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

It could happen and there would be people ready to officiate compliance even though they have no right to. Just like the "concerned" members of the public walking around with their own fucking tape measure during covid. There would also be a bunch of wankers trying to exploit and extort people for lovely lovely profits. People who use it as an excuse to commit crimes and abuse of others.

And, all those abusing the situation will claim "I am only doing the right thing for your/their own good" while they're getting their power trip on.

Time means nothing where human nature is concerned.

My grandmother hated the phrase "There is a war on, if you havent noticed" as an excuse for everything. Stealing, lying, cheating the system, profiteering.

Spivs especially.

For every good person trying their best there will be another who will exploit desperation for profit. Look at all the people selling bog roll and hand sanitizer for 20x the original price during covid.

ETA and yes of course curtain twitching and reporting others for perceived crimes.

No, just chat generated from recollections of evacuation of children during ww2!

Apparently my great grand mother got part way through and just could not hand my Nana (and her siblings) over. I honestly don’t know if I would be willing to turn my children over to strangers. It’s an unimaginable decision at the end of the day. Mind you, if there was all out war these days we would all be wiped out regardless of if we were in the city or not, so I’d rather they were with us than strangers as morbid as that is…

I think people will probably just do what was best for them it was a pointless exercise sending children away during war .there was hardly any fighting on British soil at the time the children came back home then the nazi started bombing.and I think lots if folk visited there relatives even although they didn't admit it .it sometimes was better to risk covid than be totally devastating not see your child /relative for months bugger that .the torie government could hardly prosecute rule brakers they to busy at garden parties that lot

Coming from a Channel Islands perspective, I believe if it were necessary then people would still send their children away. The Occupation was brutal in so many ways, and even as living memory dwindles people are very aware of the conditions islanders were living under. It wasn't the threat of being bombed that drove island families to evacuate in the same way it was in the UK; it was the threats of starvation, deportation, and life under a fascist regime.

If that immediate threat came to pass again, I think many would choose to evacuate. I don't think it would be quite such a shot-in-the-dark though, I imagine either families would evacuate as a household, parents would send children to live with mainland relatives, or schools would evacuate as a unit the way some did back in 1940. People wouldn't just send their children off with no plan these days.

I imagine the ease of distance communication would influence people's decision too.

My great nan lived through evacuation. She was one of five siblings and there were all separated. Over the years they managed to find each other again/be returned home, except one sister. My nan (the oldest) spoke of her often, I think it broke her never getting her sister back.
I don't think I could send my DC away. It's not natural.

@PyongyangKipperbangif your DGF was in Burma, then he would have experienced some horrific atrocities. He's lucky to have survived, although he might not see it as 'luck'. Poor man.

In WWII some children (and women) were evacuated to Canada and Australia, whether they would welcome British children now is another question.

I know there were some awful things that happened to some evacuees but others made life long friendships.

My grandmother was married in 1940, her bed was taken over by 'Polly' who was an evacuee from London, she had 4 brothers and instructions to not split the family up. My great grandmother's next door neighbour could take the boys but didn't have room for a girl so she ended up sleeping at my great grandmother's. Polly and one of my great aunts were still writing to each other 20 years later.

@channelislander My dad's next door neighbours were on holiday in the Chanel Islands, they were queuing to pay to go in to something, the person on the gate recognised their accents, asked where they were from and let them in for free. Apparently a lot of CI evacuees were billeted in Lancashire.

My mum and her younger brother were evacuated to the US, where they had an aunt who ran a boarding school (girl’s school with a boy’s school next door). My mum missed her family terribly but had an ok time and made lifelong friends. however she thinks her brother may have been abused at his school. They went to different people every school holiday and never knew where they were going. She had some amazing experiences (summer on a ranch in Arizona!) but I think was still traumatised by never knowing where she was going to be.

i have a friend whose mum got evacuated from London to a family in Cornwall who she stayed in touch with and visited over the years afterwards.

Omg I'm well embarrassed. Enjoy the celebrations!

The world has changed since then. Needs are met in different ways. So much so it's not really possible to transpose the world at war in the 40s to modern times. However on the point of remote working, clearly many necessary roles could be performed remotely. Teaching, medical consultations, government at various levels, management and administration of essential industries, advice and welfare, banking, legal etc. Now, as then, I imagine the emphasis would be on keeping life as normal as possible as much as possible and if jobs could be done, they would be. Manufacturing has changed, with far fewer people needed to make essentials, so, even if the factories existed (they mostly don't now) there wouldn't be the need for so many workers.

Is there enough room in the countryside? 😂😂

Would it? Losing my children through evacuation and not knowing they were safe and potentially never being reunited is the most unimaginatively hard thing I can think of. It wouldn’t be the last thing on my mind at all!

We need to make sure this doesn’t happen. We need to hope and encourage society to settle. For kindness and tolerance to prevail over bitterness and power hungry old men.

In the first world war, poison gas was used on the battlefield. The fear of it led to all UK residents being issued with gas masks in anticipation, in 1938. It was never used either in a battlefield or against civilians, arguably for fear of retaliation.

In the 1930s following an article on arial bombing, and due to the experience of limited bombing of civilians in ww1 many city councils did not build air raid shelters as "the bomber would always get through".

Some always assume a future conflict would become nuclear. Whilst most countries would have a red line, usually involving invasion and inability to contain an invasion (Israel and the Gideon option) it is not a certainly.

You don't think your children being actually killed by an airstrike would be harder to bear than them being evacuated to the countryside and you having to live with uncertainty?

That's why parents evacuated their kids in WWII. They knew they might not see their kids again, they knew that they themselves as adults could be killed remaining in urban areas. It must have been painful and terrible for them but still better than the alternative.

Would it? My grandmother sent 4 children out of London to the countryside in WW2. The night before she had had to push them under the table to protect them in the event the roof fell in. Her desire to be with them mattered less to her than their lives. People didn't 'lose' their children to evacuation, they were saved. As it happens my dad remembered his evacuation it as a very happy time. Though I realise this wasn't the case for all, he recalls eating well, fresh air and so on.

When Chernobyl went up the clouds were radioactive, when the rain fell on Wales the sheep were deemed contaminated and tested for years. As was the water but they kept quiet about that. We lived in the area were caught out in that rain with two small children , got soaked. There were a lot of worried families

I know from the case of my great grandparents that during WW2 parents of very small children were evacuated with them so I imagine that would be the same.

Only school age children were evacuated alone.

Safeguarding checks would be needed now though. I dread to think how many children were put with unsuitable carers in WW2.

My dad became best friends with a boy who had been evacuated from Bristol. When he moved back to his home after the war he said he would come back to live here. Many years later he did just that and he and my dad remained firm friends until the friend died in 2015. His daughter and grandchildren still live in the village.

If you really worry about this all the time, you need some psychological help

eyeroll at the original post, not this one...the one about no one having room

In early 2020, Bil and SIL in China genuinely considered sending their toddler Back to the UK for a few months to keep her safe from Covid. They didn't in the end, which is probably good because it would have been 2 years not months, but they were worried enough to consider it.

I think its really interesting that so many people on this thread think 'if there was a war we would be wiped out anyway' there are currently several major wars going on in the world, along with dozens of internal conflicts. Just because we are an island doesn't mean we couldn't face invasion and occupation. Even the Israeli government with such a profound hatred for the Palestinians see the value in the land they are on, nuclear weapons make land inhabitable.

I don't think Teams will work particularly well following an electromagnetic pulse, tbh.