Aspects of Life on the British Home Front

	This page: defiance and precautionary measures.
	Day-to-day life and conclusion.

Ethel Wappet was an Air Raid Warden in a village called Drybeck in Cumbria. She relished the responsibility this work entailed.

The declaration of war was greeted with none of the jubilation that had been witnessed in some parts of Britain in 1914. Memories of 'the war to end wars' were still fresh, whilst the destructive power of aerial bombing had been brought all too clearly to the public in the images of the Spanish Civil War. It was, however, also a nation largely resigned to the inevitability of conflict with Hitler's Germany,. J. D. Bones, remembered his teenage anxieties:

There had been so much talk of cities being bombed to smithereens nobody knew what to expect. I went out into the garden, the sun was shining out of a blue sky with little white clouds, a lovely sunny day. I stood there and wondered what would happen.

The extension of state intervention was more rapid than in the Great War, and was based upon a series of preparatory measures that had been set in train since Munich in 1938. New government departments were established, including Economic Warfare, Information, Food, Home Security and Shipping. Conscription was introduced for men aged between 18 and 40, a blackout was imposed, gas masks had been distributed and the evacuation of over 700,000 children had already begun.

Ethel Wappet's ARP box, still in perfect condition. It was donated to the Centre by her niece, Maureen Quinn in 2002.

Dennis Vernals witnessed changes in Sheffield's daily life that were mirrored in towns and cities across the land:

A blackout came into force. Young children were being evacuated into the country. All cinemas, theatres and places where people gathered in large numbers were closed. All schools, colleges and the university were closed.

Any excitement such changes sparked was soon dissipated and the sense of anti-climax that overtook him echoed the general mood.

The blackout was undoubtedly the most visible transformation brought about by the early months of war and one that brought great inconvenience. Every home had to ensure that not a chink of light was visible. Any negligence in this respect would be rewarded by a visit from the police or a member of the Air Raid Wardens Service, which had been established in 1937, when the British government had begun to confront the real possibility of war. "Put that light out!" was the usual command to any transgressor. A source of irritation for some and of humour for others, the blackout also had tragic consequences, as it was through deaths on the road rather than bombing that the War struck its early civilian victims.

The greatest social upheaval occasioned by the early days of war resulted from evacuation, which had gained momentum in the summer of 1939, as people sought refuge from probable target towns and cities. By early September, as many as 3,750,000 individuals were estimated to have joined the exodus. The official movement of children and mothers with children under five began two days prior to the declaration of war. Despite Government encouragement to participate, the evacuation schemes proved generally less popular than anticipated. For those who were evacuated, however, there began an adventure that was far happier for some than for others.

Little consideration was given to the appropriateness of the billeting households to receive the evacuees - housing the children anywhere that could be found was the only consideration. The random nature of the billeting meant that there were many social and cultural clashes between foster families and their charges. Particularly apparent was the class divide. The experience of evacuation exposed the gulf between the 'haves' and 'have nots' of the 1930s.

Evacuation had turned out to be a failure. By early 1940, huge numbers of mothers and children had flocked back home. Families had found it difficult being separated; poorer families could not bear the costs involved in visiting, or meet the demands for extra cash from some foster families; and the tensions between evacuees and their hosts sometimes proved insoluble.

In April 1940, the 'phoney' war had ended and by June Britain stood alone. Only the spirit of Dunkirk appeared to give the people something positive to focus on, and it was invoked regularly, in the propaganda of summer 1940, to galvanise the nation for the struggles ahead. A new leadership was also in place to lead this fight. The Chamberlain government had come under increasing criticism for a lack of urgency in its response to the war emergency and had finally fallen in May 1940. Winston Churchill headed the new Coalition.

Everyone understood that Britain would be the next to face the German onslaught, and defeatist talk was to be heard. J. D. Bones found this negative attitude in some older men at work, veterans of 1914-1918:

They just said there was nowhere to fight now. They were conditioned to the fighting in trenches like the First World War, but I remember we younger ones were most indignant at the thought of giving in.

Despite Britain's isolation, it appears that the more positive attitude was by far the prevalent view. There was a feeling that Britain, unencumbered by Allies, could now face the enemy and draw on the experience of having beaten them once before. One man was heard to observe, "Anyhow, sir, we're in the Final, and it's to be played on the Home Ground".

Britain was now on full invasion alert and a raft of precautions and defensive measures were set in place. In Falmouth, Frank Colenso was one of a number of local boys, whose familiarity with the local area made them ideal recruits for the cycling patrols. They rode silently through the darkness, "looking for the unusual". Spy fever gripped the nation, and propaganda warned the populace that 'dangerous talk costs lives'.

Among those British citizens most actively engaged in the building of Britain's defences were the members of the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard). Anthony Eden had made the call for volunteers on 14 May. The response had been immense, with around one and a half million men coming forward by the end of the following month.

Initially, if the Home Guard had any weapons at all, they were armed with .22 Lee Enfields, familiar to those who had seen service in the first war. Later, Britain took delivery of rifles from North America, which ensured that more Home Guard units became armed. Frank Colenso, who, aged sixteen, had graduated from the cycling patrols to the Home Guard, began practising with a Lee Enfield and was then given his own .300 Springfield. He regularly attended weapons practice with other enthusiastic young recruits:

We practised with live grenade throwing (Mills bomb) and also used cup-dischargers, fitted to our rifle muzzles, which would project a Mills grenade, fitted with a base disc to fit the cup, quite an extended range, being propelled by a special cartridge, but it was a bit hard on the old WWI rifle stocks, giving quite a kick. We enjoyed the shooting on the rifle ranges ... once our developing sixteen-year-old shoulders got toughened to the powerful recoil of our .303 and .300 cartridges. I often carried off the first, second or third prize - the money (only a couple of bob maybe) coming from the tuppence we all had put into a kitty. It was an incentive to improve our aim.

Later, his Springfield rifle was replaced by a Canadian Ross and he found that, "with its unusual, quick, straight bolt action, I could loose off very rapid shots at the same target with good results ... On the other hand, I could do badly, when gasping for breath after a hundred yard run in gas mask, with eye-piece steamed up and askew, and miss the target altogether".

In the summer of 1940, guerrilla units, The Secret Army, had been set up by the Home Guard, to undertake sabotage operations. They were equipped with high explosives and had a network of weapons dumps and hideouts. In October 1942, Colenso transferred to a guerrilla platoon, taking part in his first exercise: "Ambushed the other platoon. Shot! ... Not bad. Blacked out face with burnt cork and wore my 'Commando' woolly hat".

Ethel Wappet's Civil Defence arm band and badge.

The Battle of Britain, which began in July 1940, raged on through August and September, with the dogfights often taking place in full view of the people on the ground. The crux came on 15 September, when the RAF successfully broke up a large German bomber offensive on the capital. Although the daylight raids continued into October, any German plans for an invasion had now been abandoned, and the focus of German tactics shifted to night-time bombing - the Blitz.

The initial raids centred on London and the capital bore the brunt throughout the Blitz, but the Luftwaffe also hit several other British cities. In November 1940, the devastating attack on Coventry took the British air defences by surprise. Barbara Davies, directed to Coventry on war work, was struck by the scale of destruction that awaited her:

The Calderdale area had not suffered from any air raids. We had heard on the radio about the devastation of bomber raids on our cities but nothing had prepared me for the shock of Coventry.

The bombing of Coventry, with its ruined Cathedral, became emblematic of the provincial Blitz. By May 1941, however, Hitler's bombs had struck Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff, Birmingham, Southampton, Bristol, Portsmouth, Bath, Plymouth, Exeter, Nottingham, Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesborough, Hull, Ipswich and Norwich.

The emergency services were augmented by civilians who had to register to join the fire, police, ambulance or civil defence services. Dennis Vernals chose the fire service and was employed as a messenger. As soon as the sirens sounded he had to report to the station and go out with one of their fire appliances. He acted as a runner for the Officer-in-Charge.

On the whole, the Blitz united people in a sense of community spirit, in defiance of the enemy action. By the middle of 1941, it was clear that bombing was not going to break Britain. The Blitz ended in May 1941. The Luftwaffe's raids were not over, but the worst was certainly past. However, a new terror arrived later in the War, for those living in the south, in the shape of the German V bombs. As in the Blitz, although there was understandable fear, with both the V1s and the V2s the people, by and large, adopted a fatalistic "if your name's on it" attitude.

Morale had generally held up. There had been slumps, sometimes occasioned by wild rumours about the casualty rates. In the early days of the Blitz, when it looked like the East End was going to bear the brunt, there were real signs of a collapse. Churchill and the King and Queen were booed on some of their visits to the bombed areas. But, as the Luftwaffe spread its attention into west London and the suburbs, the tension was relieved. Even Buckingham Palace was bombed. There was a real sense that all classes were suffering together.

Article by Ian Whitehead.

	This page: defiance and precautionary measures.
	Day-to-day life and conclusion.