A Childhood Lost in Britain’s WWII Evacuation
This newly released book by DC resident and professor Doreen Lehr is part historical analysis, part memoir. It's a heartfelt and touching account of a traumatic childhood and how it affected Lehr's entire life's path. The book is the true recounting of her life as one of 1.5 million children evacuated to the presumed safety of the countryside from British cities during WWII, in a heart-wrenching, social experiment that tore families apart. A GIRL’S WAR (Advantage/ May 2010) has a resounding message that childhoods do matter, particularly for those who have spent their lives waiting to go home.
In anticipation of the German bombardment of the British Isles, the government launched “Operation Pied Piper,” which at the time was the largest movement of people in the history of the world. Later in the war, Doreen was one of those evacuees. At the age of three or four, separated from her parents and her brother, she attended two boarding schools before the age of five. The long-term effects of such massive upheaval, coupled with the confusion and devastation of war, was not anticipated by government planners, or even acknowledged in literature until the past two decades.
Lehr went searching for her lost childhood in other people’s memories—her teachers and fellow students from The Linton Residential Camp School, where she spent some years during the war. With brutal honesty, Lehr recalls the emotional trauma of the separation from her parents, not knowing how long it would last, or if she would ever see them again. She talks candidly about the long-term effects of her separation from everything familiar and how it left her with skepticism of adult promises, a lack of trust and an extreme independence.
As Lehr patched the fragments of her past together, she found the need to examine her experiences from a historical perspective, and “give voice to the voiceless… Then it is the duty of governments to listen.” (Mary Edwards Wertsch, author of Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood inside the Fortress.) She attempts to answer the primary question former WWII evacuees still ask today, "How could my parents send me away?"
A GIRL’S WAR is a courageous narrative that includes a fascinating probe into the decisions of a country at war. Great Britain intentionally displaced the nation’s children, the very future of the country, with little regard for the damage it would cause those evacuees. A GIRL’S WAR is a long overdue account of an extraordinarily poorly conceived plan and a compelling memoir. Don’t miss this book.
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