BRITAIN TO-DAY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 21 July 1944, Page 2

BRITAIN TO-DAY

EVACUATION OF CHILDREN “FEET FIRMLY ON THE GROUND” j (By James Lansdale Hodson. Author! and War Correspondent) London as you will know is sending scores of thousands of its young children beyond the range of the flyingbombs and for an hour or twj at Paddington railway station I have been watching them go. Other stations are just as busy getting the children off to safer areas. Two of the buses bringing the little ones to Paddington had got in the way of a flying-bomb and the windows had been smashed, but the netting covering the glass had saved the passengers and only one girl was wounded. A middle-aged teacher with a group bound for Wales said to me. “I was bombed myself yesterday—only the walls of the house left, but apart from this—pointing to plaster near her eye I’m all right Glad to be going, though ’’ They were all glad to be going. I think. When trains went out the youngsters cheered. One boy had been singing, “Can't stop now we are in a hurry.” Would there be forests, mountains and rivers? Would it be Blackpool? So the talkative ones went on. Was it time to eat their sandwiches? How long were they off for? But most of them were quiet. Some, very solemn and patient were sitting on their packages and cases: each child was wearing a large address label on this precious morsel of humanity consigning him or her, she didn't know where. But they are glad to go. It is the parents who are the most sad. pleased that the children are off to safety but sorrowful at the desolation and loneliness of empty houses. Their sons and , daughters with the thoughtlessness of youth are the callous ones. This is the second great evacuation London has had but this is a smaller ’ one than 1940 and will, we hope and 1 believe, be much briefer. There is this : curious difference, too. in that to-day the children are going north tp the ; cities which in 1940 were sending' their L children to the country regions, and homes which sent their sons and I daughters to strangers are now taking t st rangers in. A new sort of rubbing • shoulders goes on. THERE WILL BE HEARTBREAK We discuss sometimes what lasting effect--or lasting benefit—these shifts of people will have. I remember a reporter in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales saying to me at the time they had 10.000 people, mostly children, from the industrial areas in the Midlands. "The question is—will the children be Welshified. or shall we be Anglicised? One little girl from Birmingham already sings hymns in Welsh with quite a good accent. And. men. it’s doing our reputation good. People thought we were ruffians in Rhondda because of the strikes we have had in the past, but they are realising that we are quite decent people. All these children call the Welsh people they are billeted on “Aunt' and “Uncle.’’ And I. as a North Countryman, am quite pleased at the thought that the London children are going up to my native heath, learning to appreciate Lancashire's broad vowels and broad humour, or to sing in full-throated Yorkshire fashion, to tramp the Yorkshire dales or see the lovely English lakes. They will see “the black country.” too—the coal mines, factories and workshops they have only read about in books. They will learn how diverse is this England. There are going to be two places that are like home to them: indeed, very often two real homes for them for many, many years. Which of us is not richer for that?

Of course there will be some heartbreak in it. too. When childless couples take a boy or girl into their house, and the child hr Nigs something they have been aching for. they and the child grow to love one another—it is ten to one they do —there is a note of something like tragedy in the parting, when it comes. I saw it when I was 1n the United States recently. I spoke to a woman who wa, on the verge of tears when talking of what she knew must soon happen It will be the same here. Indeed it has been already. In 1940 a good many children under five went from the cities to the countryfolk and. children's memories being short, some of them hardly knew their true parents when many months later the time came to go home. You can imagine how bitter the Teal mother could Jdc. how sad the foster mother and how deeply upset the child. It is a sidelight on war. And of course any description that attempts to be honest must note the evacuated mothers —though happily the number is not large—who develop high and mighty ideas. I have known instances where it is the evacuated woman and her visiting husband who have monopolised the house and almost driven the real householders out. War does not subdue but rather enhances man's strange behaviour. But, taken all round, these shifts of people are forcing the town and country to learn more about one another —which is good.

LOOKING AFTER THE EXODUS The men and women I saw looking after the exodus at the railway stations were those one always sees on these jobs—Red Cross nurses. clergymen, members of the Women’s Voluntary Services, school teachers and air raid wardens. A lot of folk are spending a hard-earned holiday doing this job and have journeyed from the safe provinces to stormy London to do it. One keeps running into unsung heroes. On my ship to France recently was a middle-aged man in the Observer Corps who had given up his job as an accountant to spent two months on ships in the English Channel watching the skies for "Jerry” aircraft. I came ashore and met an Admiral’s daughter of 35 w’ho leaves home at 6 a.m. and gets back at 7 p.m. after working on aircraft fabric all day for £3 13s 6d a week. Last night I talked with my local chief at an ambulance, a Sergeant of Artillery on the Western Front in the last war. He has had twelve days’ holiday in nearly five years of war. Twelve days and no more. I said that that was hard going. He grinned. “It was worse at Passehendaele ii% 1917. You get a dry bed here." His ambulance driver.-, yesterday voluntarily gave up one of their days off each fortnight till the blitz grows less stiff. He said “We get a bit of fun sometimes—why bless you. I used to have two Russian ballet dancers among my ambulance attendants.” But quite unexpectedly sometimes one runs into the tragedy of the war as though somebody had hit you in the face. A Government accountant sat next to me in the Tube. He pulled out a photograph ol a group of boys. He said "They are all dead except me One who had won the Military Medal was killed at Dunkirk, one w’as an ace pilot in the Battle of Britain, one had been killed ove- Malta, that one was killed in the Western Desert, and two were killed in the blitz on London.” He put the picture away again. I did not say anything. What can one say? I w’alked up the hill going home. It was a lovely evening, for the moment calm and serene. And an evening came back to me from 1917 when I w’as waiting to go back to France, an evening when I watched the smoke curling up from the cottage chimneys and pigeon.-- flying over the wood, heard the curlew crying and wondered how many more sunsets I was going to see. The beauty of England was almost as sharp as a sword thrust. And it must be the same now for our lads waiting to cross the Channel. Aye, and for some of those who lie awake in the night, and if they are near the coast listen tor the rumble of the guns across the Channel or. if they are further off. \ir n lo roar of our a > rcr aft. War narrows some gulfs and widens others A’ play producer I know well wrote to a newspaper this week saying that he did not despair of the theatre s future because men who arc in the services -he is a Lieut.-Commander himself—w’ill come back with new ideas i

and new energy and he hopes to sweep away those vvno are still trying to live in 1938. Y'es, we have got some who are s.till trying to live a pre-war life. We have got soldiers and sailors—l mean hostilities -only men—who want a different Britain lrom the one they know to come back to and we have got a lot of others who will be content to come back to what they had, since so many cannot be sure ol coming back at all. Some folk abroad grow alarmed occasionally at the notion that Britain will go what is called ‘ red.’ Ido not think they need be. We are not going violently or sw’iltly in any direction i! 1 am any judge. 1 believe wc shall go a little further to the left, but quite steadily. We are a steady lot, easy going and often illogical but with botf our feet firmly on the ground.