Remembrance

by Yemisi Olawoye

An estimated 47% of school children from London were separated from their parents and despatched to the countryside after the war broke out. Some children were sent as far away as the United States, Canada and Australia.

Some of them caught up with each other in November, at the Whitehall remembrance service in London, the Cenotaph memoriam for those who gave their lives in the two world wars.

They have explained the ways in which the evacuee experience has been a part of their lives.

Cenotaph

Gordon Abbot was 12 when he was evacuated from Plough Road School in Battersea in June 1940. After his parents said goodbye at the school gates they went off, without knowing where they were heading.

He said: “We were walked to the rail station at Clapham Junction and from there we caught the train to Waterloo, from Waterloo we travelled all the way to north Cornwall.

“After a short period of time, I was evacuated to a farmer and his wife who had no children, and I became part of the family.”

Children at the time would wait at temporary evacuee centres were they could be selected by a family who liked them. He felt he was one of the lucky ones who got a good home.

Following battles at Dunkirk the Luftwaffe, Germany’s air force, gained important grounds in France in May 1940 and established a launch base into the UK, starting the ‘Battle of Britain’.

National Service

The London Blitz phase of the Luftwaffe air raids on the capital began in September 1940. The capital was being relentlessly bombed and casualties mounted. Many parents, previously hesitant about sending their children away, finally put their children forward.

Gordon joined the RAF for his national services. He is one of the few children who went and lived with his guardian parents after the war.

He said: “I had to do lots of things on the farm in those days - it was highly labour intensive in 1940. I had the freedom of a very large farm, 400 acres. I saw my parents once in five years, stayed there until 1945.

“When it was time to leave, I didn’t really want to say goodbye. They were crying, I was crying. I came back to London, my parent realised.” He went back to live with his guardian parents who adopted him.

He joined the RAF in 1952 and was there for five years.

He believes duty and pride in the nation has stayed with him and others. They also support the duties carried out by the Royal Family today.

Remembrance Day is a chance to pay his tribute and, on behalf of other evacuees that are not able to attend, in recent years he has given talks about his experiences and those from the evacuee generations.