Thanks, Beryl, tell us more about where you landed up and what you can remember of it.
The history books tell us that there were three main, official evacuations from the big cities. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the assumption was that any war would immediately result in widespread and devastating aerial attacks on centres of population. That was why the first evacuation took place from 1st September 1939, immediately that war looked wholly inevitable. It was of course a false alarm as the Luftwaffe stayed its hand for many, many months - the period of the "Phoney War" or the "Bore War" - and gradually two-thirds of the evacuees drifted back home over the next two or three months. The second evacuation, more the real thing and longer lasting, started on 13th May 1940, three days after the Germans attacked Belgium, Holland and France, and continued into July 1940. The third significant evacuation started in late June/early July 1944 and was sparked off by the first V1 attacks; it was more of a London thing, compared with the first two which were nationwide, and I assume that it barely affected Birmingham.
These were the official evacuations which involved some 1.5m. people in the first, 1.25m. in the second and around 1m. in the third. Of the three-quarters of a million unaccompanied children who were in the first evacuation, around half a miilion stayed away throughout 1940 and 1941 and their numbers only started to reduce early in 1942. Nevertheless a substantial number of children were still classified as "unaccompanied" and remained absent until well into 1945. Alongside all these childrens and sometimes their mothers and vulnerable adults, there were huge numbers of people involved in unofficial movements when individual families made their own arrangements, whole schools transferred to the countryside and some families even sent their children overseas, to the USA, Canada and Australia. One estimate suggests that there might have been an additional 2 million people involved in this further exodus.
But of course it is the official evacuations which are best recorded: those which involved the movement of children, often unaccompanied, who left their inner city areas, had a label tied on to them, were loaded onto trains and at the other end faced the great unknown. There must be many more experiences of the Birmingham evacuations amongst forum members and let's hope we hear some of them. (And in fact, whilst I have been typing this, mariew has set the ball rolling!)
Chris