The Second World War was the first time Britain faced the prospect of heavy aerial bombardment threatening the lives of millions of civilians in the most densely populated cities. The Government Evacuation Scheme (GES) was the government’s response to this threat. With the destructive air raids in the Spanish Civil War fresh in the minds of politicians, evacuation was felt to be a crucial tool in mitigating the effects of aerial bombardment.1 Thus, children and other priority groups were evacuated from the destruction in London and other industrialised cities to rural areas. One such rural area was West Sussex which will be investigated as it was unusually both an evacuation area and a reception area. Eighty years on, government documents and stories from evacuees preserved in both local and national archives unveil the logistics and first-hand accounts of evacuation on the government scheme. Dissecting the intricate details of how the GES operated reveals how the political mechanism orchestrated such a large-scale migration of peoples in pressured time conditions. Combining all these details to create a bigger picture shows the GES was developed and implemented using a mixture of a collaborative and directive approach by national government towards local government and charities.