Escaping the Blitz: A WW2 Evacuee Remembers

Warfare

History Hit

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4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's guest Kitty Baxter was aged just nine when World War II broke out in 1939. One of five children born to a road sweeper and a cleaner, Kitty joined thousands of children being evacuated to the countryside as German bombing raids loomed.

This would be the first of three times that she was rehoused far from home over the course of the war. Sometimes treated more like a servant than a small child, Kitty endured gruelling years cut off from her parents rather than a safe haven from war.

In this episode she regales James with her experiences living with strangers' families in environments radically different to working-class London, and how she navigated joyful moments as well as times of struggle & loss. One of the last generation of women from this era, Kitty's voice remains as whip-smart as her irrepressible nine-year-old self who triumphed over the adversity of a most unusual childhood.

Kitty's new book I'll Take That One: An Evacuee's Childhood is available here.

Edited and sound designed by Aidan Lonergan.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It was on Kitty Baxter's 9th birthday on the 1st of September 1939 that the first World War
0:09.4	evacuations of children from London began. Under the threat of Lufwaer for bombardment,
0:15.0	children from London were taken in their thousands
0:18.0	and sent to the rural British countryside.
0:21.0	The aim was to escape the looming threat of indiscriminate bombing, but the impact would separate families.
0:29.6	Separated from their parents, all Kitty and her siblings had were pillar cases of belongings, a
0:34.4	set of pyjamas, a couple of pairs of pants, a toothbrush, and of course a gas mask in a cardboard
0:39.8	box. What happened next, over a series of three evacuations during the entirety of the Second World War,
0:47.0	would change Kitty's life, split her and her siblings, and change her family life forever. I'm your host James Rogers. This is the
0:55.4	warfare podcast and to take us through the experience of evacuees during the
0:59.5	Second World War we are joined by Kitty herself. She takes us through what it was really like to be and
1:05.6	evacuee, what it was like to live through such a turbulent time in history. So here is Kitty Baxter
1:12.3	on being an evacuee. Hi Kitty, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today? I'm doing well, thank you very much. So nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. We're
1:34.4	going to hear your entire personal history of your time as as an evacuee during the
1:39.9	Second World War, but before we get into all of that, I'm keen to hear about what life
1:44.8	was like before then, because you were born in the 1930s in Camberwell, South London,
1:49.8	you're one of five children, so you must have had one hell of a busy bustling household.
1:55.6	What was life like in London before the war?
1:58.8	It was beautiful.
1:59.8	Life in London is always beautiful and having a family with five children is also beautiful.
2:06.4	It was always so much.
2:07.2	I had two older sisters so I had to mind my peace and cues and be very, very good girl. But that was the good sign and the downside. I never got new clothes,
	...

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