How Yorkshire welcomed forgotten evacuees

In May 1940 when Germany invaded France, the 40,000 or so residents of Guernsey feared their lives were about to change forever.

However, as the island’s families gathered around the wireless to hear the latest news broadcasts, what they could never have realised was that in a few weeks their fate was to be forever tied with towns and villages some 300 miles away in northern England.

While it’s well-known that during the Second World War thousands of children were evacuated from Britain’s industrial areas to the safety of the countryside, much less is known about the Guernsey evacuees who swapped their small island for the bigger one across the English Channel.

Yet the numbers were far from insignificant. In total 17,000 Guernsey residents, including 5,000 school children, left their homes and everything they knew.

The exodus became inevitable when on June 17, Nazi forces reached the French coast, just 30 miles from Guernsey. The decision to evacuate was made and children, along with their teachers, were to be the first to go.

Over the course of two days, 5,000 youngsters, many of whom were told they were going on a school trip, so not to frighten them, boarded boats. Alongside them were their teachers and 500 mothers who acted as “helpers”. As parents said their goodbyes, many promised they would do their best to follow on the next boat.

By June 28, when Germany flew a squadron over the island bombing the harbour in a raid which saw 44 people killed, just under half the population of Guernsey had managed to escape.

They were the lucky ones, but the journey to safety was by no means an easy one.

The evacuees were hurriedly crammed into anything that could float, from mail boats to coal barges and cattle boats and endured rough Channel crossings. One boat licensed to carry 12 passengers carried 300 and the journey lasted seven hours.

Olive Quinn, one of the first mothers to be evacuated, recalled: “As the ship pushed through the night, my daughter Carol began to cry for her daddy. He always used to put her to bed. How could you tell a little girl that a man called Hitler had put a stop to that?”

A hundred similar conversations were happening in every vessel which left the Guernsey shore and when they finally reached land their final destination was still some hours away.

Arriving in Weymouth the evacuees were given tea, sandwiches and a medical examination. More than 70 years on one woman, Hazel Hall, still has the medical label that was given to her. On it are the letters “NAD” – they stood for Nothing Adverse Detected; wartime shorthand which would guarantee her at least temporary sanctuary far from Guernsey.

The Salvation Army noted that 23,000 evacuees arrived in Weymouth – 17,000 from Guernsey and 6,000 from Jersey. However, because Weymouth was experiencing air raids, the evacuees did not stay long and very soon were sent northwards by train.

Thousands arrived in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire while others travelled on further to Glasgow. In Yorkshire, the evacuees arrived at reception centres in Leeds, Horsforth, Baildon, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, Keighley, Barnsley and Wakefield.

One newspaper reporter describing the arrival of 400 evacuees at Bradford’s Eastbrook Hall wrote: “They were immediately given a meal and while the fathers and mothers were sleeping on stretcher beds in Sunday school dormitories, volunteer workers nursed and fed their babies. The youngest of the evacuees is a baby just 10 days old.

“One evacuee told us ,‘I have a wife and five children somewhere, but I don’t know where. They came across on an earlier boat’.”

While many were worried about the fate of those that had been left behind others struggled to take in the unfamiliar skyline of Yorkshire’s industrial heartland.

These evacuees from a small rural island were understandably shocked at the sight of smoking chimneys. Muriel Parsons wrote in her diary: “There were rivers and canals, viaducts, trains and noisy railway stations, cotton mills belching black smoke into the air, and coating everything with a dark grey dust.”

Lawson Allez recalled the “people were very friendly but everywhere seemed so noisy after living on a quiet island.”

Many evacuees assumed that they would only spend a few weeks in these alien surroundings, but it was not to be. On June 30 news arrived from Guernsey. The island had been occupied by the Nazis.

The Channel Islands earned the dubious claim to fame of being the only part of the British Isles to be invaded during the war and those who were left had to take comfort where they could find it.

Some found a little solace in a letter written by Victor Lewis sent to the Guernsey Star just before the Nazi occupation.

“This is a message to the mothers and fathers of the Guernsey children who are now getting acclimatised to a temporary new life in the north 
of England,” he wrote.

“The hospitable people here have thrown open their doors wide to them. I know the north, and the people of it, the parents of Guernsey need not worry.”

Hundreds of Yorkshire families took Guernsey children into their homes for the next five years. Kathleen and Marian Hollings lived with the West family in Horsforth, “their daughter, Barbara, was like our own sister and let us play with all her toys,” they recalled.

Guernsey mothers who had accompanied the school teachers moved into empty houses with their own infants. Maud Falla remembers: “We arrived with nothing, and the day we moved in, kind people kept arriving with furniture, bedding, and odds and ends.”

Some Guernsey teachers obtained permission to remain with their pupils throughout the war, and 42 children and teachers from Guernsey’s St Peter in the Wood school continued their lessons at Lees School and Haworth Senior School near Keighley.

Those Guernsey evacuees of working age supported the war effort and undertook part-time work in Yorkshire’s factories producing aircraft, chemicals, army uniforms, parachutes, ammunition and electrical components.

Others joined the forces, fire brigade or Home Guard,and contributed towards local war fund campaigns. One Guernsey woman sent a letter to the Sunday Express, showing her patriotism.

“I have lost in this war many things that were dear to me,” she wrote. “A cosy little home in Guernsey, now occupied by jackbooted ruffians... the companionship of a young husband who dreams his dreams behind barbed wire in Germany. We are behind you to a woman.”

With no wartime postal service between Guernsey and England, some evacuees sent 25-word Red Cross messages home, but it took around six months to receive a reply and most had little idea of what was happening to their loved ones back home.

The evacuees also formed “Channel Island Societies” in Bradford, Haworth, Huddersfield, Horsforth and Halifax where they could meet, and support each other when homesick.

Christmas parties organised for the children were particularly meaningful to those whose parents were trapped in occupied Guernsey.

Brian Terriss recalled, “After having our Christmas dinner it would be time to hand out the children’s toys, most, if not all, were hand made. My toy was a two-wheeled wooden scooter which you pushed along the road with your foot.”

When the island was finally liberated on May 9, 1945, most of the Guernsey evacuees returned home. Others stayed. All would never forget the five years they spent in the north.

Guernsey Evacuees – The Forgotten Evacuees of the Second World War by Gillian Mawson is published by the History Press, priced £14.99 . To order a copy through the Yorkshire Post bookshop call 01748 821122.