Goodnight Children, Everywhere

Voices of Evacuees

At the outset of World War II the British government enacted Operation Pied Piper, during which many British children were torn from their families, taken miles from home and placed with strangers. In this poignant account, the men and women who were children at the time recall being labelled, lined up, and taken away. Their parents, urged by the government not to see their children off on the buses and trains, had no assurance that they would ever see their sons and daughters again. Though no lives were lost and no one was injured, the psychological wellbeing of these suddenly dislocated children was rarely intact. While some children were advantaged by the dramatic change in their lives, others—separated from all they knew and loved—suffered unendurable heartbreak.