Evacuees return to Pentewan

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Paul Williams23/06/2010

LAST week marked a very special anniversary for ten VIPs visiting Pentewan.
The retired collective were celebrating the 70th anniversary of being evacuated to the village during the height of the German blitz on London and other major towns and cities during the Second World war.
The reunion was the brainchild of former evacuee Derrick Finch. Mr Finch, a sprightly 78-year-old, attended last year’s 70th anniversary of the start of the evacuation at St Paul's Cathedral in London. His memoirs of staying at the small seaside village had just been published as a small book entitled For I Was A Stranger (And You Took Me In). This sparked the idea of a local reunion back in Cornwall.
He set about rounding up his contemporaries, many of who he hadn't seen since returning to London during the war.
After a lot of telephone calls, as well as liaising with Pentewan's Old Cornwall Society Chairman Robert Evans, the date was set. Mr Evans set  the venue up at Pentewan's Village Hall and with a little help from his local friends, many of whom knew and remembered the raggle taggle bunch of kids that were deposited on their village all those years ago.
So on June 16, exactly 70 years to the day that they left their families for the safety of Cornwall, John Chiswell, Dorothy Gardener, Jean Martin, Ron Gardener, Betty Finch, Leslie Salmon, Derrick Finch, Barbara Martin, Jean Selwood and Rita Jones all met up and reacquainted themselves in an emotional reunion with people and faces that they had last seen as children.
Wiping a tear from his eye, Derrick recounted those dark days: "We were all from London and to be honest never set foot outside of the East End. We were only little kids and Cornwall seemed like an alien place to us.
“After getting on the train at Paddington we were on an adventure that was taking us somewhere we never knew existed. After steaming for hours we got our first glimpse of the sea at Dawlish. Then came the bridge at Saltash and about 5pm we finally arrived in St Austell.
"We left the station and arrived outside Mr Prynne's shop. Of course, the girls were in demand as us boys were seen as hard work. I was billeted with Uncle Charlie and Auntie Etta Couch, they lived across the village at Tymor.
“We received such a warm welcome and felt so at home we soon had a bigger family than we could have ever imagined. That friendship and warmth thankfully exists to this day."
Mr Evans explained why he worked so hard to organise the reunion: "For years the locals had spoken about the evacuees and with the 70th anniversary looming we thought that this was probably the last chance that we would ever get to organise such a reunion.
“After liaising with Derrick it was brilliant to be able to bring this wonderful collection of people back to the village that they called home during the dark days of the war.
"It's been an honour to get them all here on the exact date 70 years ago that they arrived. It's also been fantastic that so many local people that knew and remembered them could be here today to help us celebrate this unique anniversary for the village."
Fittingly Mr Finch composed a poem, The Evacuee,  (printed above) to commemorate the 50th anniversary that he was unable to attend but the words remain fitting and sum up the feelings of a group of lonely children that found solace in a small rural village in Britain's darkest hour.