Shropshire Routes to Roots

Children in wartime: Liverpool parents' day out

Liverpool parents' day out [Reproduced with kind permission of the Oswestry and Border Counties Advertiser]

LIVERPOOL PARENTS' DAY OUT

VISIT CHILDREN IN SHROPSHIRE

Happy Reunions

MANY BRING TOKENS OF GRATITUDE

Several hundred fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers of evacuees from the Liverpool and Birkenhead district arrived in Shropshire on Sunday morning to visit their young relations, some for the very first time and most for the first time since they made an initial visit to see what sort of homes their children had been settled in on the eve of war.

There were two special trains, the first arriving shortly after 11a.m., and the second just before noon. On the first there were more than 500 passengers, and of these 30 detrained at Whitchurch, 20 at Wem, about 250 at Shrewsbury and the remainder at Craven Arms, Ludlow and Leominster. The second train, which had come via Gobowen, had 140 on board from Birkenhead, and contingents alighted at Gobowen, Oswestry and Baschurch, and the final party, of a few over 40, at Shrewsbury.

There were cheerful scenes on Shrewsbury station and on the station approach, where not only a considerable number of children awaited their parents, but also a large number of Shropshire members of the Women's Voluntary Services and friends with cars ready to take the visitors out to the country villages.

[Oswestry and Border Counties Advertiser]