Calcot pupils enjoy 'tea with an evacuee'

Youngsters revisit the 1940's through local evacuees’ tales and dressed up as wartime children

YEAR 6 pupils at Calcot Junior School were transported back to the 1940s in a recent evacuation day, in a celebration that brought the old and young communities together.

The children were visited by five members of the community who had experience of evacuation during the Second World War.

Mike Mellor, Gillian Allen, Pat Head, Dennis Jones and Gwen Crocker spent the morning with the pupils recalling their experiences, good and bad, of the Government’s Operation Pied Piper – the mass evacuation of children from cities to rural towns and villages during the war.

Learning about the war this term, the pupils took great delight in dressing up as evacuees, with homemade gas mask boxes and evacuation labels.

They listened with interest to the evacuees’ stories, asking questions about their experiences and comparing their lives now with those of children back in the 1940s.

Mr Mellor, who was evacuated from London to Blackpool, told the children of the ‘silent’ V2 rockets which travelled faster than the speed of sound.

Ms Crocker also told the children how, as a Reading evacuee, she ended up making a home and having a family in the town.

The morning also included a look at an artefacts box from Reading Museum, before the Year 6 choir performed some traditional wartime songs for their special visitors, who all joined in, merrily singing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary as they reminisced about the wartime years.