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The 1940 exodus has left the image of a stream of frightened families and individuals desperately fleeing the invader in the public memory, a brief moment of collective madness and social and state dislocation confined to the spring of 1940. The study of the exodus conducted on a departmental scale (Eure) offers a much more nuanced picture: at an individual level, we note the existence of strategies, often successful, to achieve a goal—reaching the home of a friend or relative, for example. Looking at social and administrative bodies, the role of public and associative organizations appears to have been essential in the management of refugee flows, particularly in the care of certain vulnerable refugees like hospital patients and children. Finally, it seems necessary to take into account larger time frames than the spring of 1940 to understand the logic of the exodus, which was ultimately an eminently plural experience.