Evacuation to Parents Important Notice1939-1945, Central Office of Information, catalogue reference INF 13/171 (4)

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.

Girls' Short Styles

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? 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.” 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? We set off for the railway station and met all our school friends and teachers, it was exciting because you had to be rich to go on holiday, so not many people went.

Evacuation tried to ensure the safety of young children from the cities that were considered to be in danger of German bombing - London, Coventry, Birmingham, Portsmouth etc. Some Saturdays we would go the Whitby on the bus and have a look around the shops. At Christmas I had some nail varnish and I wrote to Santa asking him for a new dress because IMary 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: “In the interwar period, 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.” John Wheeler: “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.” When we lived at the castle it was very cold and we didn’t like it, after about six weeks we came home.