Evacuees

The implications of continuous air attacks on Britain's cities and towns led to the introduction of an evacuation programme. Children and babies were sent to the relative safety of the country to be spared the expected horrors of the bombings.

Re-enactment of World War II Evacuation, 1988.Downs Junior School carrying out an evacuation procedure to learn how it would have felt to be an evacuee in the Second World War.

Copyright Evening Argus

On this page you can explore some local memories of evacuees and host families.

There are further links in Visitors to Brighton and Prisoners of War about other visitors to the local area during the war.

You can download Evacuees and its accompanying pages by clicking here (PDF format).

As the bombing became worse, the local auth­orities decided to evacuate thousands of children into the country to live with kind-hearted people for safety and comfort. They had their names and addresses on labels fastened to their jackets, their gas masks over their shoulders, and suitcases large and small packed with their clothes, etc. A good many children struggled along with this luggage to the various railway stations, from many large towns in the South and many more from the London area. It was a very pitiful sight to watch as they kissed their mums and dads goodbye.
Albert Paul - Hard work and no consideration

An official estimate in 1937 expected the war to start with sixty days of continuous air attack against the main cities, in which 600,000 people would be killed. (In reality 60,000 civilians were killed by enemy air attack in the whole six years of the war.) To meet this threat a massive evacuation was organised. The whole of Britain was divided into evacuation, neutral and reception areas. Plans were made to move 4 million people, mainly school children and mothers with their babies, from the first to the last areas; that is from the major cities to the countryside and smaller towns.

In fact, in 1939 one and a half million persons were officially evacuated and two million moved to safety making their own arrangements. Most of those officially evacuated in 1939 drifted back to their homes just in time for the 1940/41 Blitz, when another unofficial evacuation began. Finally in the summer of 1944 1.5 million people left London under threat from the V1 and V2 weapons.
Michael Corum in Brighton behind the Front

The police told us that this was another of Hitler's inventions called the V2, the world's first rocket missile and the second of Hitler's V-weapons, travelling at 3000 miles per hour. There could be no warning before the 2000 lb. warhead exploded. The first V2 fell at Chiswick on September 8th 1944 and another 1000 followed, killing 2,754 people before the last one fell at Kent on March 27th 1945. More V2s fell on Antwerp than on London, while on their way over.
Albert Paul - Hard work and no consideration

This was a massive exodus, a mixing of people which had a major effect on British society and individual lives. As never before 'one half found out how the other half lived', town met country and the classes were mixed up.

Brighton started the war as a reception area, receiving children from London. In 1940, as a front-line town, it became an evacuation area and sent some of its children away to the north.
Michael Corum in Brighton behind the Front

16 March 1941
The children leave this morning, more tomorrow and others on Tuesday. It appears there are about 13,000 children in Brighton, 5,000 were expected to go, but I think only 3,500 are registered, which is considered quite good when compared with other towns. Mothers with young children may go if they have friends or relatives in reception areas.
Olive Stammer in Brighton behind the Front

When our teacher at St Mark's School in Arundel Road told us that we were going to be evacuated, none of us knew what she meant. I think we thought that it was a bit like a long annual Sunday School outing, and we were looking forward to going away. Why did we have to go to the clinic to be examined first? Why did we have to suffer the indignity of 'Nitty Nora' going through our hair with a steel knitting needle?

We all assembled at the school early one morning, with luggage labels pinned firmly to our coats, our few pitiful possessions in one case, and with our cardboard gas mask boxes on a string over our shoulders. We scrambled aboard the coaches that were to take us to the station and our new homes in Yorkshire, we thought it was exciting, so why was my mother crying?

After a while my father took me home. I still cringe when I hear stories of other evacuees as some of them were badly treated. It is one of the worst memories of my life time, I am sure my mother never realised how unhappy I was.
Rita Packham in Brighton behind the Front

We took an evacuee from London. I asked my father to get a child for us to care for, so he went to the office where they were dealing with homes for the evacuees, and he came back with a mother and baby boy of eighteen months, Barbara and Arthur. I was thrilled having a baby in the house, he was a lovely little chap, and we grew very fond of him. His mother was divorced and didn't appear to have any relatives, except for a brother who seemed to manage her affairs and visited her now and again. Barbara and Arthur stayed with us for a couple of years.
Olive Masterson - The Circle of Life

All this happened in September 1939 and onwards, and a good many of these children, who are now young men and women, made great friends with the people who took them into their homes.
Albert Paul - Hard work and no consideration