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Click on the images to enlarge.
Jimmy Click on the images to enlarge.Ritchie was only nine years old when he and his brother Fred were evacuated from Birkenhead, Merseyside to Wales, in September 1939. Fearing heavy bombing of cities, thousands of children were evacuated to rural parts of the country. Over 200,000 children were sent to Wales during the war. Jimmy and his brother were sent to live at a butcher’s shop and then to Dyffryn Ardudwy in Merionethshire.
Jimmy’s life in Wales was much safer, but it took a while to settle. He and his brother did not stay long at Mr and Mrs Wynne’s butcher’s shop, as Fred longed to go home, and his crying disturbed the Wynne’s baby. They went to live with Mr and Mrs Edward Griffiths in Dyffryn Ardudwy where Jimmy used to work on the family’s farm. He learned to milk the cows himself, and to love farming.
Being evacuated to Wales changed the course of Jimmy’s life.
This story was generously contributed by the National Library of Wales.
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Jimmy travelled to Wales by train with the rest of his school, and hundreds of other children. They had no idea where they were going. He had to carry his gas mask with him, like these young boys photographed at Newtown station. |
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Jimmy arrived for his new life in Wales with only a small pack of belongings. Children from the poorest families arrived with no spare clothes at all, only those that they were wearing the day they left home.
These instructions were sent to all people expecting to take in evacuee children to their homes.
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Jimmy learned Welsh from the Bible verses he read at Sunday School and by talking with local people. He quickly mastered the native tongue of his adopted country.
Efforts were made to educate the evacuees in schools or in local halls. In the Welsh-speaking parts of Wales some evacuees were given Welsh language lessons.
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Evacuees were billeted with local families and some complained that they were poorly fed. In towns and villages communal canteens were set up, such as at Pontarddulais, where meals were served for evacuees at the Salvation Army Hall. |
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By the end of the war most evacuees went home to England. But Jimmy decided to stay and live in Wales. He had fallen in love with the countryside and he had met a Welsh girl, Nancy. They later married and raised four children in the Welsh way of life. Jimmy did not return to Birkenhead for several years after the war. When he did go back he found that ‘everything had changed’.
Today Jimmy farms in Ysbyty Ifan, north Wales, and considers himself to be, in his own words, ‘a Welshman’. He sees his brother Fred, who lives in England now, and they still speak in Welsh to each other.
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