Education and Evacuation in the Second World War Meg Oliver (With Particular Reference to London)
Education and Evacuation in the Second World War Meg Oliver (with particular reference to London) This is my history of evacuation, which illustrated most aspects of children in London in the Second World War. I was seven when war broke out and I lived in SE London. As early as May 1938, in the shadow of the Munich crisis, the London County Council was already discussing evacuation as a means of saving people from the horrors of aerial bombing as seen in the Spanish Civil War, should war break out with Germany. After the Munich Crisis when war was averted, although Chamberlain promised “Peace in our time,” by the summer of 1939 war seemed likely to break out and people were making arrangements to leave London. My parents, like most, wanted to stay with us if possible, hence they sought to make alternative arrangements. By 1st September my mother and sister and I were staying with friends in Lenham, near Maidstone in Kent, and it was there that we heard war declared. Our evacuation had taken place as the same time as 600,000 children were evacuated by the LCC. Our host was chauffeur to the ‘Big House’, which itself had become the home of a London boys’ school. It was a fairly temporary arrangement and then a relative arranged for us to stay in a farm in Limpsfield in Surrey. I did not go to school during this period. However this was the time of the ‘phoney war’ while Hitler gathered his strength for the onslaught on Britain, and also waiting to see if those, like Lord Halifax, could get support for a deal.
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