Living Archive - Home Front

Evacuees

Cities were prime targets for enemy bombers during war. The government felt it would be safer for children to be evacuated to safer areas of the country.

The evacuees would travel by train or bus into the reception areas and would be taken through the village ready to be chosen by families who could take them in. Many children had never been away from home before and were unsure what was happening and whether they would see their families again.

Many of the families who took in evacuees were sympathetic and kind, but unfortunately this was not always the case.

Some children were picked because they were older and were able to carry out work on farms.

"We got up and for some unknown reason we were all dressed in our best clothes, this was to go to school. Mum said, ‘We’re going off now to the station.’ No explanation, nothing. She picked the baby up in her arms, my brother was four and I was six and off we went. We went onto a coach to a station. I walked onto the station with our labels, gas masks, and a bag. I heard a slam and I turned round and my mother was there behind the fence, behind the gates at the station just looking and crying and we were ushered on then. Total, total bewilderment. We hadn’t got a clue why we were going." Joan

"Me and my brothers were evacuated, I do have memories of being taken to the station, and I have since been reminded that it was Paddington station, we were the little waifs that you see on the television very often with a label attached to them. We arrived in Rickford in Somerset which after London was so peaceful." Doug

"The school that I belonged to evacuated all their children but when they approached my father with a view to me going he said, 'no way.' if we die, we all die together', I was quite happy with that." William

"Me brother and sister were evacuated, my brother was evacuated to Leighton Buzzard, but I had no idea where my sister was evacuated right further up north somewhere, I never saw them during the war." Gladys

"Next door to us we had a little girl, Vera, from Islington she came. She was only four but I think she lived in our house more than she lived next door. Because there were three girls you know and she used to come in and play and we used to bath her and dress her and wash her hair and all that sort of thing." Mary

"Well we did have an evacuee, Yvonne, she came from Chingford but I can’t remember how far into the war it was when she came. She was roughly the same age as I was we both went to school together an being as I hadn’t got a sister I suppose it was nice to have somebody the same age." June

"People came out their houses and said, ‘Oh we’ll have that little girl,’ it was an all girls school, ‘I’ll have that little girl, or I’ll take those two.’ Me and my friend were still there at the end! I thought nobody wants us. Anyway an old couple, Mr and Mrs Boniface, they were very, very nice but too old to be bothered with children. They must have been in their eighties, but they took us and we slept together in the back room." Betsy

"We had two evacuees, Roy and Jean. Roy was ten and Jean was about seven years old. we thought they were very nice children and they obviously came from a good home and we thought we were very lucky because some of the children that came at that time had really had it rough. They had been sleeping in makeshift shelters down underground stations, some of them were completely stressed. I remember at the time there were quite a few problems but we didn’t have any problems at all with ours."John