Evacuees commemorate 70 years since first London exodus
They are elderly now, many of them stooped and white of hair, but as they queued patiently outside St Paul’s Cathedral today, luggage labels attached dutifully to the lapels of their coats, for a moment the years fell away and they were not their old selves any more, but a generation of children about to be evacuated from London as the world stood on the brink of war.
Perhaps an outsider would not have noticed. But the broadcaster Michael Aspel, who was among those gathered for the service marking the 70th anniversary of the first evacuation on the eve of the Second World War, is a former evacuee himself: he could see it. “We all look at each other, these old geezers,” he said, “and see ourselves as children.”
For him, and all the other 2,000 evacuees at the service, the memories came racing back of saying goodbye to their parents at railway stations across the capital as they embarked on their strange new lives in the countryside, of seeing their mothers crying across the platform and wondering why they were so unhappy.
Read entire article at Times Online (UK)
Perhaps an outsider would not have noticed. But the broadcaster Michael Aspel, who was among those gathered for the service marking the 70th anniversary of the first evacuation on the eve of the Second World War, is a former evacuee himself: he could see it. “We all look at each other, these old geezers,” he said, “and see ourselves as children.”
For him, and all the other 2,000 evacuees at the service, the memories came racing back of saying goodbye to their parents at railway stations across the capital as they embarked on their strange new lives in the countryside, of seeing their mothers crying across the platform and wondering why they were so unhappy.