From 1938 onwards when war seemed more likely, the British government predicted that the Germans would use an aerial bombing campaign on civilians just as they had done with Zeppelins in WW1. It was also recognised that the Germans had a formidable air force and that most of the bombers would get through Britain’s as yet inadequate anti-aircraft and fighter protection.

The most vulnerable would be children and nursing mothers with babies, so plans were prepared to move these out of the capital and large the cities and port towns to the countryside. To keep some control of this mass movement, children would be evacuated in their school classes with their teachers, leaving their parents to carry on with essential work unhindered by their worries for their children’s safety.

In the summer of 1939, with war imminent, hurried plans were made to organise railway and road transport, and local reception committees headed by evacuation officers to prepare accommodation in country towns and villages to house the evacuees. From the end of September, in the space of a week or two about a million and half schoolchildren were evacuated. It was an amazing movement of people and obviously not without many hitches before all the evacuees were found suitable billets, and halls and local school buildings requisitioned to provide classrooms.

To many of the evacuated children who came from poor areas of the large cities, the countryside was like another world, good and bad. Villagers suddenly had boisterous children in their houses, orchards were plundered, standing crops trampled and farm animals chased around, until somehow, everything settled down and a modus vivendi was established. Much of the burden fell on the class teachers who now had to become surrogate mothers and nurses.

Experiences of the young evacuees varied, many found country life a new and exciting experience and had caring foster parents, others received harsh treatment and were treated like skivvies. Many tried to bunk on trains to try to get home during the ‘phoney war’ after the fall of France in 1940. A large number did return, only to be hurriedly sent away again when the Blitz started a few months later, a process that was repeated in London during the V1s and V2s campaign of 1944.

Despite the hurried planning and arrangements in the frantic rush to get the children out the cities once war had been declared, it was an amazing effort on the part of the organisers and officials, and the local reception committees, which undoubtedly saved the lives and limbs of thousands of children who would have otherwise been caught up in the blitz and the other bombing campaigns.

Goodbye East End, was released on 2 July 2015.