The Plight of Wartime Child Evacuees

About the Book

One Boy's Story is more than a personal wartime memoir. It is, additionally, a social document and a teaching tool.

The initial focus of the book is a three-day period in 1939 that saw 827,000 school children, in the United Kingdom, evacuated from major cities to escape anticipated German bombing. The children, aged 5 to 14, were evacuated en masse without their parents. They stayed with "volunteer guardians" for the duration of the war.

One Boy's Story tells of the plight that befell many - the experience of existing in an emotional vacuum without love and guidance from a parental figure, and the harsh reality of "never being safe" in a country at war.

Wartime photographs of sad evacuees and buildings destroyed by enemy bombing give the book a poignancy and visual depth.

The book becomes a social document at the conclusion of the main memoir narrative. The author argues that the true story of emotional deprivation experienced by wartime child evacuees has never been fully explored. He additionally argues that the absence of parental love and guidance in wartime Britain offered an object lesson as to its importance.

The author suggests that today's young people ("who will be tomorrow's parents") can gain an understanding and appreciation of supportive parenting by studying the evacuation and additionally, the logic of what the author describes as "social nurturing."

The main narrative is written in a style that is suggestive of a very young person telling the story. The technique facilitates easy reading, in a classroom setting, by students of different age levels.

About the Author

Brian Perks is a former journalist, editor, and trade journal publisher. He is a former British subject, now a Canadian citizen, and resides in Canada. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was evacuated, with thousands of other young children, from the City of London. He was 5 years old at the time.