Guest post written by author Julia Kelly
Julia Kelly is the international bestselling author of historical fiction and historical mystery novels about the extraordinary stories of the past. Her books have been translated into 13 languages. In addition to writing, she’s been an Emmy-nominated producer, journalist, marketing professional, and (for one summer) a tea waitress. Julia called Los Angeles, Iowa, and New York City home before settling in London. Her new novel The Lost English Girl is out now.
When you think of photographs of World War II, it’s hard not to picture the raising of the United States flag on Iwo Jima or the sailor kissing a woman in the middle of Times Square on VJ Day. However, some iconic images of the war came before a single shot had been fired. Contemporary newspaper photographs show British children on train platforms, cards hung with bits of string around their necks and tiny suitcases at their feet. These children were the evacuees of Operation Pied Piper.
More Than 1.5 Million People Were On The Move
Operation Pied Piper started on September 1, 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany. The government ordered the evacuation of 1.5 million children, mothers with infants, and other vulnerable people living in urban areas. Strategically important centers of government and industry, like London and Liverpool, where my book The Lost English Girl is set, were considered at high risk of German air raids. The countryside, where approximately 800,000 children evacuated through Operation Pied Piper would ride out the beginning of the war, was considered much safer.
Planning Operation Pied Piper Was A Years-Long Undertaking
Scarred by memories of World War I, the British government began to look at how best to protect the most vulnerable from air strikes years before war once again loomed on the horizon. However, Operation Pied Piper didn’t take shape until the Anderson Committee’s July 1938 report, which laid out plans for the evacuation of schoolchildren and new mothers.
Under the official government scheme, children five years and older were sent away alongside their schoolmates on special evacuation trains. Parents were told to pack a suitcase and their child’s government-issued gas mask, and to say goodbye without knowing when they would see their child next.
Some parents also arranged private evacuations for children who were too young or otherwise did not qualify for Operation Pied Piper. These private arrangements were no less heartbreaking for families who decided that the only way they could protect their children was to send them away – a dilemma lived through by Viv, my main character in The Lost English Girl.
It’s harder to estimate how many children and others were privately evacuated, but some scholars believe it could have been as many as two million, bringing the total number of public and private evacuees to approximately 3.5 million people.
Hosting Evacuees Was Compulsory
Although the evacuation of schoolchildren was not compulsory, billeting them was. That meant country-dwelling hosts didn’t have a choice about whether they would take in a child or a mother and infant.
Some hosts tried to find evacuees who would be the best fit for their households. There are stories of evacuee trains arriving at rural stations where hosts would examine children and select those who were well-dressed or well-behaved. Other stories tell of teenage boys being chosen to help with the farm work. Giving hosts power to pick and choose left more “undesirable” children for last.
No Evacuee Experience Was The Same
There was no one standard experience for children evacuated under Operation Pied Piper. Because children were billeted by individuals, with families sometimes being split up across a few different households, even siblings could have wildly different memories of their war years. My own aunt was billeted with a couple who’d been unable to have children, and they doted on her. Her brothers, billeted separately on a nearby farm, had fine though not particularly warm memories of their evacuation experience.
Many evacuees later recalled the culture shock of moving to a rural place. For many children, this would have been their first time seeing life outside of a city, exposing them to a completely different way of life. Some found it miserable, and they wrote letters home begging their parents to bring them back. Others thrived and developed a lifelong love for the countryside.
Not Every Evacuee Remained In The Countryside For The Entire War
After war was first declared, Britain entered a strange, quiet period that is now known as the “Phoney War.” During the first eight months of World War II, there was little fighting on land, and some people began to believe that the danger of air strikes had been exaggerated. Understandably, parents began to wonder whether they should bring their children home.
By January 1940, about 900,000 evacuees had returned to their urban homes, despite intense propaganda campaigns encouraging parents to leave their children in the countryside.
Everything changed when Germany invaded France and the Low Countries, making the threat of an invasion on British soil feel all the more real. The Blitz, which started in September 1940, made the danger Operation Pied Piper was designed to protect against all too real.
During the Blitz, Luftwaffe bombers hammered London in an unrelenting series of air strikes. Famously, London’s East End was hit hard, with bombs flattening entire roads. Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, Coventry, and other cities with important manufacturing capabilities also sustained heavy bombing.
The Blitz spurred a new wave of evacuations, with approximately 1.5 million people leaving urban areas again. And even more people left in 1941 and 1942, after Germany began to launch attacks using its new and devastating V1 and V2 rockets.
Not Every Homecoming Was A Happy One
Even once the war ended, Britain was reeling from the trauma of a war that cost more than 880,000 British forces – or 6% of the adult population – their lives. Entire neighborhoods had to be rebuilt after bombings, and people struggled to put their pre-war lives back together.
When it came to children returning home, things were far from simple, as the historian Julie Summers explores in her excellent book When the Children Came Home: Stories of Wartime Evacuees.
“Many found coming home as difficult, or in some cases more difficult, than they had done leaving in the first place,” she writes.
If you look at the simple math, it makes sense. A child sent away at the age of 10 in 1939 would be a 16-year-old by VE Day. Parents would have gone from having a young child to reuniting with a teenager whose formative years had been spent with another family – and potentially contending with major trauma such as feeling abandoned or sent away by their parents.
Some families were able to repair the damage done by evacuations and find common ground once again. Others never healed from the experience of being split apart.
As time has gone by, evacuated children, parents, and hosts have begun to speak more openly about their experiences. There is still debate about whether Operation Pied Piper and the evacuations that followed were worth the large-scale sacrifice.
If there is a silver lining to be found, it’s that the issues and experiences underlying the World War II evacuations have inspired a whole genre of literature, movies, and television. Probably the most famous child evacuees are Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy Pevensie, the beloved siblings in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia; however, movies as recent as the British period movie The Railway Children Return (2022) have imagined the evacuated children’s enduring stories.
The Lost English Girl has been a wonderful opportunity to shine a light on the stories of children and parents whose lives were disrupted by wartime evacuations and explore the incredible ways that people can find strength in some of life’s most difficult moments.
