Figure 1.--

I do not know much about the decision our parents made. They simply announced to us that we were going to America. Our little sister was deemed to young to accompany us. After the announcement, it was all done in a bit of a hurry. I remeber Dad telling us we were going, and both my brother and I were very excited. We did not know much about America, but we were avid cinema fans. And Hollywood had us well briefed. We were sure we were going to see cowboys and Indians. I think the excitement acted to keep our minds off leaving the family. We were in a group called the 'Transcriptors'. The name was given as we were sponsored by the Boston Transcript newspaper. Our welfare was under the supervision of the American Committe for the Evacuation of Children. A lot of behind the scenes activity was needed to put the scheme in motion in the first place. My brother and I were evacuated to the USA in August 1940. This was only days before the first Luftwaffe raids on London. For our departure, we were mustered at Grosvenor House Hotel. I was very excited and totally unaware of the anguish that my parents must have felt. We rather thought we were off to a kind of summer camp adventure for a short period. Of course at the time many adults thought that the Germans were soon be coming down Whitehall. Thus our parents had no idea if they would ever see us again. We sailed from Liverpool to Montreal. We went to Montral because America was not yet in the War and the Atalntic convoys were organized from Canadian ports. I have since read that there were big problems in allocating the woefully few Royal Navy escorts at this time. The American Navy was not yet escorting convoys and the Canadian Navy virtually did not exist. Our ship was the Duchess of Atholl. Initially we were escorted by a destroyer and accompanied by another liner. We were left on our own in Mid-Atlantic. We had a circuitous journey to avoid the German U-boats. The weather was very rough for most of the crossing and I think most of us were sea sick at some point. Going through the icebergs was very exciting, especially when we saw a polar bear.

Government Arrangements

Although the initial preparation for overseas evacuation was ponderous the pivotal decision was that made on when the US Attorney General ruled that the State Department to issue unspecified visas (July 14, 1940). All that was required was the presentation of a corporate affidavit from a charitable organisation formed "for the purpose of assuming care and support for refugee children." Until this decision no visas could be granted to unaccompanied children unless their welfare was guaranteed by a relative or friend who was a citizen of the USA.

Visas Issued

The speed with which things got into gear following this decision, I feel, meant that the organisation concerned had anticipated that this decision would be made and preparations were made well in advance of this date. Apparently six days after this decision was made 1,000 visas were issued on the corporate affidavit of the United States Committe for the Care of European Children.

Finances and Arrangements

Issuing visas was one thing, but there were other issues such as who was going to pay for the support of these children as no money would come from Britain - foreign exchange was prohibited. To fight the War, Britain needed to import large quantities of food, raw material, supplies, and equipment. And Britain was rapidly depleting its foreign currency reserves. (Note: Although the ordinary transfer of money was prohibited, parents were able, later on, to send contributions to their children's foster parents.) American Lend Lease (March 1941) essentially underwrote the British war effort well before America entered the War. Other issues were Where the children were to be billetted pending allocation to families, how were these families to be found and deemed suitable. Who was to be responsible for their continuing welfare? What is remarkable was that all this happened within a month or six weeks.

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[HBC had thought that these overseas evacuations were handled from a centrasl British office. That does not appear to have been the case. We notice from the letter written by Alan's father that he specifically applied to the Transcripter (a Boston newspaper) evacuation program. There were evacuations to other countries and other sponsors. It is interesting that Allan's father chose America and the Boston Transcriptor.] My fellow evascuee, Clare, told me that her parents read the advert in the Daily Telegraph. Our parents read both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. These are both 'Middle Class' papers. By placing the adverts in the Telegraph, it would be read by the parents of the 'well brought up' children they may have been were seeking! (I do not have a complete list of the publications where they advertized.) My father writes that we were not eligible to apply to other schemes, but I don't know why. Maybe we were too well off, or not in imminent enough danger. Certainly we were not in the front line like the East End of London. Clare's parernts were both doctors, Her father was mobilised, and her mother had to run the practice single handed. They didn't want the children in separate barding schools (most schools at the time were single gender schools) with the possibility of separation if invasion came. I tried to find the Telegraph advert in the British Library Periodical Archive, but I either have to appoint a reasearcher or go in person. Our County Public Library has an on line archive, but it was being updated when I last tried. My other thoughts is that it might have been in the British Medical Journal/ Dental Journal as there were so many doctors children on the scheme. It is out there somewhere. I tried the Boston Library who told me they were at the Harvard Business School. They hold just the business records. I can't find where the back issues of the Boston Transcript are held.

Our Parent's Decesion (July 3)

I do not know much about the decision our parents made. I think they decided on or about Juky 3. They must have discussed it for some days beforehand. It came of course a couple weeks after the French capitulation. The Luftwaffe was rapidly establishing bases along the Channel and we all having seen the newsreels knew wha was to come. My father's original letter was in my welfare file. I am flattered he called us decent, but I think we were! It is interesting to me that he went on an anasthetics course. I suppose it represented the shortage of civilian medical personnel. I expect he was taught to use the 'rag and bottle' method. (A pad of gauze placed over the nose and mouth onto which ether was poured. It might have been sprayed with ethyl chloride first to give a quick induction. There would be a lot of coughing and spluttering with ether as the inducing agent. It was considered a safe(?) and easy means of anaethetising. So long as they went 'easy' on the ethyl chloride. They said nothing to us at the time. They waited until the American Committee approved us. Then They simply announced to us that we were going to America. Our little sister was deemed to young to accompany us. After the announcement, it was all done in a bit of a hurry. I remeber Dad telling us we were going, and both my brother and I were very excited. We did not know much about America, but we were avid cinema fans. And Hollywood had us well briefed. We were sure we were going to see cowboys and Indians. I think the excitement acted to keep our minds off leaving the family.

American Committee (about August 7)

We were in a group called the 'Transcriptors'. The name was given as we were sponsored by the Boston Transcript Newspaper. Our welfare was under the supervision of the American Committe for the Evacuation of Children. A lot of behind the scenes activity was needed to put the scheme in motion in the first place. One of the difficulties was that visas could not be granted to unaccompanied minors, unless they were sponsored. This is where such organisation as Kodak, and the Boston Transcript came in. Up to then, children were only given visas if they had named friends or relatives to sponsor them. attached is the receipt for my passage and visas etc. You see this was dated Auguest 5, 1940. £25 was quite a lot of money in those days.

Suitcase

We were allowed just one suit case each. I took my Teddy. The suitcase contained basic clothes plus a few toys. In my case they were some Dinky Toys (Model cars, ships and airplanes). One of my favourite ships was a model of HMS Hood. It was the best known ship in the Royal Navy. That was the ship that blew up with all hands but three survivors by an unlucky shell from the Bismark. I still have the suitcase that I took to America. Sadly the label, listing the contents has been torn out. It is a great shame that the contents label has been detroyed. There are a few items still legible in my mother's handwriting. It is apparent that minimal clothing was taken eg just two pairs of underpants! Two Khaki shorts are listed. These I remember were common summer play clothes worn with matching shirts. I think I was a bit ashamed to have a Teddy at nearly 10 and this was soon lost.

Departure (August ?)

My brother and I were evacuated to the USA in August 1940. This was only days before the first Luftwaffe raids on London. For our departure, we were mustered at Grosvenor House Hotel. I was very excited and totally unaware of the anguish that my parents must have felt. We rather thought we were off to a kind of summer camp adventure for a short period. Of course at the time many adults thought that the Germans were soon be coming down Whitehall. Thus our parents had no idea if they would ever see us again. In my 9-year old naivity I detroyed my motherr's outward stoicism. I saw all around me and said to Mother. "Why is everyone crying?" That was too much for her and she too burst into tears. I still remember the glare from my father. I only learned about my gaffe when my mother told me when we got home. I was not really aware of anything going on around me in those days. I was only 9-years old and carefree. Then we left by bus to the train station. The train took us to Liverpool a huge port. I remember the train journet well. We went by bus to Euston Station. We were divided into small groups of about ten; each group having an adult minder in charge. We were crammed ten into a compartment on the train, and issued with a blacket and a pillow. We were instructed to show no lights. Each compartment had blinds to pull down. We were served with a hot drink. The journey took all night. On arrival in Liverpool we were taken to St. George's Hall, a famous concert hall. Here we were given breakfast and had a sing song to music palyed on the famous pipe organ. Late afternoon we were bussed to the docks and embarked on the P&O liner, the Duchess of Atholl. We were allocated cabins. There were six of us in our cabin in three sets of bunks.

Atlantic Transit

We sailed from Liverpool to Montreal. We went to Montral because America was not yet in the War and the Atalntic convoys were organized from Canadian ports. I have since read that there were big problems in allocating the woefully few Royal Navy escorts at this time. The American Navy was not yet escorting convoys and the Canadian Navy virtually did not exist. Our ship was the Duchess of Atholl. Initially we were escorted by a destroyer and accompanied by another liner. We were left on our own in Mid-Atlantic. We had a circuitous journey to avoid the German U-boats. The weather was very rough for most of the crossing and I think most of us were sea sick at some point. Going through the icebergs was very exciting, especially when we saw a polar bear. On the ship we had daily boat drill. I think it was a way of keeping tabs on us. The six of us in our cabin had an adult minder and the eldest boy was like a dormitory prefect. We had to wear our life jackets at ALL times. The Duchess of Atholl was a trans-Atlantic Liner of some 25,000 tons. The exciting thing for us was we had GUN mounted on the afterdeck. It was at most a five pounder. The crew used to have gun drill periodically and always had a large audience. We kids were a nightmare for the crew, as we used to go exploring. If there was a hatchway or a door open, we wanted to see where it lead. One of the most exciting places for me was down in the hold, amogst the packing cases and other cargo. I don't think modern day Health and Safety officials would approve! We safely entered the St. Lawrence via the Strait of Belle Isle north of Newfoundland. Regarding the danger, I don't think this was thought to be a problem until the City of Benares incident (1941). After this Churchill put a stop to the evacuation of children by sea.

The Duchess of Atholl (October 1942)

The Barttle of the Atlantic was arguably the most important campaign of he War. Without control of the sea lanes to Britain, the Germans could force the British into submission. And there would be no way for America to bring its prodigious industrial might to bear on Germany or the Dominions to aid Britain. The Germany Navy was not prepared for war when Hitler invaded Poland and launched the War. The Duchess of Atholl was used for troop carrying to buildvup Britidh forces defending Suez. The rapid construction of U-boats and German access to Atlantic ports after the fall of France (June 1940) meant that U-boat threat increased measurably afrer Alan and Graham safely reached America. She then made six evacuee crossings before these were stopped following the sinking of the City of Benares. The Duchess of Atholl was one of hundreds of ships to be lost in the Atlantic. Two years after Alan and Graham's crossed the Dutchess of Atholl was torpedoed by a German U Boat (October 1942). The 1942 sinking occurred in the South Atlantic off the West Coast of Africa. The ship was carrying a cargo of oranges. These were salvaged and the survivors ate them. This was gleamed from another story about the sinking. The ship did not sink quickly as there were time to get 20 life boats away. There were 34 children on the ship at the time as well as a good number of civilians. The Duchess was unable to sucessfully send out a destress signal. Distress signals were sent from the portable radio equipment that each life boat had. Unfortunately the signal was not one one on the main distess frequency. So it was not likelty to be picked up from land based receiving stations. However luck was with the survivers. There were quite a lot of them some 800 who were in a number of life boats. They had been in the life boats for 28 hours. Their radio was almost out of power. The battery power was almost exhausted as the last distress message was sent out. Miraculously it was picked up at a radio recieving station in the Ascention Island. The radio operator was John Trevor Liney. He was on duty that day. He was newly trained and was supposed to listen to the 500kc distress fequency. However he got bored with listening to a frequency that had little traffic on it. He changed frequency. In so doing he picked up the fading SOS. It was being transmitted off frequency so there was little likelyhood that it would have been picked up by any other radio station. John frequency change caused him to stumble across it. He took down the position given in the SOS before the signal died. He alerted his superiors. An air search was made but nothing was found. John thought that maybe his morse ability or his listening had let him down. Then a message came in to say that HMS Corinthian, using his coordinates, went to that area and found more than 20 lifeboats with 820 survivors from the Duchess of Atholl. The survivors had been in the lifeboats for about 28 hours. What a chance occurrance. The surviors only hope was that a passing ship would find them. John, changing frequency, resulting in him stubbling across the SOS and through it the saving of 820 lives. I think John is still alive so my guess is he would have been 18 or 19 at the time.