Mary Whiteman: “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.” Alan Jeffreys: “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 especially if they were ill-treated by their foster carers. The experiences of the evacuees could really vary to a considerable level.” While we were at Sandsend a ship’s mine washed up on the beach and blew the windows out of the hotel and blew two boys out of bed in their house, all had a good laugh. We had to go to bed as soon as the 7.30 train went passed, if the train didn’t go passed we would stop up till 8pm.

A further two million or so more wealthy individuals evacuated 'privately', some settling in hotels for the duration and several thousands travelling to Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia and the Caribbean. 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.To smaller towns and villages in the countryside. Some children were sent to stay with relatives outside in the countryside, but others were sent to live with complete strangers. The government recommended that in addition to their gas mask and identity card the evacuees had the following items: Altogether we enjoyed our time being an evacuee and it was a lot of fun. It was all new living in a café and then a real castle, but loved our home best. At Christmas we went to a party at Mulgrave Castle that had a real Marchioness living there. She was a very old lady and when she had super, she had 12different foods and after every course there was a little bell rang. Alan Jeffreys: “It was the first time the government had organised 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.”

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? These extracts from letters sent by a mum to a girl called Delia, who was evacuated from London to the country. 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.How was life in the country different to life in the city? e.g. fresh air, animals, peaceful, less traffic Ronald McGill: “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.” The evacuation period officially came to an end in March 1946. On balance, although ‘Operation Pied Piper’ had caused unexpected long-term trauma, without the mass evacuation the death toll in the Second World War would, undoubtedly, have been much higher. For most, it was a happy reunion and brought an end to a prolonged period of fear, confusion and separation. On a Sunday we used to get a lift to Church in the milk float pulled by horses who used to pass wind all the time and as I sat behind his bum I was nearly like a Chinese lady by time I reached the church. Evacuation to Parents Important Notice1939-1945, Central Office of Information, catalogue reference INF 13/171 (4)