East Kilbride man, 91, to walk for evacuees in Remembrance Sunday parade

“Having been evacuated to Canada during the war myself, this took me by surprise,” he admits.

“All those years had passed since 1945, and I knew nothing about this.

“I did some research and discovered a former evacuee had started an organisation in the 1990s which has become the British Evacuation Association. It has members all over the UK. So, I contacted them and me and my wife Marion, who was evacuated to Aberfoyle, are now members.”

Evacuee children arriving in Aberfoyle during WWII (Image: Newsquest)

This year, 91-year-old Dan, from East Kilbride, will be joining fellow evacuees on the march in London.

“I have been in training since last year,” he smiles. “Part of this training means keeping the car in the lockup, except for long distances. I go walking as often as I can - I was on a three-and-a-half mile walk recently with my local walking group.  

“The thought of sitting in a rocking chair all day, because of age, never crosses my mind.”

Dan Harris. (Image: Newsquest)

Dan was evacuated to Canada to stay with his aunt Anne and cousins Jimmy and Helen. Anne’s husband - Dan’s uncle Andy - had voluntarily joined the Canadian army immediately after Britain declared war on Germany.

Evacuees c 1940 (Image: Newsquest)

“He visited my family home in Glasgow before I had been ‘enrolled’ to go to Canada and it was he who sowed the seeds in my mother’s head for me to go out there,” says Dan, who was one of 2664 young people evacuated by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (the ‘CORBy’ ) during the Second World War.

The scheme came to an abrupt end when the evacuation ship SS City of Benares, carrying 90 children bound for homes in Canada, was torpedoed and sunk. Many people, including 77 of the 90 CORB children, died in the tragedy.

READ MORE: Tragic tale of Glasgow footballer revealed in new book about Greenock Morton FC

“Andy’s family would not see him for six years,” adds Dan. “My cousins missed out on having a father for so long.”

Dan in Canada with his aunt Anne and cousins Jimmy and Helen (Image: Dan Harris)

When he walks in London at the weekend, Dan will have the words of a famous poem – and memories of colleagues lost – in his mind.

“Over the years watching the Remembrance Day parades on TV, it gets to me the way some people recite the opening lines of the poem In Flanders Fields,” he says.

“This famous poem was written by Lt Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian military surgeon who died of pneumonia in 1918 while on active service. As his name suggests, he had Scottish ancestry.

“When people rattle out the opening lines: ‘In Flanders fields the poppies grow, between the crosses row on row’, in a casual manner, it misses the importance of the image these lines suggest - the horrific number of graves, and all those young people who gave their lives for future generations.”

The poem has special significance for Dan, who was nine when he arrived in Canada.

“The Principal at my new primary school in Canada sent for me and said he wanted me to recite In Flanders Fields to the whole school on Armistice Day,” he explains.

“I went off to learn it and came back to his office the following week, and rattled off the poem at about 50 miles per hour.

“He commented that I was word perfect, but that poets use words to paint pictures and my audience wouldn’t see that from the way I read the poem.”

He adds: “He then took me to his large office window. The school was only a few yards from the boundary fence of an airport, and there was a large area of open land between the school and the airport buildings.

READ MORE: 'It's special': Glasgow's incredible museum store reopens to public

“He asked me to look at the corner of the field to my right and to imagine a row of war graves stretching from the corner nearest us, right across the airport, and then to imagine another row in front of that, and then another row until the airport was filled with war graves and poppies.

“I have never forgotten that, nor the occasion when I delivered the poem to the whole school, speaking in my broad Glasgow accent, with emphasis and gesture to get the point across.”

Dan adds with a smile: “It must have gone well, as I was invited to recite that wonderful poem every year on Armistice Day, before returning to Scotland in December 1944.”

The poem is even more poignant for Dan, he explains, because some of his friends lost their lives during their National Service, in different areas of the world. He says he will be "very proud" to play a part in Sunday's parade.

“At last, after all these years, I will be able to publicly pay my respects for all those young children, and their adult escorts, who lost their lives when their ships were sunk,” he says. “I will also be remembering the young men who joined up with me to do National Service but, sadly, lost their lives - one of my Canadian classmates was killed in Korea.

“It will be an emotional day.”