An immersive promenade theatre experience at Eden Camp Modern History Museum, Malton
August 2022
In June 1940 5,000 school children were evacuated from Guernsey to Yorkshire, along with 17,000 inhabitants of the island, including adults of the roughly 40,000 population.
On the 19th June as the Nazis reached the French coast only 30 miles from Guernsey, the government put the island on alert that evacuations would take place, and that parents should prepare their children for travel and themselves to say farewell. Evacuations began the next day.
People were evacuated quickly and on whatever vessels available. Cattle boats, mail boats, 1 boat licensed to carry 12 took 300 on a journey that lasted 7 hours.
By the 30th June, just 11 days after the evacuation notice, the Nazis took Guernsey.
Evacuees arrived in Wheymouth port, and were given tea, sandwiches and a medical exam. The youngest evacuee was just 10 days old.
We follow the journey of a group of children from a small school house in Guernsey who find themselves in ‘God’s Own Country’; from the announcement that they would be going to the mainland to stay to escape Nazi Occupation, the different journeys that brought them into Yorkshire to adapting to their new lives in such uncertain times.
In the present day, where we are seeing so many refugees displaced, leaving everything they know behind to escape danger, this show reminds us that throughout history human kind has shown compassion and open arms to those in immediate danger and in need. We will rally, we will fight and we will prevail.
