Expat Brits, & W.W.II Evacuees Forum





Evacuee





















































































































































































































Gerry Wiseman's

Expatriate Brits Forum

&

WWII British Evacuees Forum





Hi, I'm Gerry Wiseman



Welcome to my web site.





  • This web site has two separate objectives:



First Objective !



A place where expatriate Brits living in the United States (or elsewhere, for that matter) can exchange messages.

Or ask each other questions such as:



"Can anyone please tell where I can get a decent plate of fish and chips in ? (name the place)".



Or "Why do I have to tell the waitress three times to boil the water for my tea in every restaurant in which I dine. I'm sure that you catch my drift.



Or, perhaps you are new in your adopted country, and would like to ask questions of those of us who have lived in these here foreign climes for a while. Or, you can just chat about any, and all things British, should you be so inclined. .



10/21/98

Hello there. Was also evacuated from the East End, from Myrdle St. and Rutland St. to Chorley Wood, Herts.

Like you, we were shunted around until someone took us in.

Would like to hear more about you, and what you are doing now. By the way, my parents attended the old Jews Free School
in the East End.

The best fish and chips I have found so far are at the Four Provinces Irish Pub in Falls Church.

They also have bangers, egg and chips (the real McCoy).

Take care.

G. Hecht. Falls Church, VA









Let me tell you a little about myself:
I first arrived in the United States way back in 1956. I was twenty-two years old at the time, and came as a tourist with my mother and sister to Baltimore, Maryland. We came to visit my brother Toby who had married Bev, a Baltimore native, a couple of years before.

Our original plan was to stay for six months, and then return home to London. But we liked living here in the States so much that we stayed on in Baltimore and became permanent residents. Not because we didn't like England, but because we found that the standard of living in America was much higher than what we had been used to in England.

Every few years I get homesick, and journey back across the pond to visit friends and family in the London area, and elsewhere.

There are many things about the British customs and way of life that I prefer to life here in the U.S.

Some of them are: British politeness, courtesy, a greater respect for personal privacy, tight gun control, less violence.

But after having spent most of my adult life in America, and having a wife and family, and many friends here, I don't think that I could ever happily live permanently back in the U.K.(Although technically I am still a British subject).







Second Objective !



A forum where people, who like me, were evacuated from home at an early age, and forced to spend months, or years away from their parents & siblings, can discuss their wartime experiences, both good and bad.




Here are some details about my own
experiences as an evacuee during World War II.





It was September 1,1939 (the day the Nazis invaded Poland).

War was just about to break out in Europe.

I, at the tender age of five, together with my brother Norman,who was thirteen years old, and our entire school (including our teachers,) as well as many thousands of other kids from different schools were sent away from our home in London's East End.

After a train ride that seemed to last forever, we arrived at the small Suffolk town of Newmarket.

Newmarket is known throughout Britain as a town whose main industry was and is horse racing. We were billeted with a local bookmaker and his family for several months before returning home to London.

In 1940 when the blitz started, Norman & I were evacuated again, this time to the village of Fordham, near Ely, in Cambridgeshire, just 5 miles from Newmarket. It was a very small village to where our school had moved during our absence. We didn't live together in the same house, but stayed with two neighboring families.

When he reached his fourteenth birthday later that year and reached the then school leaving age, Norman "graduated" school and returned to London.

Shortly thereafter, as I was being poorly looked after by my foster family, my parents took me home to London.

When the bombing of London became just too tough to handle, I was sent back to Fordham once again This time however, fate was smiling on me. I found a wonderful foster mother, Miss Ada Fleet, with whom I spent the next four years. She treated me like her own child, and I grew to love her.

But one day in '44 I got sick, and she wasn't able to properly care for me, so my parents brought me home - just in time to experience the terror of the V1, or "Buzz Bomb" raids. Finally the "Buzz Bomb raids ended only to be replaced by the even more terrifying V2 Rocket raids. We and our neighbors spent every night for weeks huddled in a shelter beneath a building in Spitalfields market, until, thank God, the V2 raids ended.

I visited my foster mother "Aunt Ada", as I called her, many times after the war ended.

And my parents and I stayed in touch with her until the 1960s, when regrettably, she passed away.

I am now in the process of writing my memoirs about those turbulent years, and hope to finish them soon.

To participate in either of these forums, please drop me a line or two at the E-Mail address shown below, and I'll post your comments on this site for others to read, and hopefully respond to.

Or you might like to join our new discussion group for Evacuees. Here are the instructions for logging on:

  1. Go to - http://www.onelist.com/findlist.html
  2. Find the mailing list search box
  3. Type in: Brit_WWII_Evacuees
  4. Click on search button
  5. Click on the Blue Brit WWII Evac
  6. Click on subscribe to this list

    And that's it







Top of page - | Evacuee

E-Mail gwiseman@mail.bcpl.net
Date Last Modified: 8/17/98


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