"Evacuation was a great success" Do I agree or disagree with this interpretation? Explain your answer.

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Marcus Brooks- Henderson.

“Evacuation was a great success” Do I agree or disagree with this interpretation? Explain your answer.

As the last days of peace lasted away in 1939, more than 3.5 million children were taken from their homes as part of a Government plan to evacuate largest mass movement of people ever seen in Britain.

The evacuations were planned against a series of hugely exaggerated estimates of the potential effects of the German bombs.

According to official, pre-war calculations, more than 100,000 tons of German bombs would be dropped on Britain in the first two weeks of the war alone. In fact, less that 65,000 tons were dropped throughout the entire war. The evacuation of cities at the start of World War II was the biggest and most concentrated mass movement of people, in the first four days of September 1939 alone; nearly 3,000,000 people were transported from towns and cities in danger from enemy bombers to places of safety in the countryside. The majority were schoolchildren who had been labelled like pieces of luggage, separated from their parents and accompanied instead by a small army of teachers. Talking to evacuees now about the events of those days in 1939 recall painful memories that have been deeply hidden for 60 years, exposing the trauma of separation and isolation and of fear and anger. But in saying that these same people all agree that evacuation was probably the only option that would save a lot of lives. But nevertheless this shows that something can be a success even without being liked. Most evacuees have a vivid memory of events on the day of their evacuation. The images are of busy train stations, shouting officials and sobbing mothers. Parents all instructed their children "Don't complain," "Grin and bear it." Many experiences are bias as they only based on things that happened to that particular person. The painful memories John Abbot spoke about where horrifying. His host family, who enjoyed good food whilst John was given a diet of nothing more than mashed potatoes, stole his rations. He was horsewhipped for speaking out and, with a bruised and bleeding body, was eventually taken in by the police.

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A couple of days ago my class spoke to a dinner lady at our school called Edna. She was evacuated at the age of two. She travelled to Wales and was separated from her older Brothers and Sisters.

A member of my class asked ‘How do you feel about evacuation?’ Edna paused a moment and replied “I have mixed feels…evacuation saved lives, I mean a bomb actually dropped on my house so if I stayed…but the bad point for me was growing up in Wales where I grew up thinking my name was ‘the little English girl’ and was beaten ...

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