Why were kids evacuated

These three people are unconnected, but they have one thing in common: the greatest evacuation of children in British history, which began on Friday 1 September It was codenamed Operation Pied Piper.

Who on earth came up with that name? Not a mother, that is certain. After all, the piper leads the children of Hamelin away from the town, never to return. Over the six years of the war, more than two million children were sent away from their family homes. Most returned, but how they had changed and how the separation affected their relationships with their families is seldom considered.

What must it have been like to be sent away from home at five, 10 or even 14, as some of the older ones were, and then come home months, — or, more often, years — later and have to pick up where you left off? Is it even possible when your life has changed in all other respects? And who were the winners and losers in the whole evacuation project?

Joan Risley is keen to emphasise the good points in her experience. She was evacuated twice. The first time, she went with her sister to Beccles, in Suffolk.

They were home by the beginning of but when an invasion seemed likely, Joan announced that she wished to be evacuated again. None of her brothers and sisters wanted to go too, so she was sent alone, aged nine, to Northamptonshire. She lived there with a childless couple who loved and cared for her as their own. When she returned in she found it difficult: "I remember sitting on a sofa with a feeling of not belonging.

By that time we were really poor. Dad was still ill and unable to work. My family all commented on how I talked different, so I had that strange feeling of not quite belonging yet wanting to be there because they were my family. I soon got used to being with Mum, and she got used to me. But with my siblings it was more difficult. They are my family and I am very fond of them but they never went away like I did, so they don't understand that I have had these two lives.

Two lives. That is what so many children of that generation had and for some it was, in retrospect, a bonus. But it wasn't a bonus for parents. As a mother, I feel deeply troubled at the thought of being forced to miss out on five or six years of my sons' childhood.

Page from the Thurgaton School Log Book. Evacuation could be both exciting and frightening. Each child had a different experience. For some children, being evacuated provided a new and exciting opportunity to enjoy country life. Read the letter below, written by a Nottinghamshire evacuee. She had a good experience of being evacuated, but not all children did. A letter home from a Northamptonshire Evacuee. Ask pupils " Do you think this shelter looks safe? Give out copies for pupils to work in pairs.

Lead discussion asking - " How do these two shelters differ? Who would have these? This will necessitate an explanation of class ie that certain kinds of shelter could only be erected in a dwelling with a garden - in effect at least a middle class household. This should be kept simple, providing enough to have a working knowledge so as to apply this to the topic. When Germany invaded Poland on Sept.

The evacuation began that afternoon. One mother in London, after watching her own two children march off, saw two tots leave a line and rush up to a policemen standing in the middle of the intersection, holding traffic until the children had passed.

In London and other major cities, adults saw long files of children led by teachers or other officials walk toward bus or railroad stations for their journey to different parts of the country. British Ministry of Health poster. The first and largest exodus lasted four days. Other smaller evacuations occurred up until September Ultimately more than 3. Finding homes was often traumatic for the children. As a rule, billeting officials would line the newly arrived children up against a wall or on a stage in the village hall, and invite potential hosts to take their pick.