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In January 1941, Sheila Shear and her sister were evacuated from east London to the Chilterns and billeted with a bachelor called Harry Mayo. They came from very different backgrounds - the Shears were Jewish, he was Christian - but an affectionate bond developed between them. Weekly visits and holidays with Uncle Harry, as they came to know him, continued long after the war had ended.

When Harry died, Sheila and her mother went to the funeral: "When we got to Chesham, we were treated like the closest members of his family. In fact, in the church - and this was the first Christian funeral my mother and I had ever been to - we were put to sit in the front row, in front of Uncle Harry's nieces and nephews. It was only then, I think, that I really appreciated how much our little family had meant to him - and had gone on meaning to him all his life.

"We returned to London in the knowledge that we would never go back to Chesham again. But the following day we each received a letter from his solicitor containing a cheque. In the envelope was a note that read: "A very small token of my very great affection."

Sheila is a past president of the League of Jewish Women and an energetic organiser at Nightingale House, a Jewish care home in London. Joan Risley lives near Chelmsford. She is a grandmother who learned to swim when she was 60 and keeps fit by line-dancing. Don Bayley ran a pension scheme for a large company in the West Midlands until his retirement a decade ago. These three people are unconnected, but they have one thing in common: the greatest evacuation of children in British history, which began on Friday 1 September 1939.

It was codenamed Operation Pied Piper. Who on earth came up with that name? Not a mother, that is certain. After all, the piper leads the children of Hamelin away from the town, never to return. Over the six years of the war, more than two million children were sent away from their family homes. Most returned, but how they had changed and how the separation affected their relationships with their families is seldom considered.

What must it have been like to be sent away from home at five, 10 or even 14, as some of the older ones were, and then come home months, - or, more often, years - later and have to pick up where you left off? Is it even possible when your life has changed in all other respects? And who were the winners and losers in the whole evacuation project?

Joan Risley is keen to emphasise the good points in her experience. She was evacuated twice. The first time, she went with her sister to Beccles, in Suffolk. They were home by the beginning of 1940 but when an invasion seemed likely, Joan announced that she wished to be evacuated again. None of her brothers and sisters wanted to go too, so she was sent alone, aged nine, to Northamptonshire. She lived there with a childless couple who loved and cared for her as their own. When she returned in 1945 she found it difficult: "I remember sitting on a sofa with a feeling of not belonging. By that time we were really poor. Dad was still ill and unable to work. My family all commented on how I talked different, so I had that strange feeling of not quite belonging yet wanting to be there because they were my family. I soon got used to being with Mum, and she got used to me. But with my siblings it was more difficult. They are my family and I am very fond of them but they never went away like I did, so they don't understand that I have had these two lives."

Two lives. That is what so many children of that generation had and for some it was, in retrospect, a bonus.

But it wasn't a bonus for parents. As a mother, I feel deeply troubled at the thought of being forced to miss out on five or six years of my sons' childhood. I'm profoundly grateful that I have never had to face that dilemma. In Operation Pied Piper, the family suffered but I feel the real losers, as in the legend, were the parents. It was as tough for many as one would expect. Although some wrote of their immense gratitude to the kindly foster parents who had loved and cared for their children, there were far more stories of mothers feeling that they had missed part of their children's lives. Vera Brittain wrote in her memoir: "The small gallant figures which disappeared behind the flapping tarpaulin of the grey-painted Duchess of Atholl have never grown up in my mind, for the children who returned and eventually took their places were not the same; the break in continuity made them rather appear as an elder brother and sister of the vanished pair."

If you ask Don Bayley about his past he immediately talks about his evacuation to Lichfield, just 20 miles from his home in West Bromwich. It changed his life and that of his younger brother, Phil. Mrs Coles, their foster mother, gave them something their own mother could never have done: a love of books and learning. And it was not one-sided. Twenty years after the war, Mrs Coles wrote to Don to say that she felt the children had been sent "to cheer her up".

"I considered that she was proper middle class while we were clearly working class. I learned to appreciate all these different things from Mrs Coles. I learned how to talk to people and to address them properly and with confidence. I developed a different accent, dropping my Black Country slang. In fact, I have to say that Mrs Coles changed me completely and she loved me - I'm ashamed to admit it - more than my mother ever did. She made me feel wanted. She called us My Boys and that really meant something to us."

When the boys went back to West Bromwich after the war, Don was dismayed by his mother's reaction to his new found interest in books and education. She cursed him for being "a bloody big 'ead" and was constantly nagging him to "shift yer bloody books".

Even parents who were delighted that their children had had life-enhancing experiences and opportunities, found it hard to adjust to the changes. Fathers, often forgotten in the evacuation story, also felt they had lost out. In 1944, Ted Matthews wrote to one of his four daughters whom he sent to America in 1940: "Sending you away has been, in some ways, a tragedy. I still think it was the right thing to do, even though events proved different from our fears. But it has been heartbreaking to miss these years of your lives. We shall meet again as almost strangers."

Michael Henderson and his brother, Gerald, were sent to Boston in 1940, aged eight and six. They lived with a loving family and completely absorbed the culture, education and American way of life. Now, as then, it felt like a positive gain on every level. Yet he wrote: "Returning home, it was hard for us to step into the lives of parents who had survived the bombing - and more recently the V1 and V2 rockets - and would jump at any loud noise. Our parents' admonishments were met with, 'We don't do that in America.' Soon America became known in our family as 'We-land'."

It took months for the four Hendersons to re-establish a family relationship - a lot longer, Michael notes wryly, than it took to remove the accumulated dirt they had acquired on the aircraft carrier en route back from the US.

Sometimes children observed their parents afresh and found their way of life different from what they had grown used to with foster parents. John Mare, who had been evacuated to Canada aged seven, was horrified, as only a child can be, by what he found on his return to Bath. He told his friend Penny: "My mother wears lipstick and powder. They drink and smoke, and even the dog is called Whisky!"

The gulf in experience was not just felt between the generations or within families in which some children had been evacuated and others had not. Nigel Bromage and his twin brother, Michael, spent two years of the war on a farm in south Wales. They shared a room, they went to the same school, experienced the same foster family and saw the same sights in the countryside. They were seven when they arrived and nine when they left. Yet they had two opposite responses to their evacuation.

Nigel and Michael's hosts were small farmers at Golden Grove near Llandeilo, in Carmarthenshire. They had 20 cows, all of which had to be milked by hand, and the only aid was a horse. For Nigel, there was no down side. "As I enjoyed my experience on the Williamses' farm so my brother did not. It is not perhaps surprising. We were very different personalities - he an introvert, I an extrovert. He tended to opt out of activities around the farm; I volunteered for everything. I loved every minute of it. I don't think I was particularly aware of Michael's unhappiness at the time, because I was enjoying myself. It was only after he died that my sister told me how homesick and unhappy Michael had been."

Foster parents are often forgotten in the evacuation story, yet their role was vital. For them the war years often brought great delight, though it was only temporary. One wrote poignantly: "Here are your children ... Mother and I have loved them with all our hearts. We ask you to keep alive their loyalty to us as we have kept alive their loyalty to you - may they never forget that they have two homes."

As there was such pressure on rural households to take evacuees, some children were billeted with childless couples and for many a lifelong relationship ensued. These are the good news stories that we don't hear enough about.

Some children became so much a part of their foster parents' lives that the outcome was life-changing for all parties. Gordon Abbott is constantly irritated that people are not interested in his evacuation story as it had a happy ending. He was fostered by a childless couple who farmed in Cornwall. They loved him, cared for him and educated him as if he had been their natural son. He was blissfully happy. When the war was over, he and the couple were devastated that he had to return to London, but there seemed no choice.

Once "home", Gordon felt like a fish out of water. He did not like the city and he was not particularly enamoured of his mother's new boyfriend. She, in turn, realised that he was deeply unsettled and she soon wrote to his foster parents, to ask if he could return to Cornwall. He did and was adopted by them as their son. The war had given him a new family. "I loved them dearly, and thank the upbringing they gave me, which helped me into my adult life.

"There have been many stories written by evacuees about their childhood experiences and the effect it had on their lives. Some were happy, some were appalling and some were just unhappy. I was one of the many happy ones, and my years as an evacuee from London to the West Country were filled with wonderful memories."
When the Children Came Home: Stories of Wartime Evacuees by Julie Summers is published by Simon & Schuster, £18.99. To order a copy for £15.19, with free p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. Topics

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In January 1941, Sheila Shear and her sister were evacuated from east London to the Chilterns and billeted with a bachelor called Harry Mayo. They came from very different backgrounds - the Shears were Jewish, he was Christian - but an affectionate bond developed between them.

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You can help every child grow up with the love and support of a family

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Children and World War Two - History Learning Site

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Children were massively affected by World War Two. Nearly two million children were evacuated from their homes at the start of World War Two; children had to endure rationing, gas mask lessons, living with strangers etc. Children accounted for one in ten of the deaths during the Blitz of London from…

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Younger readers of this journal may themselves have been exposed to war during their teen years. Much has been written on the subject in the last two decades - how war affects children, how to rehabilitate war-affected children (tertiary prevention), and how to make the experience of being in a war zone less damaging for children (secondary prevention). However, any degree of immersion in the suffering of children in war impels one to consider ways of removing the vector producing the suffering - war itself (primary prevention). While in a previous essay in this series ( 1), I considered ways to prevent specific wars, here I will consider a broader issue of replacing our present war system with a peace system.

The impact of war on children

War affects children in all the ways it affects adults, but also in different ways. First, children are dependent on the care, empathy, and attention of adults who love them. Their attachments are frequently disrupted in times of war, due to the loss of parents, extreme preoccupation of parents in protecting and finding subsistence for the family, and emotional unavailability of depressed or distracted parents. The child may be in substitute care with someone who cares for him or her only slightly - relatives or an orphanage. A certain proportion of war-affected children lose all adult protection - "unaccompanied children," as they are known in refugee situations.

Second, impacts in childhood may adversely affect the life trajectory of children far more than adults. Consider children who lose the opportunity for education during war, children who are forced to move into refugee or displaced person camps, where they wait for years in miserable circumstances for normal life to resume, if it ever does. Consider a child disabled in war; they may, in addition to loss of a limb, sight, or cognitive capacity, lose the opportunity of schooling and of a social life. A girl who is raped may be marginalized by her society and lose the opportunity for marriage. Long after the war has ended, these lives will never attain the potential they had before the impact of war.

Listing the impacts of war on children is a sadly straightforward task:

Death. Hundreds of thousands of children die of direct violence in war each year ( 2). They die as civilians caught in the violence of war, as combatants directly targeted, or in the course of ethnic cleansing.

Injury. Children suffer a range of war injuries. Certain weapons affect them particularly. A landmine explosion is more likely to kill or seriously injure a child than an adult ( 3). Thousands of children suffer landmine injuries each year ( 4).

Disability. Millions of children are disabled by war, many of whom have grossly inadequate access to rehabilitation services. A child may have to wait up to 10 years before having a prosthetic limb fitted. Children who survive landmine blasts rarely receive prostheses that are able to keep up with the continued growth of their limbs.

Illness. Conditions for maintenance of child health deteriorate in war - nutrition, water safety, sanitation, housing, access to health services. There may be loss of immunity to disease vectors with population movement. Refugee children are particularly vulnerable to the deadly combination of malnutrition and infectious illness. There is also interruption of population immunization programs by war which may be responsible for increases in child mortality.

Rape and prostitution for subsistence. These phenomena which often occur in situations of war, ethnic cleansing, and refugee life leave lasting physical impacts in sexually-transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, psychological impacts and changes in life trajectory.

Psychological suffering. Children are exposed to situations of terror and horror during war - experiences that may leave enduring impacts in posttraumatic stress disorder. Severe losses and disruptions in their lives lead to high rates of depression and anxiety in war-affected children. These impacts may be prolonged by exposures to further privations and violence in refugee situations.

Moral and spiritual impacts. The experience of indifference from the surrounding world, or, worse still, malevolence may cause children to suffer loss of meaning in their construction of themselves in their world. They may have to change their moral structure and lie, steal, and sell sex to survive. They may have their moral structure forcibly dismantled and replaced in training to kill as part of a military force.

Social and cultural losses. Children may lose their community and its culture during war, sometimes having it reconstituted in refugee or diaspora situations.

Child soldiers. It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of young people under 18 serving in militias in about 60 countries. They are particularly vulnerable to all of the impacts listed above ( 5).

Remedial strategies

Action on this cluster of tragic phenomena is usually considered under two categories - how to mitigate some of the damage to children and how to heal children after they are damaged.

Making war less damaging to children (secondary prevention)

1. Implement international humanitarian law regarding the protection of children in war. The Geneva Conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child deal with protection of war-affected children with regard to food, clothing, medicine, education, and family reunion. In addition, they are intended to protect children from ethnic cleansing and recruitment into armed forces. However, compliance with these instruments is poor, especially when recruiting children to armed forces is concerned.

2. Ensure that general economic sanctions against a country are never used again, as they were used in Iraq as a substitute for war. Children and poor adults are those who suffer most from economic sanctions. Use of economic sanctions should be considered a war crime, just as is laying siege to a city to starve its population.

3. Ensure special consideration for children who are in flight from war zones and who live in camps for refugees and internally displaced people, especially children who are unaccompanied by adults. Special considerations need to be given for family reunion, systems of distribution of resources (sometimes to women rather than to men), internal layout of camps (to prevent attacks on girls), the provision of facilities for education and play, and special help for child-headed families.

4. Institute measures to reduce sexual exploitation and gender-based violence against women and girls in war. These measures include training of soldiers, including peacekeeping forces; inclusion of relevant interventions in humanitarian responses to population emergencies in war; reporting and support systems for victims of rape in camps for refugees and internally displaced persons; the prosecution of rape as a war crime; and making organized rape a crime against humanity.

5. Parties to a conflict must facilitate humanitarian assistance to ensure that the health infrastructure of children's lives is not destroyed. Perpetrators should be prosecuted for such actions as destroying clinics, schools, and hospitals - all of which are protected by international law. Where access to health services, such as immunization, is hindered by the violent conflict, there should be humanitarian ceasefires to enable access.

6. Include children's interests in peace agreements. Since 1999, several peace agreements have specifically referred to children in the post-violence arrangements for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration ( 6). Children are recognized as victims and perpetrators of violence in several truth-and-reconciliation commissions, but children have played little role in these systems.

Rehabilitating children affected by war (tertiary prevention)

During the immediate humanitarian response to victims of war and in the longer-term attempts to reconstruct health services after war, there are attempts by both local and international actors to care for children's needs for health care. Physical and psychological rehabilitation is instituted to varying degrees depending on the resources available. Sometimes these are minimal or absent. There have been many efforts to help the psychological impacts of war on children. Few have been evaluated.

Some efforts at rehabilitation of war-affected children include social healing moving toward education in the Culture of Peace. This is an approach to primary prevention of recurrence of war.

Imperative to end war

It may strike the reader that, although the many efforts to make war less damaging for children are important and should continue and be strengthened, this is a pathetically feeble response in the light of the intensity and magnitude of the suffering involved. From a certain perspective, there is even something preposterous about an exclusive focus on making war more tolerable for children. We rail against approaching HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria in this way. Poverty, on the other hand, like war, may be treated with the assumption that it will always be with us, and is a fact of life. These assumptions should be vigorously challenged.

War is a recent phenomenon in human evolutionary history. For most of our species' existence there is no evidence of war.

There are many current cultures without war.

In the European Union, social institutions for dealing with conflict have evolved to a point where war is unthinkable between member states.

There are clear alternatives to war in dealing with intra- and inter-state conflicts.

Judicial process: The World Court resolves many interstate conflicts.

Democratic functioning is designed to resolve intra-state conflicts. Good design of constitutions is another factor in this function.

Dialogue: UN conflict management capacities already quietly resolve many serious conflicts. Better resourcing could enhance these capacities. Other agencies also act in this mode.

Nonviolent struggle is frequently successful in deposing dictators or dysfunctional regimes. Usually this is done without good organization or training. Such efforts could be even more successful with these resources added.

Cultural change from endorsement and support of violence in conflict response to support and knowledge of peace processes. Consider cultural change in Sweden over the last few centuries from a belligerent country to a peaceful one. UNESCO has worked specifically to promote a culture of peace.

It is time for health professionals to define war as a serious global public health problem. The public health imperative is primary prevention - removing the vector of illness or making conditions unfavorable for survival of the vector. If a peace system can be devised for an entity as large, diverse, and populous as Europe, it can be devised at a global level. It would be naive to suggest that this is easily achievable. But it would be cynical, in the light of the suffering of the war-affected children of the world, to accept war as an inevitable part of the human condition. There are global networks, formal and informal, of health professionals who think in terms of eliminating war and who work to accomplish this. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is such a network, particularly focusing on the role of health professionals working to eliminate war ( 7). A network with the same goal is TRANSCEND, a peace and development network which includes several physicians ( 8).

References:

1. Santa Barbara J. Can medicine contribute to preventing war? Croat Med J. 2004;45:783-5.

2. Machel G. The impact of armed conflict on children: report of the expert of the secretary general of the United Nations. New York: United Nations; 1996. Available from: http://www.unicef.org/graca/a51-306_en.pdf, Accessed: October 21, 2006.

6. Collier P, Elliott VL, Hegre H, Hoeffler A, Reynal-Querol M, Sambanis N. Breaking the conflict trap: civil war and development policy (A World Bank policy research report). Washington DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press; 2003.

7. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Available from: http://www.ippnw.org. Accessed: November 22, 2006.

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Impact of War on Children and Imperative to End War

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Younger readers of this journal may themselves have been exposed to war during their teen years. Much has been written on the subject in the last two decades - how war affects children, how to rehabilitate war-affected children (tertiary prevention), and how to make the experience of being in a war zone less damaging for children (secondary prevention).

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UNICEF: Impact of Armed Conflict on Children

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UNICEF: Impact of Armed Conflict on Children

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The following pages focus on the ground-breaking 1996 report by Graça Machel which drew global attention to the devastating impact of armed conflict on children. For more on this issue, visit UNICEF's child protection pages, emergencies pages or the site of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

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The following pages focus on the ground-breaking 1996 report by Graça Machel which drew global attention to the devastating impact of armed conflict on children. For more on this issue, visit UNICEF's child protection pages, emergencies pages or the site of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

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Drs Stacy Gillis and Emma Short draw on surviving schoolwork and propaganda to explore how World War One affected all aspects of children's lives.

Interest in how non-combatants experienced the First World War has grown substantially in the last 30 years. Children were particularly impacted by the war through disruption to home life and to schooling, absent parents, and deaths of family and family friends. While such experiences were common on the Home Front, children often struggled to understand the reasons behind these events, and the impact upon them was sustained in different, and often more emotional, ways.

Children and the War - a book for young people

A book of patriotic readings addressed to school children, published in 1917 in Italy.

Usage terms: Public Domain

Perceptions challenged

The figure of the child is one that challenges popular perceptions of the war. It is a figure that is complex and shifting in terms of the way it operates within discourses of empire, war and nationhood, yet it is a figure that is often unnoticed or dismissed as not participating or not able to understand the complexities of war. Yet archival material on propaganda directed at children, such as the Italian book for schoolboys, I ragazzi e la Guerra [Children and the War] (1917), along with children's own writing about their experiences of war, such as the poem written by 11-year old Anny Politzer, 'Der heimkehrende Krieger' ['The Returning Soldier'] (1914-18), suggests that some children occupied an engaged position in relation to the war.

The returning soldier - Poem by an 11 year old schoolgirl

Poem written by an 11-year-old school girl about a returning soldier walking through Vienna.

Such material can help us to explore questions of how understandings of the figure of the child are tied up in the shifting positions of adulthood in war, as well as how representations of the child were complicit in restructuring attitudes towards war. The material held in these collections demonstrates that children did not keep diaries in the same way as adults, or that this material has not survived - where we can trace the impact of war on children, however, is primarily in schoolwork and in drawings.

Children's schoolwork

In a collection of school essays, published in 1915, The World War and Personal Expressions by Children: 150 German School Essays, students discuss their experience of war through the events that they have experienced - for example, saying goodbye to their father, news of missing or killed family members, celebrations after a victory, or the constant sound of bombs. What is also clear from this is how deeply children are influenced by propaganda - for example, they anticipate a victory through the cultural and educational recollection of past German victories. Here, then, we have evidence of how children are both products of propaganda and also producers of the same. An Austrian essay, 'How I made a nightly attack on London with my Zeppelin', is a story written by a child imagining successfully attacking London . We can see that new technologies were often a source of excitement for children, so that which is figured in adult writing about the war as a source of terror or fear, is, in children's writing, a source of interest and excitement.

Similarly, the boys of Princeton Street Elementary School in London wrote of their impressions of airship raids and these essays offer crucial insight into how the UK was not at all prepared for airship attacks. These boys express both excitement and fear during the airship raids, and satisfied their curiosity by going out to inspect the damage once the raids were over. The war was also introduced into school lessons in ways that might not be immediately obvious. Arithmetic questions, such as those included in the German textbook Krigsrechenaufgaben [War Calculation Tasks]

(1916) , were loosely based around the successes of the German army - so for example, calculations about the amount of wool needed to knit gift parcels for the troops or calculating the length of row of prisoners beside a railway line. Here the war is used not as a subject for teaching, but as a background example, indicating the pervasiveness of the war to everyday lives.

Domestic invasion

Children's lives were often expected to continue as normal, and the French photograph 'Mère et enfant munies d'un masque à gaz' ['Mother and child wearing gas masks'] shows a child helping her mother cook, but the insertion of the gas mask here is indicative of anxieties surrounding the development of long-range weapons and advances in chemical warfare. It indicates how the domestic space of the home was also a potential site of invasion, and the way in which the child was thus positioned as a combatant in the war. That these writings and images come from France, Italy, Austria, Germany and the UK indicate how the figure of the child is one that crosses borders and boundaries, both imaginary and physical, in wartime.

Usage terms: Public Domain

Written by Stacy Gillis

Dr Stacy Gillis is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the School of English at Newcastle University. She was the Principal Investigator for the Approaching War: Childhood, Culture and the First World War Leverhulme International Network. She is currently working on a book about the rise of the British detective novel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and her research interests include the First World War, feminist theory and popular fictions of the fin-de-siècle.

Dr Emma Short is a Research and Teaching Associate in the School of English at Newcastle University, and was the Network Facilitator for the International Leverhulme Network, Approaching War: Childhood, Culture and the First World War. Her current research considers Gertrude Bell's literary heritage and the making of the modern Middle East, and reveals the lasting impact of Bell's own literary and cultural imagination on the Middle East's place in the British cultural and political imaginary.

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Drs Stacy Gillis and Emma Short draw on surviving schoolwork and propaganda to explore how World War One affected all aspects of children's lives. Interest in how non-combatants experienced the First World War has grown substantially in the last 30 years.

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Wikipedia: Effect of World War I on Children

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Wikipedia: Effect of World War I on Children

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Though the United States was in combat for only a matter of months, the reorganization of society had a great effect on American life. During World War I, daily life was affected as men were drafted and sent abroad, and women had to fill their places in the factories. Youth programs grew and developed in a response to aid the government with these new programs. During and after the war, life for children in the United States was greatly affected in a variety of ways.

Drawing by Marguerite Martyn of two women and a child knitting for the war effort at a St. Louis, Missouri, Red Cross office in 1917

More than 116,000 members of the U.S. military died in the war, far fewer than combatants from other countries. No one has estimated how many orphans resulted. Additionally, as the male workforce left for battle, mothers and sisters began working in factories to take their positions, and the family dynamic began to change; this affected children as they had less time to spend with family members and were expected to grow up faster and help with the war effort. Similarly, Woodrow Wilson called on children involved in youth organizations to help collect money for war bonds and stamps in order to raise money for the war effort. This was a way to mobilize public opinion and shame adults who did not donate. The Office of War Information and other agencies implemented programs and created posters and pamphlets to encourage war support.

The United States was involved in World War I for the last 19 months of the war (April 1917 to November 1918), 4,355,000 men were conscripted into service. By summer 1918, they were trained and shipped to France at the rate of 10,000 military personnel a day.

Meanwhile, every farm, town and city, and every economic sector, was mobilized for the war effort. Tens of millions of parents took war jobs or joined voluntary organizations such as the Red Cross. This involvement changed the course of the war and directly affected children's daily life, education, and family structures in the United States. The home front saw a systematic mobilization of the entire population and the entire economy to produce the soldiers, food supplies, munitions, and money needed to win the war. Although the United States entered the war in 1917, there had been very little planning or recognition of the British and other Allies' problems on their homefronts. As a result, the level of confusion was high in the first 12 months, then efficiency took control.

After the United States entered the war, daily life was affected for most as men prepared for battle, women began working, and children and families had less time to spend together. The women and children did much more work than they used to. Children were affected as many of their fathers were killed or wounded in battle, and their mothers began working long hours in the factories. As the war progressed, technology advanced and industry boomed, enabling women to spend less time on household chores and more time outside of the home. The American family began to change as women started working more regularly, which affected the role of the child in American life, The Great Depression also followed WWI .

Girls too young for paid jobs learned how they could help the war effort.

Over 21 million people were killed or injured in World War I; in many cases, all of the men in one family were killed, numerous cities in Europe were destroyed, and family life throughout the world was greatly affected. While the United States suffered the fewest casualties, family life was still greatly affected as husbands were deployed and wives had to begin working. As the war draft suddenly removed many men from factory work, the factories began soliciting for women workers in traditionally male-dominated areas. Therefore, women had less time to spend at home with the children, as many of them would have before the war. As fathers, uncles, brothers, and grandfathers deployed in military service, women filled their places in factories and offices, changing the ways young children and teens received home nurturing. Additionally, women moving into new roles in society had lasting effects on children and family life after the war. President Woodrow Wilson stated, "We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" As women began working in the factories, more of society began to realize the need for women's rights; while women had been granted suffrage (voting rights) to varying degrees in several states beginning in the late 19th century, they were now guaranteed full suffrage throughout the United States by the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution passed in August, 1920. This also paved the way for the children of future generations by creating greater career opportunities for girls and women; as women gained a stronger voice, girls became more involved in the workforce and education and prepared for roles outside of the home. Additionally, family life was affected after the war as more and more women entered the work force, moving away from the traditional stay-at-home mother and housewife role.

Over the course of the war, the United States mobilized hundreds of thousands of men and endured an estimated 117,465 casualties. Of the men who survived and returned home, post-traumatic stress disorder created a major impact on society. During this time, and still today, post-traumatic stress (then more likely to be known as "shell shock") was not fully understood, but because of the traumatic nature of battle, many men were negatively affected after the war. Some men were forced to leave battle, which many people considered cowardice, and there were asylums throughout Europe housing men suffering from this condition. In some extreme cases, men were even shot for showing weakness. There are still people living today who lost family members because of this practice, which created lasting impacts on these children. Additionally, many of these men were teenagers when they left for war, and virtually all were under the age of 30; therefore many of these soldiers were barely out of childhood themselves.

This is a young American man enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War I.

Furthermore, because over a million young men were deployed overseas, marriage and childbearing had to be postponed.

On the home front, domestic appliances were being created, alleviating the amount of time that women needed to spend on chores, so they had more time to work outside of the home. Additionally, this lessened the need for female servants, as things like laundry services and food preparation services became popular. Therefore, women were able to move into more traditionally male-dominated areas, as technology began to do the service jobs that women primarily were responsible for. Additionally, this showed young girls that they could eventually work outside of the home and more opportunities were available to them after they completed their education.

World War I altered education in the United States through curriculum changes with government pamphlets and required patriotism sessions. Even though the United States was only involved in World War I for a short period of time, the government instituted many programs for and changes to American education. During this war period, there was a strong focus on nationalism and patriotism, which significantly affected education. Woodrow Wilson and the United States government funded a series of pamphlets, posters, bulletins, and speeches, which promoted strong nationalism and anti-German sentiments. These forms of nationalist propaganda were used nationwide in public school districts and influenced students to remain loyal to the United States. These programs promoted things like volunteering with federal organizations such as the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and buying War Bonds to support the government.

Additionally, the government created several programs to help support education such as the Committee of Public Information (CPI), the National Education Association (NEA), and the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, all of which promoted nationalist movements and changes to education. For example, as part of the CPI and NEA programs, with the assistance of Woodrow Wilson, pamphlets were published advocating democracy and national patriotism in schools. These pamphlets also focused on a new movement of social efficacy, which strongly favored students growing as people and becoming involved, patriotic citizens. Another main goal of these educational programs was a move away from state education systems and toward a nationalized system of education, which would keep curriculums similar and promote a unified nation among students. For example, the national government changed textbooks to portray the American Revolution in a way that didn't make Britain appear malevolent. This was important because the United States allied with Great Britain.

Starting as early as the elementary level, patriotic and pro-war lessons were instituted in public schools. They included things such as weekly fifteen-minute periods on patriotism for first and second grades. They stressed that teachers instruct the children so that they viewed the war in a positive manner and portrayed war in terms of celebrations, and victories, not destructive realities. An elementary pamphlet stated, "In teaching the war to young pupils, the appeal should be directed primarily to the imagination and to the emotions. It is not enough that our pupils shall be informed of the events of the war...Their imaginations must be awakened and their feelings aroused to an appreciation of the significance of the great happenings of the times." Therefore, starting at a very early level, students were taught that the war was a good thing and the importance of patriotism.

The patriotic sentiments were also carried out in secondary settings. Specific programs and in-school curricula targeted the patriotic development of children, especially teens. New history curricula introduced rewrote the story of the American past to de-emphasize the friction between the colonies and Britain, and to deconstruct historical American and German amity, to vilify the Germans. For example, every senior in high school received their own pamphlet in January 1918 called "Study of the Great War." This attempted to encourage enmity for Germany and emphasized the importance of an Allied victory. Things like the importance of the ROTC program were also stressed during this time. Nationalist posters and other forms of propaganda were placed in public areas throughout the country and again showed the importance of patriotism. Posters, like the Boy Scout poster shown below, depicted teenagers helping the war effort as being courageous and admired. This form of propaganda was especially influential on teenagers because most of them were trying to figure out their roles in society and desired to fit in; therefore, posters showing their peers serving their country and receiving recognition and respect, were particularly influential in persuading teenagers to join the war effort in whatever way they could.

After the war ended, nationalist movements changed to a larger focus on international peace. There were strong government movements toward peace and anti-war sentiments and the need to avoid further wars. Additionally, there was a focus on internationalization of higher education. For example, in 1920, the Belgian American Educational Foundation instituted a program with over 700 students, in which American students went to study in Belgium and vice versa in order to promote international understanding.

As a result of World War I, youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls greatly expanded, helping to raise money for the war effort.

Due to the large nationalist movement during World War I, many youth organizations were developed or expanded, including the Boy Scouts of America. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson placed a great importance on the Boy Scouts of America, asking them to encourage war support and educate the public sources about the importance of the war. They helped distribute the war pamphlets, helped sell war bonds and helped to drive nationalism and support for the war. Additionally, they were involved in many acts that helped the national government, such as locating black walnut to use in war materials and peach pits for gas masks. The Boy Scouts were involved in five Liberty Bond drives in which they helped sell Liberty Bonds to benefit the American Government. During the first campaign, they raised a total of $23,000,000 and in the second drive they collected $. For the third campaign, known as the "Wake Up, America" rally, beginning on April 27, 1918, 400,000 Boy Scouts embarked on a door to window program selling Liberty Bonds as well as war stamps. At the end of the five campaigns, the Boy Scouts raised $354,859,262 in bond subscriptions and $43,043,698 in war stamps. When a Boy Scout sold a bond or stamp, he would record the sale and send in a post card to his local post office, which would then forward it to the bonds and stamps, he would receive an "Ace Medal".

During World War I Camp Fire Girls helped to sell over one million dollars in Liberty Bonds and over $900,000 in Thrift Stamps; 55,000 girls helped to support French and Belgian orphans, and an estimated 68,000 girls earned honors by conservation of food.

After the conclusion of World War I, the United States and the rest of the world changed. Those who were children during World War I grew up to become the adults of World War II. These children were exposed to propaganda and indoctrinated to value strong nationalism and loyalty to the United States and its allies. Therefore, when World War II was on the forefront, many of the adults in the United States still harbored negative feelings toward the Germans because of their schooling during World War I.

Additionally, women were granted suffrage shortly after World War I. This was partly due to the fact that they had moved away from their traditional roles and filled the factory jobs that the men were forced to leave in order to serve in World War I. Women showed their importance in society, which fueled many women's rights movements post-World War I. The girls who were in school during World War I were also learning about the importance of nationalism, and saw their mothers fulfilling traditionally male-dominated roles. This desire for nationalism and exposure to wider opportunities helped to enable these girls to grow up and become involved in securing rights for themselves.

Sources and further reading

Guisepi, Robert (editor). "World War One, The Great War." ' World History International: World History Essays From Prehistory To The Present. 2001. Web. 13 April 2010.

Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (2004), is the standard scholarly history

McDermott, T. P. [1] SOSSI Journal: USA's Boy Scouts and World War I Liberty Loan Bonds. Accessed 22 March 2010.

Snowman, McCowan, and Biehler. "Psychology Applied to Teaching." United States of America: Cengage Learning, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4240-8070-0.

"Wilson Makes Suffrage Appeal, But Senate Waits". The New York Times, 1 October 1918, 1.

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Effect of World War I on children in the United States - Wikipedia

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Though the United States was in combat for only a matter of months, the reorganization of society had a great effect on American life. During World War I, daily life was affected as men were drafted and sent abroad, and women had to fill their places in the factories.

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Boston Globe: Photo Essay on Children of War

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Boston Globe: Photo Essay on Children of War

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The United Nations children's agency reported this week that 14 million children in Syria and Iraq are in crisis due to war. The number of children needing aid has greatly increased from the previous year and there are fears that the severe violence will permanently scar the young generation.

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Thousands of children have been killed in the bloody conflict in Syria, while more have been raped or tortured. Children's charity War Child tells Metro about the shocking violence taking place and what it's doing to save lives.

Almost 40,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in Syria since March last year.

Ten per cent of those killed have been children. The numbers are frightening and so are the stories.

Abdulmajid* is a refugee from Aleppo, one of the deadliest locations in the country as fighting wages between president Bashar al-Assad's army and rebel forces.

After his school was wiped out by an aerial bombing, 15-year-old Abdulmajid, along with his parents and ten brothers and sisters, left Syria for nearby Lebanon. It was not a simple, or typical, journey.

'We didn't take anything,' he said. 'There was no time. On the road I saw houses in rubble and burned out cars. I saw massacres, people and children, killed without any reason.

'On the road I also saw a small body of a dead baby without a head. When we passed that, I had to close my eyes.'

In a country where thousands of children are being raped, tortured and murdered, Abdulmajid's story is just one of many horrifying accounts. Compared to thousands of others, he is fortunate. And he knows it.

'Things are good here,' he said of his new home in Lebanon, where his father has built a tent for the family from plastic and wood.

'At least I don't hear bombs at night and I don't have to be afraid we will be killed. In Syria I was awake every night for at least two months because of all the scary sounds.'

Despite fleeing to safety, Abdulmajid cannot forget the things he has seen.

'Here I sleep better but I do have nightmares,' he said. 'I am in a car with beheaded people and I am the only one that is still alive. When I wake up crying, my mother comes to comfort me.'

At a school in north Lebanon, he takes part in therapy classes three times a week which have been set up by the British charity War Child . It has established six 'safe spaces' in existing schools and community buildings across the border where refugee children from Syria can receive care, therapy, food and education and mix with local Lebanese children. It plans to install five more centres next year.

CLICK HERE TO ENLARGE INFOGRAPHIC ABOVE

About 700 children use the safe spaces but War Child wants to expand its reach, saying counselling is crucial for those children who have experienced violence.

In a report in July, War Child said up to 1,300 children had been killed in the Syrian conflict. That number has now almost trebled. It said at the time that both rebel troops and the Assad regime had used children as soldiers.

'Children in Syria have the constant threat of aerial artillery bombardment to deal with, as well as being witness to horrendous atrocities and fearing that they will also be killed or arrested by security forces,' said Rob Williams, chief executive of War Child.

'In the last two months the conflict has become more deadly and more widespread. At least 3,800 children have been killed. Thousands more have been raped, tortured, or been forced to witness the killing of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

'The evidence shows that government forces and the militia they support have committed the worst atrocities against children. 'Boys as young as twelve have been detained, tortured and raped repeatedly. 'Girls have been raped in front of their parents in a campaign of terror. Children have been arrested, shot through the knees, had their throats slit, suffered abuse and enormous emotional damage.

'The government is targeting children as a means of forcing opposition activists to pay the highest possible price for their protest.'

Maryam*, who is 11 years old, is another Syrian child refugee from Aleppo who now finds herself in north Lebanon. The home next door to her family's was bombed in the fighting. She hid and listened in her own house as her neighbours were killed.

'It got bombed and they all died,' she recalled. 'They had small children. All this happened and I was still in my house. I was so scared this could happen to us too.'

She and her seven brothers and sisters fled to Lebanon, where they now live in a tent. She doesn't know what happened to most of her other family members and friends. She wants to become an Arabic teacher. She said: 'My other dream is that Syria will be beautiful again. I would love to go home.'

Mr Williams said the Syrian conflict stood out because of the depth of violence against children and the specific targeting of them.

He said therapy was crucial to help children recover from their experiences.

'Without help, conflict trauma can trap children into a psychological catastrophe of constant repetition of events in their head, inability to process their experiences and very poor prospects for education and successful adult life,' he said.

'With help, children can come back from this experience, but they are going to need persistent support.'

In Lebanon, Abdulmajid is using that therapy to try to overcome what he saw. He doesn't know if his home in Syria still exists.

'I understand that we are here because it is safer but I miss my country,' he said. 'That's where I belong and I hope to go back very soon. When I grow up I want to help to rebuild my country. I am sure there will be a lot of work for me there.'*The names of the children in this article have been changed to protect their identities To donate £3 to War Child's Children Of Syria appeal, text PROTECT to 70444. Your text will cost £3 plus standard network charge. 100% of your donation will go to War Child. Go to www.warchild.org.uk/syria for more information

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'I had to close my eyes': The children coping with horrors of Syria conflict

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Thousands of children have been killed in the bloody conflict in Syria, while more have been raped or tortured. Children's charity War Child tells Metro about the shocking violence taking place and what it's doing to save lives. Almost 40,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in Syria since March last year.

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The Invisible Trauma of War: Affected Children

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The Invisible Trauma of War: Affected Children

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-- Reposted from the online magazine, "The Trauma & Mental Health Report"

Eighteen million children are being raised in the chaos of war. In the past ten years, as a result of armed conflict, over 2 million children have been killed, 6 million have been disabled, 20 million are homeless, and more than 1 million have become separated from their caregivers.

In 1996, Graça Machel, former wife of Nelson Mandela, released a UN report entitled "The Impact of War on Children," bringing international attention to the subject among policy makers and academics. The 10 recommendations made in the report have become guiding principles to aid war-affected children. Advancements have been made by the international community to address issues of security, displacement, and human rights monitoring, but less support has come to the psychosocial and educational needs of war-affected children.

War vets speak of the images, sounds and smells that continue to haunt them. Many speak of nightmares, flashbacks and periods of crippling grief.

"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers" - African proverb

So too, children children living in violent, terrorized environments experience such horrors as destruction of their homes, and the death of parents, siblings, neighbours and friends. Many live in circumstances where they make critical survival decisions to hide under deceased remains of others, to kill or be killed, and often live through situations where they believe they will die.

Recent years have seen celebrity and political activists join in the discussion. Following his own recovery from severe post traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD), Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, released two books "Shake Hands with the Devil" and "They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children," detailing the horrors he witnessed in Rwanda and his mission to stop the use of child soldiers. Hollywood films have included Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond, and Machine Gun Preacher.

Despite media attention, response has been limited. Immediate measures for increased protection and security are necessary and being actively pursued, but the more regenerative responses like those of child-focused psychosocial and trauma rehabilitation are not being appropriately supported or implemented despite the demand and need for these interventions among affected communities.

Following the genocide in Rwanda, in psychological interviews, more than 60% of children claimed that they didn't care if they ever grew up. While the global community struggles to value and prioritize global mental health care, millions of war-affected children around the world are left in the wake of traumatic experiences with little to no support.

Children between the ages of 12-18, having had more years exposed to violent conflict, struggle to recover from years of compounding traumas. Interviews within refugee camps reveal pervasive feelings of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, grief, resentment, anger, and fear among war-affected children.

Graça Machel reports, "The physical, sexual and emotional violence to which they [children] are exposed shatters their world. War undermines the very foundations of children's lives, destroying their homes, splintering their communities and breaking down their trust in adults."

Without the support of the international community, most of these children will carry these heavy emotional burdens into adulthood.

Humanitarian aid generally focuses on the concrete, what we can see, measure, build: Food, medicine, bricks, and mortar. Psychological trauma is invisible.

To address the mental health needs of war-affected children as they relate to future peace building goals, international interventions are being established with a focus on the complex interplay between children's psychological and social development. These "psychosocial" interventions support not just the emotional healing and development of compassion and empathy, but recognize the important dynamics between children and the social environment in which they form attachments, acquire a sense of belonging, and learn codes of pro-social behaviour.

For more information on psycho-social and trauma rehabilitation for war-affected children check out the non-profit organization, The Freedom to Thrive Foundation, devoted to providing these resources within refugee camps and at the community level in an evidence-based, culturally-sensitive, and community-informed manner.

-- Contributing Writer: Adriana Wilson, The Trauma & Mental Health Report

-- Chief Editor: Robert T. Muller, The Trauma & Mental Health Report

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The Invisible Trauma of War-Affected Children

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Reposted from the online magazine, "The Trauma & Mental Health Report" Eighteen million children are being raised in the chaos of war. In the past ten years, as a result of armed conflict, over 2 million children have been killed, 6 million have been disabled, 20 million are homeless, and more than 1 million have become separated from their caregivers.

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Our approach

We aim to reach children as early as possible when conflict breaks out, and stay on to support them-long after the TV cameras have gone home.We help keep them safe, give them an education, and equip them with skills for the future.We understand children's needs, respect their rights, and put them at the centre of everything we do. Whether it's helping Syrian children access education, rehabilitating ex-child soldiers in the Central African Republic or seeking justice for young people detained in Afghanistan.We also work with children and young people to change systems and practices that affect them. We campaign on the root causes of conflict, and we demand that children are at the centre of all humanitarian responses.Our vital, life-changing work covers four main areas:

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Our approach We aim to reach children as early as possible when conflict breaks out, and stay on to support them-long after the TV cameras have gone home.We help keep them safe, give them an education, and equip them with skills for the future.We understand children's needs, respect their rights, and put them at the centre of everything we do.

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For the teacher: School Resources about War Child

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For the teacher: School Resources about War Child

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War Child strongly believes in your right to privacy online.We work to ensure that any data which we hold on our supporters is securely protected and used appropriately.

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Our approach

We aim to reach children as early as possible when conflict breaks out, and stay on to support them-long after the TV cameras have gone home.We help keep them safe, give them an education, and equip them with skills for the future.We understand children's needs, respect their rights, and put them at the centre of everything we do. Whether it's helping Syrian children access education, rehabilitating ex-child soldiers in the Central African Republic or seeking justice for young people detained in Afghanistan.We also work with children and young people to change systems and practices that affect them. We campaign on the root causes of conflict, and we demand that children are at the centre of all humanitarian responses.Our vital, life-changing work covers four main areas:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our approach We aim to reach children as early as possible when conflict breaks out, and stay on to support them-long after the TV cameras have gone home.We help keep them safe, give them an education, and equip them with skills for the future.We understand children's needs, respect their rights, and put them at the centre of everything we do.

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