Press Releases
Friends Reunited: Reuniting WWII Evacuees at the Museum of Welsh Life
Date:
2005-03-01With the dark clouds of war looming over Britain in 1938, the Government decided to take steps to ensure the safety of children and the vulnerable in industrial or urban areas that might be the targets of enemy attacks or bombings. Over the war years, a million and a half children were moved to safer, rural areas, many thousands of them to Wales, including Nina Bawden, author of the children's classic Carrie's War. To reunite the evacuees that stayed in Wales during the Second World War with their friends and host families, the Museum of Welsh Life welcomes the war children to meet again on St David's Day for a day of memories, stories, music and reunion.
The Government always stressed that evacuation was voluntary and in no way should families be split if they didn't want to. In some ways it may have been easier if evacuation had been mandatory as the decision to send off your children weighed heavily. Few children had ever travelled across country and most families had never been apart from each other until the heart wrenching day when it was time to say goodbye at the local schools where children were escorted onto buses and trams, often by strangers, for their last glimpse of home as they rode towards the railway station.
From the 1st of September 1939, the railway stations of major cities were a desperately sad place with thousands of children clutching small cases, paper packages, the odd teddy bear and the ever-present gas mask ready to board the steam trains to safety. With brown paper labels stuck on to their coats or jumpers, children waved goodbye to all things familiar to a new life in a very different environment with often a totally different pace of life and a new language: Welsh. Some classed their time as evacuees as the best of their lives but some children suffered abuse as unpaid slave labour or worse.
Can you help us find the evacuees of Wales and their host families? Were you an evacuee in Wales or did your family or community host young children from all over Britain? Did you wait nervously at the village halls of Llanddewi or Llanberis, Aberdare or Crymych as hordes of small strangers were distributed to family and friends for a new and unknown life in Wales? Tell us your experiences and share in our day of 1940s music and memories, spam fritters and emotional reunions on this very special St David's Day at the Museum of Welsh Life.
Entry to the Museum is free thanks to the support of the Welsh Assembly Government