RE-EVACUEES' BIG SUNDAY MOVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 134, 7 June 1940, Page 11

RE-EVACUEES' BIG SUNDAY MOVE

TRANSFER TO SAFER AREAS

WAR "MOTHERS" WEEP

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.) . LONDON, May 21. Seven thousand of the children who were sent to Kent, Essex, and Suffolk last August have been transferred to other reception areas in South Wales, this being a measure of further precaution as the South and South-east counties may be subjected to bombardment from the air. Carrying hand luggage and a day's rations, ths children travelled in 12 special through I trains. When 400 children left Canterbury early on Sunday morning for Pontypridd, South Wales, the women who for the past nine months had mothered them all went to the station to see them off, and many were in tears. One woman said: "It's just like parting with our own children." When about 1000 Ilford evacuees left Ipswich there was almost as many local children on the platform to see them off. Overnight iarewell slogans chalked by the local children had appeared in the streets leading to the railway station. The Mayor and prominent citizens saw 600 children off at Deal. A local tradesman gave each one a bottle of milk. Relays of corridor trains later pulled

into Newport station with Monmouthshire's share of the evacuated children. Two thousand nine hundred are being received at Tredegar, Abertlllery, and villages around Newport. The children were greeted by new playmates, clergymen, welfare workers, and foster parents and taken to their new homes.

Scenes resembling those of a bank holiday at seaside resorts were witnessed at many Welsh railway stations.

"What is he saying?" asked a tiny girl peeping out of a carriage windo\v as ' someone shouted ' "Croesaw-i-Cymru," and was told that it meant "Welcome to Wales." Ten thousand children had been expected, but about 7000 arrived. They were given a rousing welcome. Many will find new homes in miners' cottages in the Rhondda Valley. On arrival at their destinations they were given" hot meals and medically examined before going to their billets.

A social gathering, attended by members of the teaching staff, . the school committee, and the Home and School Association, was held in the Sjatoun School last evening to bid farewell to Mrs. Davies, a teacher at the school. Eulogistic references to Mrs. Davies were made by the chairman of the school committee, Mr. E. J. Elliott, the headmaster, Mr. Mudgway, and Miss Mac Donald. Mrs. Davies waf presented with an electric jug.