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EVACUEES
Beginning in 1939, the Government encouraged parents in the cities to evacuate their children to safer parts of the country; some children did go as far afield as Australia and Canada. Some children from Hull and Middlesbrough were evacuated to the villages of Haxby, New Earswick and Strensall.
GERALD BARKER was sent to Canada at the age of nine in 1940 and stayed there until 1945. He went by ship, the Duchess of York.
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The convoy took us out into the Atlantic. 'There were numerous destroyers, other merchantmen and HMS Hood, which everyone knows about I'm sure, was with us for quite some while. But it took ten days in all to cross the Atlantic. And as the days went by, you found that perhaps part of the convoy, by the time it got safer maybe mid Atlantic or just beyond, part of the convoy dispersed in another direction.' 'I think even though I was only nine at the time you felt it was for your own safety and well-being in the long term. The people we were with were the Mackays, they must have said well we can take a couple of boys. It was very beneficial I think for my brother and myself to be kept together. It was an adventure perhaps at that time, we were there safely, I had my brother with me, it was a comfortable existence, so I think homesickness didn't come into it too much.' 'The village probably wasn't much more than 250 people in all, so you can imagine there weren't too many children. It was a little school of two rooms with five grades in each room, and only two teachers, so each teacher was responsible for teaching five grades in each side.' |
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'If I'd been older I might have found the culture shock harder to take. 'They were a caring couple...The first Christmas there was a sledge each and skates and ... tanks that spit out what looked like fire, and we got a little train set as well which was quite nice, very sturdy thing, we brought that home in actual fact.' 'I learned a lot from Mrs Mackay, she was a very helpful person. She was really first class in so many ways. She taught me initially to play the piano, which I managed to keep going ... I know as boys we took on some of the household chores, quite a bit of them in actual fact. Of course there was always the wood bin to fill up in the morning before you went to school to keep the stove going, because as you know most North American homes have stoves.' 'When we left, Mrs Mackay insisted on staying
until she could see the ship going out to sea. Coming back here,
I had to adapt to the change in schooling. The weights and measures
system for example was very different. Trying to settle into home
and become an Englishman again was difficult. |
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Gerald Barker with his brothers in Canada. Gerald is in the centre. |
ROSE WILCOX went from town into the country:
'We were all taken into this big hall and told to sit cross-legged on the floor. And it was a bit like a cattle market after that, because the various people who were going to have evacuees came in and picked the ones they wanted. So there were a few scruffy little lads with runny noses and they were the last to be left, and one or two families of children, two or three in a family who wanted to be kept together.'
'We were lucky, because we were kept together, my sister and myself and we went to a farm right at the top of the dale, to a Mrs Simpson. It was quite remote, for us, after living in Leeds, and we slept on shakedowns in the apple loft. That's the first time I had warm milk straight from a cow. Our supper that night was two slices of crusty homemade bread and milk straight from the dairy. Different again from the milk that you get in bottles from the shop in Leeds.'
'I soon got homesick because it was a very big farm.
'I remember going to school, we used to go to school on a shire horse, four of us sit on the back of a shire horse, my sister and me and two kids who were fairly close and they picked them up as well. And we used to go I think it would be about two or three miles down to school on this big shaggy horse, which was the first time I'd ever got close to a horse as big as that.'
The village kids weren't very friendly towards us, they looked on us as outsiders. It was all a bit strange. To us it was like going back in time because we were townies and they were village people. The highlight of our week was going down to chapel over about six fields. And hail, rain or snow we went to chapel.
They weren't lovey-dovey but they weren't cruel. I think
we were just a sort of inconvenience more than anything. We never did
get a proper bed, we slept in the apple loft on these shakedowns, I think
looking back they were straw pallets with blankets across. I think we'd
been there probably seven or eight months and my mum decided to bring
us back home. I don't like apples even now. There's something about it,
if I smell an apple, I can go right back to the apple loft. 
Imagine you are an evacuee. Write a page in your diary describing your feelings.
1. Why were children evacuated?
2. Where did Gerald Barker spend the war?
3. How did Rose Wilcox get to school when she was evacuated?
4. Where did Rose and her sister sleep?
5. What did Gerald and his brother get for Christmas in their new home?
6. How long did Rose stay at the farm?
7. What did Mrs Mackay teach Gerald to do?
8. To what did Rose compare the evacuees when they were waiting in the hall?
9. Do you think that Gerald enjoyed being evacuated? Can you say why?
10. Do you think that Rose enjoyed being evacuated? Can
you say why?
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| S | A | E | Y | I | H | G | A | S | M | A | S | K | S |
| L | L | I | H | C | R | U | H | C | D | P | R | A | W |
FIND THESE WORDS
Bombers, Gas mask, York, Land Army, Air Raid, Evacuee,
Blackout, Home Guard, Siren, Rabbit Pie, Churchill.
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