Evacuation

GUNS BOOM AS THE CHILDREN GO
By Daily Mail Reporter

WHILE guns boomed at sea the last "evacuation train," carrying 1,200 children from Harwich to safety in the West Country, drew out of the station yesterday. Only about 100 children now remain with their parents in the town.
A few hours earlier a local A.A. battery had been in action and British 'planes swept overhead.
As the rumble of the fire at sea died away, Mr. A. Peters, waving good-bye to his two children, turned and said to me:
"I was astonished when I was in London recently to see the number of children who are still there. If they could only hear the daily gunfire as we do they would not be so stupid."
His comment recalled to me a scene I witnessed at another station.
There a train containing about 700 soldiers coming home from Flanders was standing at the next platform to one containing 750 children who were being evacuated. These soldiers had seen the relentless air gunning of refugees, women, and children, in France. The sight of these youngsters most of them under 11, cheering and singing as if they were going on holiday, so moved many of the men - hoping soon to be reunited with their own families - that they broke down and wept.
But in London, where the guns have seldom been heard, teachers waited throughout Saturday and yesterday for parents to register their children for evacuation.
Of 500,000 children of school age in Greater London affected by the scheme only one in five had been registered by Saturday night.