The Children Who Left Guernsey - And the Parents Who Stayed Behind

The Children Who Left Guernsey - And the Parents Who Stayed Behind

Thousands of Guernsey parents said goodbye to their children without knowing when - or whether - they would see them again.

In my previous post, I looked at what happened in Guernsey in June 1940, when families learned that the island was to be demilitarised and parents had to decide whether their children should be evacuated to Britain.

Around four-fifths of Guernsey’s children left.

Most schoolchildren travelled with their teachers and classmates, and some mothers went as helpers. Once they arrived in England, many were sent north and billeted with local families. Several Guernsey schools were re-established there, which meant some of the children continued to be taught by teachers they already knew.

Five-year-old Brenda de Moulpied was one of the children who left.

Brenda travelled aboard the SS Viking with her school. Her mother remained in Guernsey for another two days before leaving with Brenda’s brother, but Brenda had already been moved on by the time she reached England. She was at an evacuation reception centre in Bury, and her mother did not know where she had been sent.

They were eventually reunited at Stockport railway station on the 16th of September 1940.

They had both left Guernsey, but Brenda had still spent almost three months separated from her mother.

For children whose parents remained on the island, the separation could last years. German forces occupied Guernsey on the 30th of June 1940, only days after the evacuation had begun.

The children remained in Britain, living with host families and continuing their schooling. Some spent a large part of the war there while their parents and relatives remained in occupied Guernsey.

What had initially been expected to be a fairly short evacuation had become something nobody could put an end date on.

Some of the children who left Guernsey in June 1940 would not return until after liberation in May 1945.

Do you know of anyone whose family was affected by the evacuation from Guernsey?

Channel Island evacuees in Marple, Cheshire, 1940. Ministry of Information Photo Division / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.