Without having to read the source, I know that Nina Bowden was an evacuees herself so the story is probably based on her experiences which would make it a reliable source. We can tell she has done this because the children in this story were evacuated from London to South Wales, which was what happened to her. However, this could mean that the extract could be biased towards her experiences and not a balanced source.
Nina Bowden may have been basing the story on her own experiences but some aspects in the novel could have been elaborated to make the story more entertaining. This could easily have done because Nina Bowden would obviously have wanted as many people as possible to buy and read her book.
At the time of the war, People in the countryside had the view that people living in towns were poor. This is reflected on in this source because Miss Evans thinks the children don’t have any slippers with them because they don’t own any, it is actually because they didn’t have room to pack any. This fits in with my own knowledge that people in the countryside thought people in towns were poor. I also know that the children wouldn’t have been able to take much luggage with them and would have had to leave items such as slippers at home.
In my opinion this source would be quite reliable as evidence about evacuees. Although it is from a fictional novel, to make it more realistic it must have had a basis of fact. Its reliability is increased by the fact that Nina Bowden (the author) was an evacuee herself and the book the extract is from is likely to be about her own experiences.
Q3
The statement “Evacuation was a great success” could be interpreted to create many different views on whether it is true or not. I will be looking at various sources and using my own knowledge to decide if I agree with the statement or not.
Evacuation first took place in September 1939. After the mass casualties in the First World War, the government realise they had to do something to prevent the same thing happening again. Technology had been developed even further by this time so there was a large risk of Germans bombing big cities in England using planes.
To prepare for if this did happen, 8 million paper coffins were ordered to be used for any people that were killed.
However, this wouldn’t do much for the prevention of deaths do it was decided that children living in big cities such as London and Manchester would be evacuated to the countryside. This was going to be a huge operation – altogether, 1.5 million people were evacuated. Sir John Anderson was put in charge of the evacuation scheme.
The first six months of the war were known as “the phoney war” this was because none of the expected air raids took place. Many people returned home at this time as it was around Christmas and they wanted to spend it with their families. However, evacuation started again in 1940.
One of the initial problems with evacuation was the parent of the children. Many parents didn’t want to send them away to live with strangers. An example of this is the interview with a father of a seven-year-old child from Southend. He tells the interviewer he isn’t going to send his child away because he doesn’t thing that it would be looked after. He says that the people in the Shires, Wales and the West were all starving before the war as one of the reasons against sending his child. In a way, this contradicts my own knowledge, which shows the man being interviewed may have just been looking for excuses (which is probably true). I know that people in the countryside had the opinion that people in towns were poor and this man is from a town. However, the impression is given that the man thought his child would go to a very remote area where the people could have been starving. He also says that if he got killed during the war he would rather have his child at home with him where there are people nearby that could look after him. The father of this child would probably have been more at ease if all of his questions about the evacuation process had been answered which suggests that the government did not do very well in making information available to parents. The way in which the government chose to deal with problems like this was by using propaganda to convince parents that evacuation was the right thing to do.
Source B is an example of something that could have been propaganda. It is a photograph taken in September 1939 and shows evacuees walking to a station in London. It would easily give the impression that evacuation was a success because it looks very organised. However, the children in this picture look to be with their school because of what they are wearing which could add to why it looks organised. I know from other sources such as the film “Hope and Glory” that sometimes parents took their children to the station when they were being evacuated. This shows it wasn’t all completely organised and could make it seem like less of a success.
All of the children look happy which is a reason to make it look successful. Another source, which would back up that the children were happy, is source D – the picture of the evacuees at bath time. Again they are all smiling and looking happy. However, both of these sources seem reliable but as they are photographs they could easily have been staged. The children could have been told to smile for the picture – and even if they weren’t, the natural thing to do when someone takes a picture of you is smile. Because of this, both of these sources could have been used as propaganda to encourage evacuation.
Source H is another example of propaganda from later on in the war. It is an advertisement used by the government in 1940, which, is appealing for more people in Scotland to provide homes for evacuee children. I know from my own knowledge that the government would have been doing things like this because after the period known as the “phoney war” where no bombing took place, a lot of people went home and the evacuation process stopped for a while. 1940 was when the blitz began and evacuation restarted. The advertisement features a large picture of two evacuees who are probably brother and sister as they look close together. Behind them is a picture spilt in half showing a nice looking village with fields and cottages and a dark town being bombed on the other half. The children look very happy and as they are evacuees its obvious they would be living in the nicer looking half of the picture.
The text in the advert only talks about the good points of evacuation and makes it sound really good by saying things such as “And they’re healthier and happier” about the children themselves. This is how we can tell it is propaganda because it doesn’t talk about any of the bad side of evacuation. However, it would really give the impression of evacuation being a success.
Advertisements like this were needed to convince people to let an evacuee stay with them because a lot of these people had the impression that evacuees were bad. This relates back to the point of people from the country thinking that people from towns were poor. We see this in the extract from “Carrie’s War” (source G) where there is an incident where the woman that has taken in the evacuees doesn’t think they have any slippers because they do not own any. We find out that this is wrong because the children could actually not fit them in their suitcase. Things like this will have happened a lot because of the impression countryside people had of town people.
Having said this, in a lot of cases it was true. We can see this in source A where it says, “The country people were shocked at the obvious poverty and deprivation of the town children”. This source also speaks about reports of children “fouling gardens, hair crawling with lice and bed wetting”. These probably would have happened in some cases but not all. Especially because evacuees and foster parents would not be matched up to be of equal class.
There is a lot more evidence of bad incidents and stories of evacuation such as these because of letters from people with evacuees staying with them. There are bound to be more complaints than positive remarks because people were more likely to write and complain than write and say how good the evacuee staying with them might have been. So although this makes evacuation look unsuccessful it is not strictly correct.
Another source like this is source E from an interview in 1988 with the mother of a “host family”. She gives off a very bad impression of evacuation as her experience sounds to have been really bad. She speaks about the children she had “urinating on the walls”. But again this is only one side of the evacuation story. Good times may have also taken place but as the interview took place a long time afterwards, the woman may have forgotten about all those as she is more likely to remember horrific things such as that.
Source F also talks about how people had bad impressions of evacuees. IT is from an interview in 1988 with someone who was an evacuee in 1939. She wishes that the common view of evacuees that they were “raised on a diet of fish and chips” could be changed. She was obviously not a poor person fitting the stereotype from a town. We can tell this by her speaking of being familiar of “the origin of milk”. We do not know what her experience of evacuation was like but it is a shame that people like her were treated differently because of the general impression.
There were a lot of success stories about evacuation too which aren’t really mentioned in the sources. Separate to these, someone I know had family (aunt and uncle) that fostered an evacuee. They did not have children of their own and treated the foster child like they would their own child. This really was a success story because the child continued to visit his foster parents for years and years after the war had ended because they had enjoyed their time as an evacuee so much and the foster parents had really enjoyed having them stay.
After the war had ended, because of evacuation, the government’s attitude had been changed. The differences in quality of life for children in towns and children in the countryside had become much more apparent and this could now be changed. One of the things that improved life was the introduction of the NHS – National Health Service – that is still in place today. The general health of the nation had been improved anyway because most evacuees had been given a better diet and had gotten more exercise, which meant they became a lot healthier. Rationing also meant that everyone got a much better diet as everyone was given the same amount of food instead of rich people getting a lot and poor people getting hardly any.
It also gave women a lot more opportunities; during the war they had been able to do the jobs that the men at war would usually have been doing. They were able to do this because they no longer had to stay at home and look after children. Women did such a good job whilst the men were at war that things changed so women would be allowed to do these jobs after the war.
Not all of the evacuation experience was good though. Some of the children had been treated very badly when staying with foster parents – many had been forced to do unpaid labour. IT was also a very upsetting time for families as they were torn apart from loved ones.
During the time when many children had gone home because of the “phoney war” the blitz began and a lot of the previously evacuated children died. Evacuation should probably have been stricter and children should have been made to stay with foster parents but as it could not have been predicted that Germany would wait so long before attacking this didn’t seem very important.
After looking at various sources and using my own knowledge, I have decided that I do agree with the statement “Evacuation was a great success”. Evacuation had a lot of bad points, but the overall outcome was very positive. Hundreds of lives were saved, out of the 8 million paper coffins ordered, there were only 50,000 needed as only this amount of people died – a tiny amount compared to the death toll of the first world war. It also improved standards of life in Britain after the war. Health improved and the government took a much more positive attitude towards the country. Evacuation was also a success because the well organisation meant that the huge scale operation of transporting people around the country and finding foster parents was pulled off.
