John Welshman’s popular history of evacuation is a warm and human story of British child evacuees during the Second World War. Using autobiographical writings, the book tells the stories of nine children who were evacuated, along with the stories of a billeting officer, a head teacher, a sociologist, and a civil servant. Welshman also traces the main contours of policy debate over evacuation in Whitehall as a subplot to the accounts of the children (5). Valuably, the book highlights the experiences of those evacuated from provincial cities such as Glasgow, Manchester, and Birmingham, rather than the more familiar stories of children forced to leave London.

As Welshman himself acknowledges, the story of evacuation has been told elsewhere: from the perspective of its impact on postwar social welfare in Richard Titmuss’s Problems of Social Policy (1950) and in the memoirs and writings of former evacuees since the 1960s. Welshman aims to combine these strands in a history that incorporates personal narratives with the official problems of organizing evacuation, in a way more “child-centred and comprehensive” than in previous histories (5). The book recreates the history of evacuation through the experience of those who were there at the time, focusing on children from lower-class backgrounds, whose accounts are “all the more articulate and powerful precisely because they are less polished” (5).

The book is organized chronologically, from the first wave of the official government evacuation scheme in 1939, which saw one and a half million children and vulnerable adults moved, to the evacuation of one and a quarter million following the beginning of bombing raids in September 1940, and then on to the final wave of 300,000 evacuees in the flying-bomb attacks of 1944–45, ending with a brief epilogue summarizing the postwar lives of the former evacuees. Welshman’s focus on individual narratives offers a series of interesting examples of how evacuation affected individuals, families, and communities. One of the most fascinating stories is that of Judith Grunfeld, the head teacher of a Jewish secondary school in Stoke Newington, evacuated in 1939 with the school and her family to Bedfordshire. The culture shock of the encounter between rural villagers and a community of urban, religiously observant Jews offers a fresh perspective on evacuation that differs from the more common stories of class conflict. Grunfeld’s beautifully told story reveals how the village’s anger at being asked to host Jewish evacuees gradually turned to acceptance and respect. When the cinema hall, which was used as an education center for the children, caught on fire, the local fire brigade quickly saved the Scrolls of Law, the prayer books, and the Hebrew Bibles from destruction, knowing they were more vital to the life of the school than even the lost typewriter and the food. This touching story acts as a powerful foil to the official focus on the tensions and failures of evacuation.

Welshman’s narrative relies on previously published autobiographical accounts as well as new ones that he solicited. He placed advertisements in local newspapers in the areas from which evacuees came, and he received an overwhelming response, ultimately from more than three hundred and fifty people. In every case, Welshman writes, it was clear that their evacuation stories had been told repeatedly before: “I was struck that the urge to tell one’s story was so strong” (8). Welshman also noted that every one of the respondents remembered being the last to be chosen upon arrival in the reception area (8). Though he does not explicitly acknowledge it, this obviously cannot be true. These misremembered points are themselves interesting and show to what extent later memories become infused with the popular narrative of evacuation, in which the cattle call of the billets has become a metaphor for the disorganization of the official scheme, the children’s homesickness, and the coldness of their reception. Retold memories from sixty years ago, from a time recalled as an adult but experienced as a child, are by their nature fragmentary, and the reader must rely on the historian not only to present what is remembered but to interpret what has not been. While he acknowledges that “memory clearly needs to be understood as complex” (9), more analysis of these accounts would give a richer understanding of the individual narratives and the effects of evacuation on children as a whole.

Welshman’s decision to let the stories speak for themselves highlights the personal experiences of the individual children but weakens the overarching account of evacuation. The narrative jumps from one story to another, with only a line of asterisks to mark the leaps. The juxtaposition of policy debates and official complaints over the provision of shoes for children and the prevalence of bed-wetting and other supposed bad habits with the children’s own experiences would have more force if Welshman had linked the two narratives more clearly—how many of the respondents remembered such experiences themselves or heard about other children who had suffered from them? While photos of some of the children are included, it would also be helpful to have a master list of the names and home cities of the evacuees and when and where they were evacuated to keep the different narratives threads in order.

Welshman has written a touching and vivid book that puts a human face on the Second World War and the process of evacuation. While these witnesses and participants tell an important story of the impact of evacuation, the larger picture into which these pieces fit would benefit from being depicted in more detail.