PUPILS were evacuated from their school to give them a taste of life in the Second World War.

Pupils at Mill Hill Community Primary School, in Northallerton, were given a farewell speech from their headteacher at 9.30am yesterday before their billeting officer assigned them to their new life in the countryside.

Thirty-one children, dressed in caps, knee-length socks and shorts, walked from their school, in Crosby Road, to the WI hut, in Romanby, 25 minutes away.

Taking inspiration from novel Goodnight Mr Tom, about a boy from London sent to live in a village in the North, the class imagined they had been evacuated for real.

Carrying gas masks, ID cards and ration books, the children pretended they were from Bethnall Green and had never seen a rural village before.

Mrs Croft said: “It was all about looking at how the children in the Forties would feel when they were sent away from their homes during the Blitz.”

At the WI hut, the class wrote diaries of their experience and looked at propaganda posters from the war, as well as making carrot soup and bread buns.

In the afternoon, WI members showed them how to knit and sew, and the children created a large artwork of the Blitz.

Mrs Croft said: “The response from people when we walked down the street was amazing.

One person shouted ‘I remember when I did that for real’.”