Children’s experience in Britain, forced to interact with the adult realities of the Second World War (1939 to 1945), is a largely untold story.
In 1939, in England and Wales, the majority were very young. Nearly 6 million were under ten years old.
During the war years, their lives were turned upside-down.
Evacuation, air raids, deaths of family members, playmates and neighbours, the destruction of homes and familiar landscapes, disruption to schooling, fear of gas attacks, shortages, fathers away fighting and mothers working, homelessness and emergency accommodation.
34 million address changes took place during the six years of the war, affecting their lives.
Children were as much in the front line as adults. It was a time framed by fear and bewilderment but also often of freedom, excitement and new experiences.
Mass evacuation of children
In the run-up to the Second World War, the government feared high civilian casualties as a result of German air raids.
Two days before the British declaration of war on Germany (3 September 1939), a mass evacuation scheme began in a huge logistical exercise involving thousands of volunteers: Operation Pied Piper.
It saw a first wave of 1.5 million children, pregnant women, mothers with infants, and the frail and disabled evacuated from urban target areas to safety in the countryside. It was non-compulsory.
Some better-off parents often made their own private arrangements.
A second wave followed after the fall of France in the summer of 1940, including children sent to America, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Australia.
The overseas scheme was largely abandoned due to public outrage following a U-boat attack on an evacuation ship, the SS City of Benares, on 17 September 1940, which saw the loss of 260 lives, 77 of them children.
Evacuees were allocated to host families who were paid. Children were of every age and background. Hosts were sometimes shocked by the behaviour and the apparent poverty of some of their charges.
Living with a strange temporary family in a rural location was a great adventure for many children, and most were well cared for. Many from the inner city had never seen the countryside or farm animals.
Others found the experience dull and pined for the buzz of city life. For some, it was a time of misery, neglect and homesickness. Some tried to run away.
In the first few months after the outbreak of war, the expected German bombing raids had not happened (the ‘Phoney War’). There was a false sense of security.
By January 1940, almost half of the evacuees were brought home by their parents. The government produced posters to try and persuade them to leave their children in their places of safety.
Child casualties of bombing raids
September 1940 saw the start of the Blitz, the sustained and merciless campaign of night-time bombing attacks on major British urban and industrialised areas by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force).
London itself was attacked on 57 consecutive nights. Town and city centres across the country were devastated. Thousands of residential streets were reduced to rubble.
During the eight-month-long offensive, 7,736 children were killed. Nearly one in six of the 43,500 civilians who died. Many lost relatives, including brothers or sisters. Others were orphaned. 7,622 were seriously wounded.
Gas masks for all children and adults
Following the use of poison gas during the First World War a little more than 20 years earlier, Britain feared that Germany would use the toxic agent on civilians in air attacks.
38 million gas masks were issued, one to every adult and child, including babies. They came in a brown cardboard box with a strap and were to be carried at all times without exception. People caught not carrying one faced a heavy fine.
However small, children were trained to use a technically advanced military equipment. Most training occurred in schools with daily gas mask drills.
A teacher would suddenly shout: ‘Gas, gas!’ and children would quickly put on their masks.
The natural rebellious streak of children saw some using gas mask boxes to carry personal things such as toys or sandwiches. Others found they could blow comic ‘farts’ out of the side of the mask.
Parents often bought metal gas mask cases stronger than the regulation cardboard ones, which tended to fall apart. Some were personalised with homemade decorations.
Life in air raid shelters
There were millions of air raid shelters in Britain during the war: domestic, public, commercial and private, improvised and professionally constructed.
Two million corrugated-iron, arched Anderson shelters were delivered for burying in people’s back gardens. Morrison shelters, a table-like solid structure with a cage around it, were for erection in living rooms.
Communal shelters were built in town and city streets. The public also took shelter in cellars, church crypts, underground stations or beneath railway arches. Factories and businesses often constructed their own shelters.
When the Luftwaffe began night-time bombing, shelters became places where people of all ages ate, slept and socialised, sometimes for hours.
Some families with Anderson shelters domesticated theirs, replicating their home comforts in miniature with a primus stove, tea and rugs.
Public shelters could be cold, damp, smelly and very crowded. People brought in musical instruments, gramophones and radios to help hide the terrifying noises of sirens, bomb attacks and anti-aircraft fire, especially from their children.
With fathers away and many schools closed children had the freedom to run wild. Public shelters were often locked during daylight hours to deter immoral behaviour and vandalism.
Schools and education
Schooling was massively disrupted during the Second World War. Young teachers had been called up to fight. Books, stationery and equipment were in short supply.
Over 2,000 school buildings were requisitioned for war use. Air raids damaged one in five schools.
Many schools were entirely evacuated. Others converted their cellars and basements into rudimentary classrooms. Lessons were held in church crypts, chapels and even pubs. Many children avoided going to school altogether.
Overall, the war was highly detrimental to children’s education, with literacy and numeracy failing to reach the required standard when peace finally came.
Play and imagination
Children’s games inevitably mirrored their wartime experiences.
In the below image, Doreen, Susie, and their dolls sit in an improvised air raid shelter made from an upturned armchair covered in blankets. ‘Warden’ Hugh checks to see if they are safe.
Bomb sites were officially strictly off-limits, but children explored and played in them anyway.
Ruined landscapes and the shells of houses, where nature quickly took over, became excitingly dangerous adventure playgrounds, offering materials for improvised weapons and for building camps, secret hiding places for war games, and opportunities for vandalism and looting.
Bomb sites were a landscape of unstable masonry, twisted metal, broken pipes, electrical wires and ruptured gas mains. Several children playing on them were reported killed or injured during the war years.
Children, natural collectors of everything, usually began avidly hunting for shrapnel scattered in the streets the morning after air raids.
Bullet casings, shell fragments, tail fins from incendiary bombs, shards of metal from crashed aircraft, and rare nose caps from shells were all swapped or traded for toys and other items, along with badges and military insignia.
Anything still warm from a recent detonation was particularly prized. It was not unusual for children to unknowingly even bring home live ordnance to the horror of parents.
To children, the airmen of the Royal Air Force (RAF) were war heroes. Identifying RAF and Luftwaffe aircraft as they flew overhead or engaged in aerial combat was a popular pastime.
Young people became highly skilled at recognising aircraft, not just by shape and markings but by sound, too. Clubs and books abounded for enthusiasts. There were even exams.
Children’s contribution to the war effort
During the war, most children officially left school at 14, and many aged 14 to 17 were employed full-time in agriculture, factories and offices.
Those over 16, including Guides and Scouts, also helped with Civil Defence, working as volunteer messengers or fire watchers.
Younger children engaged in the war effort by salvaging scrap metal, paper, glass and waste food for recycling.
Food shortages saw the government introduce food rationing in January 1941: meat, eggs, cheese, butter, and sugar.
Vegetables were promoted, with the public offering new recipes and encouraged to grow and eat their own through the earlier ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign.
Every spare piece of land in the country was turned to growing food, even parks, sports fields and golf courses.
Children contributed by growing vegetables in their gardens or at school.
Child refugees come to Britain
‘Kindertransport’ (children’s transport) was the British government-supported rescue effort that helped 10,000 predominantly Jewish children, mainly from Germany and Austria, reach safety in Britain in the months before the outbreak of the Second World War.
It was the most traumatic time for these children, who were aged 5 to 17. They were told they had to leave family and friends behind. Their parents were not allowed to accompany them.
Many did not speak English. Teenagers were placed in hostels. Younger children lived with foster families, often non-Jewish.
Many of the rescued children’s parents died in concentration camps or were killed in the war.
After the war, without any family, these children had to build new lives in Britain. Some did return home, while others re-joined their families who had fled the Nazis and settled in new countries, such as Israel and America.
Written by Nicky Hughes
Further reading
- Civil Defence: From the First World War to the Cold War
- Material Cultures of Childhood in Second World War Britain
Very good indeed, thanks
Very interesting but heart breaking to think the children pulled apart from family’s & frends
My wife was 8 years old when the war ended but vividly remembers the air raid shelters, gas masks and the sound of the German airplanes. She also grew up in a small Suffolk/Essex Village.
This is a very poignant post. My mother was 7 when the war ended. She grew up in a small town in Suffolk.
Thank you for your intriguing article about the resilience of British children during the war.
Deffinately an area that should discussed, debated and highlighted a grestdeal more than it is. A ver engaging feature.
I was five and a half at the end of the war. I remember collecting shrapnel, hiding in a bomb shelter and hearing the whistle of the bombs as they came down. I also could recognize the sound of the Luftwaffe bomber engines when they flew overhead. Some of the war years was spent in Luton, and they bombed the Skefco ball bearing factory as well as the railways. We could see the flames from the fires in London as a glow on the horizon. What a time, and it should have served to end war everywhere.
Amazing story, An author friend of mine recently wrote a book about this. It’s called Stay Calm and Carry On, Children by Sharon Mayhew.
Mum and Dad lived in Walworth at the beginning of the war. Dad signed up to be a London fireman, based at Whitefriars, and was one of the firefighters who helped save St Pauls. Mum went to live with Nan at St Albans, where I was born in 1941, then we all moved to New Addington, south of Croydon, in 1942. Dad was a bookbinder before the war, but remained in the fire service until he retired It wan’t until much later when I read a book about it that I realised just how close to death he must have been. They had to go out during the raids, so they were literally fighting fires while the bombs were falling..
An excellent article – many thanks!
https://youtu.be/sfLU5S64t3s https://youtu.be/c61ZsN_Pfs0 Love Affiar with London parts 1 and 2
I was born in London in Jan 1940 and the above films show London during and after the War, Churchill’s funeral, the Queen Mother’s funeral and London’s parks and museums I was evacuated for a while but at 4 demanded to go home to London, bombs or no bombs
Great photos, thank you very much for the article.
An interesting, informative and sensitive view of children in wartime. This should be widely shared showing young people of today those very dark times of the Second World War!! I was born in 1944 so only really remember food rationing and the beginning of the NHS.
Brilliant article, so true, I can vouch for it. There were also posters showing descriptions of Butterfly Bombs etc; dropped at random by the Luftwaffe to maim or kill the unwary.
Many of the evacuees ran back home because they experienced abuse from the foster parents including bring used as ‘slave labour’
Very strong links and reflections in the childrens’ trilogy of books and the film “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Although both film and book with a very heavy religious over-tone ( Alsan – The Lion being the sacririce and ressurection of Christ) does actually move from that core with the opening scenes in the film showing the very real jeopardy these children were in.
What is also exposed is the way that many families and step-parents treated the evacuees. Some were treated very well and indeed “fell on their feet” taken in by on some occassions by very monied families and ironically had a far better standard of livning than they had experienced in their “native” home. Equally though the behaviour of some of the would be Step-parents, /adoptees. did leave much to be desired and in some cases very dictatorial to some of the children, which did not help the childrens’ self confidience.
Again the film version of ” The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe” does give a very strong reflection of the actual goings on in the massive relocation of children out of the immediate war zones and to (relatively safe quarters) . Equally some of the very hostile and confrontational behaviour of the would be carers. Again not the sequence in the film verrsion of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” and the attitude of The “man of the house” who is too old to be in the fighting force, but equally as a Councillor in charge of the “War effort in that village” has very exaggerated senses of his own importance. Indeed this was true of many people who were not in the Front or Second lines of the war, but again to old to fight but felt they were more important.
Children were indeed (to use a modern phrase) traumatised by the events. and bear in mind that this was to be the longest single war in the 20th Centuary, lasting nearly 6 years. Many of the “children” passing through baby-hood to small child and young adult. Again note the age profile of the children in the film from Lucy Pevensie (apparently 7-years old, through to her immediate bother (Edmund) about 10, and the older Sister Susan and Eldest Brother Peter Pevensie who in effect takes the role of father to the other children much to the annoyance to Edmund (who is paralled with Judas in the Biblical Last Supper) as being the traitor to Aslan (the projection of would be Jesus).
The Walt Disney film, although fantasised is probably the best indication of the very real danger and massive changes to the lives of the children in the mass evacuation which was right across the UK.
Children from London could be sent from anywhere between London to Cardiff (about 150 miles) to the likes of Norflok and the Wash (although actually near the continent, not an issue since there was no military significance to Germany), also about 100-150 miles from central London. Other industrial areas, notably Birminham, and Manchester as well as Liverpool (all centres of trade and industry, and in the case of Liverpool a major shipping Port along with London Docks- the latter a MASSIVE operation for the transfer of imports and exports by sea. Hence its need to be heavily guarded and the need for extensive military escort. Hence much military shipping actually had machine guns “fore and aft” to help protect themselves from both overhead and sea-to-sea boarding.
World War II is prbably the biggest military operation in history and the effects on chiidren particularly as well as the poverty (in the real sense of the word) was serious. The 1950s were probably more austere that the period during the war, Indeed rationing did not officially end until 15th March 1949, although in reality semi-luxuary goods were still not avaialbe until the mid 1950s and in some cases that included certain “classes” of food.
The poverty was very real and there were still many “newly weds” and their young children living in shared accommodation until the begining of the 1960s, when “London started swining again” and the likes of the Beetles and the Stones created the now “pop era”, and life changed (not altogether) for the good.
Chris R- London
u write too much buddy
I am seeking information about Castle Drogo, Drewsteignton as my older sister was evacuated there during ww2. She never spoke about her time there, she died recently and her daughter is trying to find out more.