Many
British evacuees recall the build up to D Day, and their feelings on D Day
itself. The following memoirs have been obtained through my
interviews with evacuees or from the pages of wartime letters and
diaries held in my archive.
Erica
Ninnim:
“I
was born in Whitby, Yorkshire, in 1932, then my family moved to
Guernsey. However, when the threat of German occupation of the
Channel Islands arose, my family, with thousands of others, were
evacuated to England. We went straight to Whitby where we had some
relatives. My father immediately joined the RAF and was soon posted
to Oxford, so we went with him. The day after we left Whitby, my
school was bombed so I was very lucky indeed.
Father
dealt with explosives and supervised the loading of bombs onto the
aircraft which was very dangerous. On one occasion, a bomb fell out
of the aeroplane as it was being loaded, and he told me “You have
never seen so many people move so fast in all your life!” We then
moved to Sutton Mandeville where father was involved in the
preparations for D Day. One day he drove up to our house in a jeep,
wearing battle dress and shouted “I have come to say goodbye! Would
you like a ride in my jeep before I leave Erica?” I had a quick
ride around with him then said goodbye to him as he left with the
rest of the troops. Luckily my father survived the war.
Vernon
Renier:
My
school was evacuated to Lochearnhead, Scotland, which was extensively
used for the training of Allied forces. We would meet all manner of
different nationalities, such as Canadians, French, Norwegian and
British. In the months leading up to D Day, the place was absolutely
heaving with troops. Vehicle convoys would extend bumper to bumper,
for seven miles either side of the loch, not to mention all the
troops trains we saw passing through laden with ammunition and
vehicles. At the time we did not know what it was all for, but the
6th June 1944 provided the answer. (Vernon is pictured below with his sister Jenny, before the evacuation)
John Fletcher, a resident of Bury:
I have spent the past four years collecting funds to buy Christmas gifts for the Channel Island evacuees who came to live in Bury in June 1940. They are so excited by the news of the D Day landings, and I am delighted for them too. Now they can look forward to being reunited with their parents in Guernsey.
Mr Percy
Martel:
Along
with several thousand other Guernsey evacuees, Mr Percy Martel was
evacuated to Stockport, Cheshire in June 1940. This was just 9 days
before Guernsey was occupied by Germany. Percy, a Headmaster, had
brought 134 of his pupils, plus teachers and mothers with infants, to
England with him. He obtained permission to re open his Guernsey
school in a parish hall in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport. As the news of
the D Day landings broke, Percy celebrated with the other evacuees,
as the invasion gave them all hope that Guernsey would soon be
liberated from German occupation:
News
of the invasion of Normandy, after weeks of tensionand patient waiting,
came as a universal thrill, tempered by some degree of anxiety. To us all it
heralds the great day of liberation. (Below is a photograph of Percy's pupils and staff in Stockport)
Muriel
Parsons, a young woman who had accompanied Percy's school to England,
wrote in her diary:
D
Day! At last, the day we have all waited for! We went mad of course, for an hour,
but afterwards, I, for one, had a good weep. What must the home folks in Guernsey feel like?
Some
evacuees even wrote letters for their families, assuming that they
would soon be able to post them to Guernsey. Prior to this their only
contact had been through the occasional 25 word British Red Cross letter.
Percy
Martel wrote a long letter to Guernsey on D Day, a copy of which still remains within the pages of
his diary. It includes the words:
Sincerest
greetings and best wishes from the Staff, scholars, mothers and our
many friends in Cheadle Hulme.
We are proud of your endurance and fortitude,
we
are all fit and well and longing to see you all again!
However, Guernsey was not liberated until the day after VE Day, so
these letters were not posted to Guernsey until mid May 1945
I have also written a chapter on Evacuated Mothers for a book entitled 'The Home Front in Britain: Myths and Forgotten Experiences, 1914-2014. This will be published in November 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan. More information here:
