‘Carrie’s War’ is the story of a young evacuee’s personal struggles

‘Carrie’s War’ by Nina Bawden is a story about a young girl’s personal struggles, adjusting to a strange new life as an evacuee in the home of Welsh family during World War 2. The book is an evocative picture of life on the home front, especially the stirring account of transplantation of so many young British school children, at a very young and impressionable age. 

The Setting of Carrie’s War

Life for young Carrie Willow and her younger brother Nick, undergoes an enormous upheaval when they are put upon a train in the company of a trainload of London evacuees, a group of young children in the company of their schoolteacher, towards an unknown destination in the heart of Wales, far away from the scare of sudden wartime bombing. 

They arrive in a sleepy Welsh coal-mining village and are billeted to the home of a curmudgeonly Welsh shopkeeper, who lives with his spinster younger sister – Auntie Lou to the children. Mr Evans is extremely controlling and miserly. The children must creep about the house and they are not allowed to even use the upstairs bathroom during the daytime, in fear of trampling on and spoiling the carpeted staircase. An outdoor lavatory, at the end of the garden must do the job, even in cold weather. Homelife is extremely oppressive and I think, would have been intolerable, if not for the love shown by tender hearted Auntie Lou, who is scared of her brother.

The children visit Mr Evan’s elder sister’s home- Druid’s Bottom- a mysterious, secretive place, magically located in a secluded grove by the train tracks. 

Mr Evan’s elder sister, Dilys Gotobed, is a widow, confined to her bed and looked after by a woman called Hepzibah Green. Hepzibah Green is not only a caregiver and housekeeper, she also takes care of the Gotobed’s nephew – a young boy with a disability – Johnny Gotobed. Hepzibah envelopes Druid’s Bottom with such an air of warmth and comfort, that it is a joy for the children to visit there. There is always the promise of good home cooked food, a roaring fire and a friendly face telling all sorts of mystical tales at Druid’s Bottom. 

Some of these mystical tales are fraught with terrible curses and tales of superstition that haunt Druid’s Bottom. 

Carrie in particular feels that it is her calling to heal the rift between Mr Evan’s and his elderly sister and in trying to do so – she does something that will haunt her for the rest of her life. 

When Carrie revisits the sleepy old mining town many years later with her own children, will she able to forgive herself and be able to reconstrue events that happened many many years ago?

‘Carrie’s War’ was a good book, well written with an interesting plot but for me the point of main interest was the event of the evacuee children being sent to far flung corners of the country to escape the threat of bombs. As a parent it seems rather a hard pill to swallow, to resign oneself to being separated from one’s children to strangers – and what struck me as extraordinary was the calm with which Carrie’s mother let go of her children. However, we are well aware given the events of the past year, of how extreme events can lead to extraordinary decisions and modes of living life. From my perspective, it seems an unacceptable form of separation in the here and now, but perhaps being a Londoner with the threat of the Blitz hovering over my head, I would have convinced myself to put my little children on a train to the far reaches of the country. One can only hope that a person like Mr Evans would not have been the caregiver at the end of the line. 

Carrie’s War is a book well worth reading. The characters, sometimes larger than life are well crafted. There is an absorbing plot. The social and period details and the time and place of the novel are well done and there are pockets of coziness, warmth and so many descriptions of good food to lift one’s mood. 

Ultimately it is the tale of Carrie’s personal struggles, in a new environment and hostile territory that make this book so compelling to read.