On the 3rd of September, 1939, the United Kingdom and France officially declared war on Germany, prompted by the German invasion of Poland two days prior. For many in the UK and Western Europe, this is traditionally seen as the starting point of World War II. However, the rising tide of conflict had been on the horizon for quite some time before that and the British government was already preparing for this eventuality in various ways.

Over the course of three articles, I will be putting aside the UK’s military response during the war and will instead be concentrating on how everyday life in Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and beyond) was affected by the greatest conflict mankind has ever seen. In Part 1, we will be looking at the mass evacuation of civilians from urban areas to the countryside, often referred to as “the evacuation” or simply as “evacuation“.

In the mind of the British Cabinet and the Ministry of Defence, invasion of the British Isles by Germany was seen as an inevitability. At this point the full power of the infamous “Blitzkrieg” tactic had yet to be witnessed by Western Europe (aside from some German assistance to the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War) but, as an island nation, the UK expected any initial attack to come either by air or by sea. It was the anticipation of the former -aerial invasion- that originally prompted plans to remove the most vulnerable sections of the population away from those areas most likely to be bombarded; cities, major ports and industrial areas. Thus, on September 1st, 1939, Operation Pied Piper was put into effect and would continue in various waves and stages throughout the majority of the war.

Though the vast majority of evacuees were children of school-going age (and for many this is the image mentally conjured whenever “evacuation” is mentioned), it was also enacted to mothers with young children (under 5), pregnant women and the disabled. Any children that were old enough to attend school were separated from their families. In addition to this, because of the additional burden on the education system in the rural communities that would soon receive this influx of civilians, a great deal of schoolteachers, childminders and other “helpers” would also be relocated as well. From September 1st to September 3rd, 1939, the amount of people officially moved were as follows:

“827,000 schoolchildren, 524,000 mothers and children under school age, 13,000 expectant mothers, 103,000 teachers and 7,000 handicapped people.”

The Government Evacuation Scheme had been in the planning stages since the summer of 1938, under the management of the Ministry of Health. It divided the country into three “zones”; evacuation, neutral or reception. Evacuees would be transported from urban areas to the countryside, to be billeted in either private homes or specially constructed evacuation camps. Some cities considered to be especially at risk -such as the shipyards of Manchester, Liverpool and Belfast- evacuated somewhere in the region of 60% of their children. Some other cities evacuated as little as 15%.

After this initial flurry of activity, the anticipated German invasion never materialised, in a period known as “The Phoney War“. Many involved in the first evacuation began to question whether or not it was worth the effort. Children began to get homesick, parents pined for their loved ones now that any imminent danger appeared to have passed and some of those who’d offered up their homes as residences for the children did not anticipate how difficult a task it would be. Many of the children suffered from diseases such as scabies, headlice or fleas. Many were poorly disciplined and lacked toilet training.

“Oliver Lyttelton, who allowed ten children from London to live in his large country house, later complained: “I got a shock. I had little dreamt that English children could be so completely ignorant of the simplest rules of hygiene, and that they would regard the floors and carpets as suitable places upon which to relieve themselves.”

The scheme also highlighted the enormous class divide present in the country at that time. Those wealthy enough to have made their own arrangements had likely done so privately, leaving only the working class children to be sent wherever it was deemed necessary. The majority of “neutral” areas were in the more affluent areas of the countryside, so a lot of children were sent to farms or poorer regions that were perhaps ill-equipped to deal with so many new faces. The likelihood was that if you were poor when you left the city, you would end up with a poor family in the countryside. Angus Calder wrote in his book, The People’s War (1969):

“In many areas, however, local householders had assembled to pick their evacuees when the trains or buses arrived, and ‘Scenes reminiscent of a cross between an early Roman slave market and Selfridge’s bargain basement ensued. Potato farmers selected husky lads; girls often or twelve who could lend a hand in the house were naturally much in demand; nicely dressed children were whisked away by local bigwigs. Those who got ‘second pick’ were often resentful, and there was likely to be a residue of unwholesome looking waifs whom nobody wanted.”

However, for many children it was the first time they had experienced country life and it offered them a view of the UK they were perhaps not even aware of. Bernard Kops, a thirteen year old boy from East London at the time, remarked on his Buckinghamshire home in his 1963 autobiography, The World Is A Wedding:

“Everything was so clean in the room. We were even given flannels and toothbrushes. We’d never cleaned our teeth up till then. And hot water came from the tap. And there was a lavatory upstairs. And carpets. And something called an eiderdown. And clean sheets. This was all very odd. And rather scaring.”

Eventually, against the official advice of the government, many evacuees began to return home. One estimate states that by January 1940, at least one million people had left their evacuation accommodation and returned to the cities. No bombs had fallen from the sky, no great fleets of German soldiers had landed upon the shores to seize the nation and the whole thing was beginning to look like a waste of time.

Then, in the spring of 1940, this point-of-view was rapidly reappraised. Belgium and The Netherlands were swiftly attacked and occupied by Germany, now utilising their savagely efficient “Blitzkrieg” (Lightning War) tactic. Prior to that, Denmark and Norway had been occupied by German forces, to give their navy the upper hand in the North Sea. Finally, the British Expeditionary Force (the UK’s army on the continent sent to assist France and Belgium) began their retreat from mainland Europe via the French port of Dunkirk on 26th May, 1940, as the German forces began to take the northern part of the country. Suddenly, Britain was surrounded on all sides by the enemy.

A second civilian evacuation began in June 1940, this time mainly concentrating on coastal towns that were likely to bear the brunt of any seaborne invasion. At the same time, the Channel Islands (the British ruled islands in the waters between England and France) began sending children to the mainland, and expatriate schoolchildren from throughout Western Europe also began to return home. Estimates state that some 30,000 people arrived from continental Europe, with 25,000 people arriving from the Channel Islands. In addition to this influx of people into the UK, the Admiralty began to send some children to the other countries of the British Empire (albeit in limited numbers) under the organisation of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board. The official figures were:

Canada 1,532 (in nine parties), Australia 577 (three parties), New Zealand 202 (two parties), and South Africa 353 (two parties)

Some children were also sent to the USA. Tragically, one of these transport ships, the SS City of Benares, was attacked and sunk by a German U-Boat, leading to the death of 77 out of the 90 CORB children on board (the clipping posted below quotes an earlier estimate). This incident lead to public outrage in the UK and the eventual cancellation of the program.

It was also in September that the German air force, the Luftwaffe, finally began the long anticipated aerial bombardment of the UK’s urban centres in a period known as The Blitz. It is impossible to talk about the evacuation without talking about The Blitz but I will be covering that aerial conflict in greater detail with Part 3 of this series. Many of the UK’s largest cities began being indiscriminately bombed, as the German command vented its frustration at losing the aerial war to the Royal Air Force. A third wave of evacuations began, this time many of them being unofficial as concerned parents desperately tried to flee the destruction. This was also exacerbated by the fact that many people were made homeless during their attacks, their properties simply being completely destroyed.

The government assisted those who had private plans by paying their travel expenses and giving them an allowance for accommodation. Within six weeks of this third wave, some 250,000 people had left London. Eventually, 25% of the city’s population had been evacuated in one form or another.

As the war went on and the threat of invasion (but not attack) became reduced or, at the very least, an accepted part of life, people began to return home again. Apart from another exodus in June 1944, caused by the long-range V1 flying bomb attacks on London as Germany began to stare into the face of military defeat, evacuation numbers began to dwindle and the scheme was officially halted in September of 1944. Official approval to return to London was not given until June 1945, shortly after Victory in Europe (VE Day) was declared.

The billeting scheme did not end until March 1946, with many people still homeless and the country very much in the depths of rebuilding itself. The effect of removing so many young children from their homes, often multiple times, had a profound effect on that generation in their later life. From the adults point of view, it exposed them to a level of poverty and neglect in the cities that they were hitherto unaware of:

“Except for a small number the children were filthy, and in this district we have never seen so many children lacking any knowledge of clean and hygienic habits. Furthermore, it appeared they were unbathed for months. One child was suffering from scabies and the majority had it in their hair and the others had dirty septic sores all over their bodies.

Many of the mothers and children were bed-wetters and were not in the habit of doing anything else. The appalling apathy of the mothers were terrible to see.”

For some of those involved, it helped create an idealised memory of the period which would go on to influence many famous pieces of British literature and film. The Pevensie children from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe were evacuees from London, for example. Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear begins with the titular bear arriving via train with a suitcase and a label around his neck, an obvious allusion to the many children that would have arrived at their new homes in a similar fashion. The plane full of schoolboys that crash lands in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was supposed to be carrying them to safety, etc.

My grandmother was evacuated from London twice. She spent a good deal of her adult life trying to find out where and with whom, but she could never be 100% sure. She was confident that the first time was to Cambridgeshire, an area she eventually lived in until her passing. The second time she was not so sure about but it was possibly somewhere in Lancashire.

Overall, the scheme’s results were mixed. The Ministry of Health anticipated that upwards of 80% of children would be evacuated from cities, but the total ended being less than 50%. Many areas that were bombed in the war were inadequately evacuated, leading to a higher rate of casualties that could have potentially been avoided. It is also worth mentioning that many government departments, organisational headquarters and businesses moved away from the cities at this time as well. Works of art were hidden in quarries to avoid destruction. The British Broadcasting Corporation moved its studios to Bristol and Bedford. The Bank of England itself was moved to a small town in Hampshire and shipped 2,154 tons of gold to Ottawa, Canada. In total, estimates place the entire number of displaced individuals at around 3.75 million.

In Part 2 of this series, I shall be looking at how the country coped with being cut off from the rest of the world in an article about rationing. Supply lines were under constant threat from the German navy and as the island began to prepare for a possible invasion, belts needed to be tightened; both figuratively and literally, since food had become a precious commodity. See you next week.

Sources:

Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, Wikipedia.

Children’s Overseas Reception Board, Wikipedia.

Evacuation, Spartacus Educational.

Phoney War, Wikipedia.

The Evacuated Children Of The Second World War, Imperial War Museum.