What was life like for the evacuees?

What was life like for the evacuees?

Evacuees and their hosts were often astonished to see how each other lived. Some evacuees flourished in their new surroundings. Others endured a miserable time away from home. Many evacuees from inner-city areas had never seen farm animals before or eaten vegetables.

Why was evacuation a good thing?

The evacuation of civilians in Britain during the Second World War was designed to protect people, especially children, from the risks associated with aerial bombing of cities by moving them to areas thought to be less at risk.

What was life like for evacuees during ww2?

This means they left home and lived with strangers in the countryside, often very far away from home. This was because they lived in cities that were under threat of being bombed. Evacuees only took a small suitcase and a gas mask each. They wore a label that stated their name, school and home address.

What was the impact of evacuation on evacuees?

They were often poorly educated and had suffered from a lack of clean air. Evacuation helped to change attitudes because it meant that working class children mixed with more affluent families. It highlighted the severe poverty that still existed in cities after the reforms of the early 1900s.

What did Evacuees eat?

Sometimes carrots were used instead of sugar to sweeten dishes. During the Second World War, thousands of children were evacuated, (sent away from areas likely to be bombed), to the countryside. There, they were often better fed, as fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products were more freely available.

What are the disadvantages of evacuation?

Disadvantages

• Couples choose children based on their appearance which resulted in families being split up.
• Some familoies made the children work hard.
• The process of being evacuated was humiliating for the children.
• When they returned the hadn’t adapted to life in war.

How were children’s lives affected by ww2?

Children were massively affected by World War Two. Nearly two million children were evacuated from their homes at the start of World War Two; children had to endure rationing, gas mask lessons, living with strangers etc. Children accounted for one in ten of the deaths during the Blitz of London from 1940 to 1941.

What was life like for child evacuees in ww2?

What was it like for a child to be evacuated? Being an evacuee must have been scary and exciting at the same time. The children had to leave their families and homes behind and try to fit in with host families in the country. Children had labels attached to them, as though they were parcels.

How did evacuation affect children’s lives?

The war disrupted the education of many children. The mass evacuation of 1939 upset the school system for months and over 2,000 school buildings were requisitioned for war use. One in five schools was damaged by bombing, and air raids frequently stopped lessons for hours, leading to a decline in attendance.

What did soldiers eat in the trenches?

The bulk of their diet in the trenches was bully beef (caned corned beef), bread and biscuits. By the winter of 1916 flour was in such short supply that bread was being made with dried ground turnips. The main food was now a pea-soup with a few lumps of horsemeat.

What did they drink in World War 2?

1941-1945. During World War II, distillers produced industrial alcohol for the war effort; whiskey production virtually stopped, and it was rationed. This led to the increased popularity of rum imported from nearby Caribbean islands. By the end of the war, Americans were drinking three times as much rum as in 1941.

What are the bad things about the evacuation?

Some children sent overseas. Made connections across the country. Some children ran away and died. By being moved away from their parents, the children blamed the Germans, rightfully so, and so were keen to fight when they came of age. Places had to be blacked out at night, scary.

What was it like to host an evacuee?

There is a page on what it was like to host an evacuee. Fortunately, as Hitler did not bomb Britain in the early stages of the war, often called the Phoney War (September 1939-April 1940), many of the children gradually filtered back home. There were further waves of evacuation and re-evacuation of children to areas deemed safe.

What was the experience of an evacuee in Nottinghamshire?

Read the letter below, written by a Nottinghamshire evacuee. She had a good experience of being evacuated, but not all children did. For some evacuees living with a new family meant getting used to new rules and restrictions and sometimes they did not get on well with their host families.

What was life like for an evacuee during WW2?

For some evacuees living with a new family meant getting used to new rules and restrictions and sometimes they did not get on well with their host families. Have a look at this letter from a lady who was upset by an evacuee below to get an idea of the sorts of problems evacuees and their hosts faced.