The Enduring Legacy of Britain’s Wartime Evacuation

When children went to school in the morning their parents didn’t know if today would mark the inevitable moment they wouldn’t see their children for another 4 years. Educators became guardians for their pupils in unfamiliar places with limited resources. Families were split between two or three different homes. Some cried, some bravely accepted the situation and some looked on it as a great adventure. Some were glad to leave the poverty and chaos of their broken families behind and some were overwhelmed with grief at being separated from their parents, their homes, their beloved pets.

All of these stories and more make up the incredible journey of (mostly child) evacuees of Britain during the Second World War. Gillian Mawson’s fascinating and heart wrenching account, Britain’s Wartime Evacuees from Frontline Books, was one of our 20 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2017. The first hand accounts portray the complete upheaval of family and social life in the midst of the rush to get children out of harm’s way before the German bombers arrived. Mawson weaves a solid narrative structure that connects the expertly researched and vivid oral accounts from the children as adults reflecting on their past. The reader is transported to the world of the evacuees with its uncertainty, danger and utter heartbreak.

While some children from working class backgrounds in London suddenly find themselves on massive country estates unable to understand available amenities, others leave a decent home life to find themselves with foster parents who are very poor, yet who care for them as if they were their own children. Unfortunately, as Mawson notes, some children were also abused and mistreated in the process making it unlikely that something like the evacuation could take place in today’s world. Yet these cases, and some were horrific, were not as common as their opposite; that of loving strangers welcoming evacuees into their homes and their lives. The reader is left with a sense of awe that the vast majority of British children were welcomed with few complaints and were shown, time and again, a generosity that is very rare in the world today. In addition to the stoic notion of the “stiff upper lip” when faced with the Blitz and the war itself, these accounts make it clear that the British during WW2 also had “hearts of gold” and a common bond that allowed them to survive the onslaught of the fascists.

Unsurprisingly many of the evacuees formed close and lifelong bonds with their foster parents and families with some even being adopted when their birth parents died or were unable to take care of them. These are some of the most touching stories in the book as evacuees recount the kindness they received from strangers who became family and whose debts they were certain they could never repay.

In many accounts of World War Two, the cruelty, depravity and horror of the war are retold in gruesome detail. As important as such accounts are to history it is also vital that we remember the instances of humanity, decency and kindness that were shown to others in the darkest moments. Mawson’s book stands out as an important reminder from the participants themselves that even when fear is abundant and scarcity abounds that love and kindness still endure.