Evacuation wouldn’t happen now would it?

[Bellavida99]

Just watching about evacuation. I initially thought that definitely wouldn’t happen now. But then I remembered how we all did as we were told during Covid even when it meant not visiting relatives etc and I wonder if it could happen

My Mum's parents refused to let her and her brother be evacuated. My granny looked after them - grandad was in the RAF and spent the latter years of the war in India.

But not everyone "obeyed".
My own grandmother stayed on London with her young children throughout the war. Refused to be evacuated, declaring that they would be better dying together. She was fairly dramatic her whole life tbf.
Lots of families made their own arrangements. My mother in law went with her Mum and sister to stay with distant cousins. They knew where they were going, and it saved the cousins taking in strangers.

Oh God! That scene was what started me blubbering in the cinema 😭 And then my sister elbowed me in the ribs and told me to get a grip ‘cos I was embarrassing her 😳

Same. Has something big happened?

Goodness, I'm so stupid! Thank you so much for your reassurance.
Can only imagine what those people went through, bless them.
Thank you SuperTrooper14

And this has been the advice for years , even more so these past two years

I remember during the 80;s talking to my dad about the mythical "Four Minute Warning" and I asked him if he would try to get us away. He said no, he would take us outside and "watch the sun go down".

Ten/Eleven ish year old me was horrified that he wouldnt try to save us. But I didnt understand that getting blown away in the blast was far preferable to trying to survive afterwards and probably dying of radiation sickness anyway.

So now, I agree with him.

but its not like Covid? People were required to stay indoors during covid. I don't think that parents were required to evacuate their children.

I think most of them wouldn’t talk about it. My gran was evacuated and refused point blank ever to mention it. According to her sister, something happened and my great gran went to pick her up, she went back to London for a few years and then was evacuated a second time but with a sibling. The story was she was abused in some way. Both my grandmothers refused to talk about the war, they said was an awful time and they wanted to put it behind them.

Depends on the circumstances. Kinder transport was the escape/evacuation out of Germany before the outbreak of war. What if it was a virus that affected adults but not children. Would you let your children be with you. Thinking about the film Deep Impact where the mother hands the baby to her older daughter and tells her to go before the tidal wave arrives. Would you/we do that? Next war will be cyber. The nuke option is always there but if you can cripple a nation without destroying it then that's a better option

I think collectively my entire family would move to a remote farm in Scotland or something, or even far abroad. I would not be leaving my husband and male family members to fight some old politicians war that is absolutely nothing to do with us or any of the general public

I think it would happen, but a parent (probably the mother) woukd go with the child/ren.

Not quite the same but my grandfathers never talked about their time in service in the war.

My maternal GF especially was tight lipped up until he saw something on TV around Remembrance day or similar. One of the other veterans would say something about what he saw or experienced and he would say "If he can talk about what he saw, then he never bloody saw anything!" and then go and be alone for a few hours. He was in Burma.

None of the people in our family who have seen active service (including my Uncle who was in the Falklands in the Navy) have talked about it openly. These days there is much more of a "talk it through to deal with the trauma" attitude, but that is very recent. "Squash it down and pretend it never happened" was far more common.

Michael Caine was evacuated and he and another small boy were housed with a completely monstrous woman, who fed them only pilchards, and locked them in a cupboard under the stairs when she went out. His mother must have worried about a lack of letters or something because she travelled to the house and turned up unannounced at the door, when she saw the state Michael was in she punched the woman in the face and took him home to London.

I live in a big house in the countryside with spare bedrooms, so you could move in with me.😊
No seriously, stop worrying but if anything did ever happen, I think people in safe places would open up their homes.

@PyongyangKipperbang I remember a similar conversation with my mum where she said she’d run out in the street to make sure the bomb got her. I thought this was awful as a kid. I understand it better now.

I'm not in UK... Did I miss something? Speak of evacuations?

And I have a big bundle of letters from my grandad to my nan written during the war. In one exchange they are considering where is best for my Nan and infant Mum to stay to have the lowest risk of being bombed. They lived in the centre of Birmingham and had relatives on the coast in Essex. It really hit home to me, reading those words that they were real choices people had to make to try to best guess where they would be safest. Something I cannot imagine.

My father wouldn't say much either. He wouldn't join the British Legion or take part in any of the Rememberance day stuff although he never tried to stop us. Just went very quiet. He had obvs told my mother things because she understood and helped him at those times. He died before the Silence was reinstated. He was in Europe in various areas.

I always figured the next attack would be an EMP. That would slowly destroy most of the civilization without destroying it all.

How? Where?

This assumes that you have the money and resources to do that, which most people dont have.

That the transport you would need would be available, it almost certainly wouldnt be if it got to the "Oh shit, we need to leave" stage.

That the remote Scottish community would want you and everyone else that would be fleeing there. That they would have the accomodation and infrastructure to support a massive leap in population. And which country would you flee to given that global war now would really mean global. There is no where on Earth that would be safe anymore.

I know that for the Ukrainian men, staying to fight was/is a point of pride. I have made friends with a lesbian couple who were living in Ukraine at the outbreak. One is Ukrainian, the other is Russian. They couldnt safely live in either country. They came here and live with my friend under the UK scheme. All the male Ukranian relatives chose to stay despite being allowed to leave if they wanted to. They want to fight for their country.

I remember an old man in our village when I was little. He had been evacuated there and his family had all been killed back in the city. He had nothing to go back to so he stayed and married a local girl.

My paternal grandmother took in refugees in rural Gloucestershire while my grandfather was at war. My Dad remembered it really clearly, these kids came from London and were somewhat taken aback at a quiet life in the countryside but Nan stayed in touch with the families for decades after and went to London to visit them. The women were so grateful, they were friends for life.

Wouldn't happen nowadays. Life is too different.

Its funny you should say that, Grandad was very anti BL. He understood that it did help veterans but he hated the way it (in his opinion) glorified it all. He hated the heroification of all veterans.

So I dont buy a poppy, and I dont do Remembrance Day or the silences. I do (or rather, do not do) that for him.

I think the veterans who were present at the D-Day landings and can talk about it are very brave because I, personally, have trouble just hearing about that day and the preceding day and days after. But, it's important to learn what happened, no matter how horrible so that someday, perhaps, we will learn to do better.

None of my family (uncles and father) ever would talk about it. All I ever knew is one uncle was in the Army and marched through Africa, one was Air Force and my Dad was Navy in the Pacific.