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Anniversary for WWII evacuees
Chris Laker01.09.09
Hundreds of people who were moved as children from their homes in wartime Britain gathered today to mark the 70th anniversary of the evacuation.
Families were split up as three million children were given their rations and sent on trains out of the cities and, hopefully, to safety as the
Second World War began.
More than 2,000 packed St Paul's Cathedral in central London where they remembered the historic event.
The former evacuees, many now in their 70s and 80s, shared their experiences - both good and bad - with one another before and after the service.
TV presenter Michael Aspel attended wearing a brown paper label identifying him as an evacuee,
as did all those attending.
He was sent from his home in Wandsworth in south west London in 1940 at the age of seven to live with a couple called Cyril and Rose Grabham in Chard, Somerset.
He said that although he had a "good time" in the countryside, time felt as if it went slowly during his four-and-a-half years away from his family.
He said: "It was a fear that one was never going
to go home. There was no way of knowing when it was going to end."
The return to bomb-hit London also posed difficulties. "From freedom in the country it was a hell of a shock," he said.
Aspel praised the work of the Evacuees Reunion Association, which organised the service, and its campaign for a bronze memorial to be placed outside the cathedral in honour of evacuated children.
Of today's event, he described it as "completely positive" adding: "We all look at each other, these old geezers, and see ourselves as children."
A planned fly-past by a Lancaster bomber was cancelled due to the windy weather conditions.
