Where have all the children gone? Local historian ANDREW PHILLIPS recalls the story of thousands of Colchester children, women and elderly sent away 75 years ago as the German invasion loomed.

SEVENTY-FIVE years ago 13,000 schoolchildren and mothers left Colchester by train, with no idea where they were going.

Loudspeaker vans toured the streets urging the old, the infirm, and all who could, to leave Colchester: invasion was expected.

Every night, wave after wave of German bombers filled the sky, heading for London.

As the capital blazed, thousands were killed. Stray planes hit Colchester, too. Searchlights and gunfire filled the night as residents headed for the public shelters.

But none of this is mentioned in the local press. Why?

National Security was at stake. One of the most dramatic weeks in Colchester’s history had not happened.

Gazette:

          September 1940 – Colchester children arrive at Burton-on Trent, rich with the                           smell of beer and boiling Marmite, which they have remembered ever since

And yet, survivors of those days, now well over 80, still live here.

Some are reading this. We need them to tell us their story.

Already we have the memories of some.

Liz White, of the Lexden History Group, has published the wartime memories of 24 Lexden residents.

Colchester Recalled, the oral history archive, has 32 recorded interviews solely about evacuation. So what do they say?

The background is familiar.

France had surrendered. Britain stood alone.

The “miracle of Dunkirk” saw big and little boats, many from this area, snatch British troops from French beaches, leaving behind our tanks, armoured vehicles, guns, rifles, ammunition.

Exhausted and shattered, men landed at Harwich and collapsed at Frinton.

Would Germany invade? The start of the London Blitz on September 7 suggested they would.

Troops were mobilised and the local Home Guard alerted.

One member of Dad’s Army, who worked all day at Paxman’s, recalled guarding Abberton Reservoir all night with one of their six rifles and just two bullets – all his platoon could spare.

On September 10, notices went up all over Colchester: Old people, women and children must leave the town at once.

With one day’s notice, a mass evacuation of schoolchildren and mothers began.

It was chaos. Schools were already struggling.

Young male teachers had joined the Armed Forces.

Gazette:

          Poignant moment – Wilson Marriage School evacuees pose for photo at their                                     Stoke-on-Trent school. One child stayed with a Stoke City footballer

Students and retired teachers filled the gaps.

Schools had just started again after the holidays.

Parents had been told about evacuation in June. Lists had been made, but evacuation was optional. At such short notice, how many children, how many mums would turn up?

A year before, as war broke out, 14,000 London children had been evacuated to Colchester.

This massive exercise was made difficult by not knowing how many London mothers and children would come.

After a year, large numbers of those mums and kids had gone back – only to face the Blitz. Now history repeated itself.

Colchester parents had to make rapid decisions. Fathers might be in the Army, or might be working locally, dependent on wife and children to keep the household going.

Mothers might have babies as well as school-age children. If they went, they wanted to travel with their children, disrupting the plan that children would travel in school groups.

On day one, one mother changed her mind and jumped with her five children from the train as it began to move, causing confusion the next day when they could not be found.

Teachers were supposed to travel with their pupils, but many were married, had children or parents to look after, and could not go.

Heads had to stay in Colchester to teach those children – a third of most schools – who stayed behind.

Gazette:

               Warning – invasion posters went up in villages all around Colchester

The real heroes were often young teachers, some just left college, who found themselves away from home, acting as surrogate parents , social workers, medical experts and school administrators.

Some children, tearful and bewildered, were only five.

At North Station, equipped with their gas mask, a case and a luggage label with their name on, they piled into the special trains, 500 per train, topped up where necessary by the next school in line.

Thus schools were split up – not a good idea when some had different destinations. The operation lasted several days.

Railways were log-jammed, carrying troops. In 1940 enclosed compartments of two long seats facing one another, carrying ten, were common.

Unless it was a corridor train, there was no access to a toilet.

This left some children locked in a carriage, not only without a teacher, but without a toilet.

They used the floor.

Each trainload had the same story.

Long detours, frequent stops to let troop trains through, being parked in tunnels during air raids, taking from 9am to 6pm to arrive, tired, hungry and grumpy, at destinations known only to the teacher in charge.

They were then walked or bussed to a local school or church hall at Kettering, Wellingborough, Stoke-on-Trent, Burton-on-Trent, Rushden or Burton Latimer, and slept, as they were, on the floor.

The following morning, either they were marched round streets by a billeting officer, knocking on doors till all the children had been placed with a family, or they sat in the hall for a “beauty contest” where local citizens came round and said ‘I’ll have that one.’ Girls went first – they were useful in the house. Brothers or mothers with children went last – they were too many to accommodate, so might be split between two households.

Colchester parents paid a means-tested £2.2.0 per child per week (£105 today).

Some could afford to visit their children. Most had to make do with letters.

Adapting to a new household was a big ask of five to ten-year-olds.

Many changed billets. Old couples and old maids could not cope with children; children sniggered when Midlanders called them ‘me duck’.

Homesick children just wanted to go home. The word went round that if you followed the railway line, you could get back to Colchester, a revealing recollection.

Yet there is massive evidence that host families were caring and kind. This is why many evacuees stayed in touch with them long after the war, and often made pilgrimages late in life to see the house they’d lived in.

Schooling was a challenge.

Usually children were taught by their own teachers in the local school for half a day, with local children taught in the same classroom the other half of the day. Integrated classes were uncommon.

Most evacuees came home before Christmas. The drift back began early. Parents missed their children. Germany did not invade and air raids in the Potteries were quite common.

On November 14 some evacuees sat in their hosts’ shelters and watched the Luftwaffe destroy Coventry.

But the game changer came on the morning of October 3.

Alfred Road School, Rushden, took a direct hit from a German plane, offloading its bombs after a raid.

Gazette:

        Tragedy – above, rubble from the bombed school at Rushden in October 1940

Six small children were killed.

Two, Cecilia Chase and Lorna Pain, were young girls from Collingwood Road, Lexden, while Muriel Moye was from Old Heath.

The impact was so dramatic that National Security was ignored and the deaths were reported in the Colchester papers.

All those interviewed agree evacuation left its mark. For some it was an insecurity which later resurfaced; for others it was a vision of a wider world they never lost; for all it was a disruption to their schooling.

For a few it was a lark. For a very few it is still there.

Three deaths left their mark upon a family, a school, a neighbourhood, for ever.

On October 3 this year, a dwindling band of survivors will meet, as they always do, for a service of remembrance at Alfred Road School, Rushden.

Our thoughts are with them and with the surviving families of three innocent lost Colchester lives.

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