, although she was in fact English by birth but had lived here all her married life.
KAYE LE CHEMINANT

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