Audio Slide Show- Evacuation In Full

An Audio Slide Show on the 20th Century London website will take you through the evacuation process from its start in 1939 until the end of WWII when many children were finally returned to their families.Watch this after going through the entire blog.

Reasons for Evacuation

During World War II, London was hit with what is refereed to as the "Blitz" in 1940-1941. In short, London was a target of numerous air raids by German bombers. In advance of this deadly series of bombings, the British government prepared to evacuate children from six cities, including London. This plan was initiated in 1939. The flowing clip from the popular 2005 movie, The Chronicals of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, shows the characters during the bombing. This movie shows both the bombing and scenes of mass children evacuation- however, the first main evacuation took place in advance of the bombings.  Evacuations took palce again at the start of the Blitz in 1940 and then again during the attacks of V1 bombs and V2 rockets in 1944.

The interactive site, The Blitz: Google Map, allows you to click on areas of a map of London to see how they were affected by the Blitz. You can also look through color photos of Blitz damage. By begin able to see these photos in color, many people find it easier to relate to today, instead of just seeing black and white photos.

Operation Pied Piper

The order to 'Evacuate forthwith,' was issued at 11.07am on Thursday, 31 August 193. Following this, in the first few days of September, 3,000,000 people were evacuated, including 1.9 million children.

Jim Woods remembers the times, stating " I was eventually evacuated. I remember going to the station and there were literally hundreds of children lined up waiting to go. Everyone had a cardboard box with their gas masks in and a label tied to their coats to identify them if they got lost." 

The following clip from The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe shows what the evacuation, called "Operation Pied Piper," looked like. 

Below is a few pictures of what the event actually looked like.

Problems Arise

Although the British government had surveyed possible housing for children in the countryside, they didn't take into account the fact that many wealthy families could arrange their own accommodations. This lead to many of the possible spaces being already taken when children arrived.

Many children did not know where they were going. Scenes like the one shown above, where two unnamed children being picked up sceptically and by unhappy adults, were frequent. When there was not enough assigned spaces, children were often liner up at the railway by officers and adults picked which children they wanted. This, and lack of multiple bed spaces at many homes, lead to brothers and sisters being split up, a fact that made the transition even harder on children.

Many children were treated well, but others were abused. Some were beaten, some were not fed properly, and Terri McNeil was reportedly kept in a birdcage. It was for some of these reasons that some children fled back to the cities. This is discussed in the clip below from an episode of the BBC scifi show, Doctor Who. The episode is entitled "The Empty Child" and takes place during WWII.

Other children were brought back to London by parents before 1940 because nothing seemed to be happening in the war and parents assumed London would stay safe. However, there were no schools open for the children and with the parents either fighting in the war or working in the war effort, these children roamed the streets alone during the day. The following British propaganda poster promoted evacuation.