EVACUEE STORIES

Evening Star, Issue 23680, 13 September 1940, Page 3

EVACUEE STORIES

Evacuees are English children, moved from their homes to the country to escape German bombers. Here are some tales of their experiences. It is true that the pull of home is always with the evacuees, and they have been delighted to go back to visit daddy. One little lad who had paid a lady the compliment of calling her Queen said to her: " Queen, I'se going home to-day but I'se not going to cry cos I'se coming back to-morrow." Two brothers, five and three, with enough energy in them for half a little

army, found it difficult to be still in the house for any length of time until an idea was hit upon to which they warmly responded. They were encouraged to be statues, and were capital at posing. If they were told to be Two Brothers Very Quiet they would sit facing each other looking like little angels. They would go behind a curtain, which they

would draw open as they walked through, saying: “ Ladies and gentlemen, here come two statues.” They loved most of all to copy the bronze figure of the Boy with the Thorn, and both would sit for minutes pulling out the imaginary thorn from the foot. If they were given a stick they would be Joan with her sword, copying another bronze figure in the library. Little Daniel Hogan, of Bellingham, who went down into Kent, is three,

and is the dearest little fellow. If Big Brother John (aged five) pretends to ho asleep Daniel must pretend to he awake. If Brother John is on sentry-go at Buckingham Palace Daniel must sen-try-go, too. If Brother John tells a story Daniel must - cap it with a terrific tale. “ This is the story of a cow,” he will say on Monday, and on Tuesday, “ This is the story of a cow—but it is another cow.” It is perfectly true that a gipsy we know, having been given, a bed by a farmer one night, found himself unable to sleep in it, and got out and slept on the floor; and some of our evacuees have had much the same experience.

One of them wrote home that " you don't sleep on the floor here, hut in a bed with lovely white clothes over you. Under the bed is all waste." A child of 12, the little mother of seven children in an East End home, was filled with wonder when they put her to bed for the first time in the country. " Fancy (she wrote), they have different clothes to sleep in, and I have a beautiful pink dress with lace and ribbons." One of the bright young lads was a town Jimmy, who explained to somebody that he had been " evaporated to Bath," and it was this same Jimmy who went to the milking sheds on a farm and was staggered to see all the trouble the farmer had to get milk | from the cow, explaining that at home the milkman brought it in a nice clean bottle. One lady told her evacuees to take the broken eggshells from the breakfast table and throw them to the chickens, whereupon one of the boys asked in astonishment, "Why?' Will the chickens fill them up again, lady?" It has been a constant source of surprise to some of the children to see men 1 digging up things from the ground, or to see growing the familiar fruits they have always bought from the shops. One child was watching a. man digging potatoes, and exclaimed: " I thought taters came- off the stalls."