History of England 1-6

Yet practical inconveniences were inconsiderable beside the uneasy awareness that you were yourself considered an inconvenience. That this might be overlooked if you were personable cannot have proved very much of a solace. Susan Waters, a twenty-one-year-old teacher, arriving in Bedford from Walthamstow, remembered a scene ‘more akin to a cattle or slave market than anything else’. Some women would specify ‘two fair-haired, blue-eyed little girls’, while farmers might size up boys to see if they were strong enough to work. John Wills from Battersea noted that ‘if you were similar to Shirley Temple you were grabbed right away’. A woman appeared to be checking the evacuees’ hair and inspecting their mouths. A helper suddenly intervened to save the children from further indignity. ‘They might come from the East End,’ she said, ‘but they’re human beings. They’re children, not animals.’ And the evacuees could scarcely be expected to have the necessary clothing. Few had serviceable boots, for example. Indeed, Liverpool quickly became known as ‘plimsoll city’ – the children’s parents could afford nothing hardier, and plimsolls were worthless as protection against countryside mud.

‘Verminous heads’ were reported in Weymouth, and the response of some foster parents and ‘aunties’ was to shave them bald. A Lancashire chemist mentioned one particularly resourceful, or cash-strapped, woman who used sheep dip on her charges. Impetigo, a particularly virulent skin disease, was rampant among almost a quarter of the evacuees sent to Wrexham. There had been no time to medically examine them prior to departure. Yet in the universal cliché applied to every precarious situation, no one was to blame.

There were also happier tales. Between the frets and the joy, a middle note may be heard in the recollection of one reluctant evacuee. She was met by an equally reluctant ‘grey-haired lady’, who welcomed her new charge with the remark: ‘Well, come in. I didn’t want you, but come in anyway.’ A large dog was the first to greet this child, its paws on her shoulders. ‘The people of Littlehampton are the kindest in the world,’ reported one relieved headmistress. Experiences varied according to area, cultural and social expectation, and human nature. Mothers who had waved off ten-year-olds were to find themselves, six years later, hugging teenagers. Sharp-eyed scrappers came back chastened, wild ones were tamed and soft ones hardened.

In September 1939, the government was and was not prepared. Officially, it had been firm in its commitment to peace, but, as is so often the case in British affairs, Whitehall proved more prescient than Westminster. Civil servants had been turning the cogs of war while Chamberlain hoped for peace. The devastating power of aerial bombardment was not underestimated, though it happily proved to be exaggerated. The penultimate roar of the Nazi dragon came in the shape of the V1, a pilotless plane better known in Britain as the ‘doodlebug’, whose rise led to a third wave of evacuees. Then came the V2, hitting the earth at more than 3,500 miles per hour. Milton may have named Pandaemonium, but Hitler created it.

30

The march of the ants

On 10 May 1940, the Germans carved their bloody trail into Belgium and towards Holland. The more factional among Labour MPs still found it hard to accept that Hitler was the true enemy; for Aneurin Bevan, hostility to Germany was a distraction contrived to divert the workers’ energies from the real business of destroying capitalism. Small wonder, perhaps, that Churchill was later to say of him that he would prove ‘as great a curse to his country in peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war’.

But a new government must be formed, and with Chamberlain gone and Churchill as prime minister and minister for defence, Labour could join it in good conscience. Meanwhile, the German forces continued to advance, crossing the French border and threatening Holland. The British and French failed to hold their positions and the British Expeditionary Force, outflanked and outgunned, retreated to the coast. The Germans reached Brussels, their fifth conquered capital, and captured Antwerp and Cambrai. ‘This,’ said Churchill, ‘is one of the most awe-striking periods in the long history of France and Britain.’

There was a ray of hope in May, when the experts of Bletchley Park disarmed the most formidable of Germany’s secret weapons. Under the guidance of the mathematician Alan Turing, a machine was devised which could crack the feared Luftwaffe’s Enigma code. Generated by a device adapted by the Germans from a Polish model, the code’s settings were changed every twenty-four hours. It was necessary to use the prophetic powers of Turing’s machine only in desperate need, and the authorities were forced to let many ships sink rather than reveal their ability to decipher the German code. It was perhaps the greatest breakthrough of the war, but tragically compromised by the realities.