IT would have been impossible to go through the Herald archives without finding one of these iconic photographs - children being evacuated from Glasgow during World War Two. Look how young they were. These days parents wouldn't let children that young go further than the garden gate on their own, yet here they are setting off with a few teachers and mothers for goodness knows where.
They look so cheery too. You don't see knitted helmets like that these days. And is that wee girl carrying her possessions in a large hat box?
Curiously this evacuation picture was taken in April, 1941, although the main evacuation of children - 120,000 of them from Glasgow - took place in the first few week of the war in 1939 because of fears of immediate Luftwaffe air raids. The children were taken to Perthshire, Kintyre and Rothesay where they were billeted with families and pensioners with spare rooms. When the air raids did not materialise, most returned home.
This second evacuation took place weeks after the Clydebank Blitz when tragically a number of children who had returned from the first evacuation had been killed. So for many of these children this was the second time they had said goodbye to their parents. Perhaps they were just smiling for the photographer, and inside it didn't feel like such a great adventure.
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