How much were you used to looking after your sister?
Um I hated the sight of her she hated the sight of me, so we always were in conflict.
Uh of course that died very quickly with the outbreak of war and then she hung on to me and
I hung onto her really. I became the older boy, I was nine, she was seven and a half
and so it changed the relationship completely.
Suddenly I became almost like a mum and dad and it became very close for children, very close.
On the same day that Germany invaded Poland large-scale evacuation procedures were
taking place across Britain the threat of German bombing of British towns and cities was imminent
and Britain was prepared. Ronald McGill, heard in this recording, was sent away from his home
in Vauxhall in 1939 aged nine, holding the hand of his younger seven-year-old sister with little
more than a toothbrush and a spare pair of shorts. His parents said they'd see him back
by Christmas but his teachers told the children to prepare for at least a year away from home.
Many children didn't know what town they would end up in,
who they would live with, or when they would see their parents again.
The choice facing parents to send their children on a train into the unknown did not come easily,
but the option to keep them at home was even worse.
How and why did these parents make this choice?
Evacuation on this scale had never been attempted by the government before but it was their task to
safely transport millions across the country. So how was this mammoth task accomplished?
It was the first time the government had organized an evacuation scheme.
There had been aerial bombardment in 1917 with the Gotha raids
and people had evacuated from the cities, then but there'd be no government scheme in place.
School-age children were evacuated, pregnant women, mothers with young
children, and the disabled and also their carers and helpers, and teachers as well.
The evacuation between 1939 and 1945 amounts to the biggest mass migration of British history.
A few days after the announcement of war Ronald McGill boarded his
own train along with 500 other pupils from his school headed for Reading.
The school had been preparing for evacuation for a few weeks
and some schools had already started leaving the cities.
Now only that morning were we told it was Reading.
So we marched in there we waved goodbye and the parents stayed on one side of the road and
they all cried our eyes out, it was terrible. Although we were all happy and joking by then,
we'd had our apple, we said our goodbyes banged our gas masks on and we were off.
Within the next three days, 1.5 million evacuees were sent from cities and towns into rural areas
considered safe, and over the course of the war around 4 million people left their homes.
It was a huge logistical exercise that required tens of thousands of volunteer helpers.
The initial organization is administratively quite thorough, but then it definitely
deteriorates after that and it just depends on where they were going. So a billeting officer
in a town or small city would quite often be a local government official
but then in smaller towns and villages they were usually volunteers and they just had
to do what they could. And obviously people volunteered to take evacuees in, so the people
who took in evacuees were compensated they got 10 shillings and six pence for the first
child and then eight shillings and six cents for further children that they took in to look after.
Mostly the school children went straight to the training college
and then were taken met by billeting officers who offered to find them homes,
and it does credit to the town to say that that first night everybody had somewhere to go.
And they just counted up the rooms that was the idea you've in the old days,
you count how many rooms and how many people.
As well as the huge logistical challenge for the government, towns, families, and volunteers,
evacuation was an emotional upheaval, distressing for both children and parents.
Evacuation was also entirely voluntary,
so why did so many thousands so readily sign up before the war had even started?
In the interwar periodx, especially in the 1930s, the great fear was of aerial bombardment. The MP
Stanley Baldwin said in 1932 and the bomber will always get through and so this was
one of the great fears across the nation in the interwar period.
The fear of bombing, the closure of many urban schools, and the organized transportation of
school groups helped persuade families to send their children away to live with strangers.
There was also a propaganda campaign encouraging citizens to take part.
My parents were worried, they all thought that our part of London would
be devastated by bombs the first moment the war was declared. They had a very
real fear - my mother had seen the zeppelins come down over London in the First World War
and she thought that was going to happen again. And I actually heard her telling another lady
that if Germany did attack she would rather kill her own children than let them be taken.
What did you think of that? I just couldn't believe it!
I just couldn't imagine the Germans in my house, it didn't make sense.
Across the country throughout the war and particularly in three separate waves of 1939,
1940 and 1944, children, mothers and vulnerable citizens left their homes,
not knowing where they would end up, who with, or for how long.
Luggage had to be limited. Parents were issued with a list detailing what their
children should take with them when evacuated. Though the list was short for such a journey,
in fact many families struggled even to provide their children with all the items listed.
Oh we weren't allowed to take too much you know, just sort of a change of clothing mainlyt,
just a few clothes. And we had to wear a mac, strong shoes, that sort of thing but
we didn't take a lot of toys or anything, there wouldn't have been room.
You know you were 12 and your younger sister was eight? Yes yes. Did she take anything? Oh
yes she took some toys you know, sort of dolls and that I think. You know
I can't remember which ones but sure she did.
For many evacuees from poorer inner city areas it was their first experience of the countryside.
There must have been some little children
who hadn't even been to the country as much as you had?
Never, some had never been. Literally some had never seen cattle.
As I say we were quite excited and looking forward to it really because it sounded interesting to go
and live in the country. What did you imagine that meant to go to the country? Oh well I don't know,
I suppose see all the animals and trees you know. It seemed nice to us, living in London.
For some people it was the happiest days of their lives their evacuation experience. Whereas for
others they missed their family and their home and and especially if they were ill-treated by their
foster carers. The experiences of the evacuees could really vary to a considerable level.
In some instances a child's upbringing in urban poverty was misinterpreted as parental neglect
on the other hand some city dwellers were bored in
the countryside or even used for tiring agricultural work.
But I honestly don't remember whether head nits, head lice was more than an initial problem. It
certainly was a problem when they arrived because most of them were infected based. Cat and Bill
Milcoy in the first weeks they were with us spent more time in the bath almost than they did in bed.
One of the quite important legacies of evacuation and definitely goes on to affect government
legislation even during the war but certainly in the Labour government after 1945 was that
evacuation drew attention to the economic and social deprivation that really existed
in their cities from in the 1930s, and this really came to the fore through evacuation.
I was going to ask if you had ever thought whether if had you children they would be evacuated?
You've seen it as a child, what would it be like as a parent?
I wouldn't send them. I wouldn't send them unless it was to somebody I knew or I'd go there first
and try and find people. I wouldn't like to do that, too vulnerable, yeah too vulnerable.
It did transform my life it really did I can't say it enough. Scarred you in many ways because
you lost so many friends and relatives but I wouldn't have been without it.
I think in many respects I was lucky to survive but also lucky to have been there
which I'm only realizing that in later life.
For some children the end of the war brought an end to a prolonged period of
fear confusion and separation. For others it brought considerable upheaval as they
returned to cities and families they barely remembered or homes that were no longer there.
Despite the huge undertaking that evacuation was and the emotional distress to the citizens,
by 1945 the impact of the air raids on cities across the country had been devastating.
Evacuation had allowed for the protection of millions of children
from the worst of these aerial attacks.
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