How Greatly Were The Lives Of British Civilians Affected During World War II?By Laura Cleland
With
permission; Laura is a former pupil of Greenfield School -
this essay was done as piece of GCSE coursework.
Gas
(Start
of the war, A
nuisance, ...and
children, ...and babies,
Post boxes); Evacuation
(Emotional
effects, Evacuation
myths, ...and
adults, ...and
the children); Rationing
(Food, Effects,
Poor
and rich, Black
Market, Farmers
myth, Clothes,
Water);
Women’s
Work –
(Land Army,
Munitions work,
Women myth, Conscientious Objectors,
Effects on Women,
WVS, Air-Raid
Wardens); Home
Guard; Air-raids (Fires,
Carrying on…, Effects of the Blitz,
...and children,
Anderson Shelters,
Morrison Shelters,
School Shelters, Public Shelters,
The Underground,
Coventry – effects,
Myths of the Blitz);
Blackout; Conclusion |
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There
is no doubt that people had a hard time during the war, due to things like
rationing and bombing. But
just how much did each of these things affect the lifestyle of each
individual living in Britain. It
is impossible to say that everyone’s life changed in the same ways.
For example the lifestyle of a woman living in London would change
in a completely different way to that of a woman living in the
countryside. She would have
to put up with losing her children due to evacuation while the country
women would have to put up with gaining children due to evacuation.
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The
government were expecting to be bombed for years. They estimated that 100,000 bombs would be dropped on
London alone within the first fortnight.
They started to prepare for all the injuries and deaths.
Hospitals started to clear their beds to make room for all the war
casualties. Coffin factories
started to pour out cardboard coffins instead of wooden ones, as they were
cheaper and quicker to make. The
government ordered huge lime pits to be dug for mass burials.
These must have been quite upsetting changes.
Before the war people buried their relatives in a wooden coffin in
their own plot. Now, during
the war, they were going to have to bury them en masse, in cardboard
coffins, which would rot away very quickly.
It seemed as if the government did not care about the dead anymore,
only living people counted. This
was a great emotional change for people living during the war as well as
quite a. big physical change.
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Another
preparation for war was against gas.
The government issued over forty million gas masks. The masks were to protect the British people from the
horrible mustard gas, or Lewisite, that had killed so many troops in the
First World War. On Monday
4th September 1939 they ordered everyone always to carry their gas masks.
Everyone set off for work carrying the buff coloured cardboard
boxes on their backs. |
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Throughout
the war peoples’ attitudes to gas masks changed. When they first got them everyone carried their gas masks
from a sense of duty, but soon people began to get sick of lugging the
masks around. The lost
property at train stations became full of purposely forgotten gas masks.
To try and stop people from leaving their gas masks at home cinemas
wouldn’t allow people in if they were not carrying their gas mask with
them. This was a another
change but not such a big one. |
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To
begin with when you went to the cinema you had to take a gas mask with
you. However this did not
have a major effect on the public as they soon stopped not letting people
in when they weren’t carrying their gas mask.
The only place that kept up the obligation was the Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre, Stratford on Avon.
One land girl cycled to the theatre one afternoon and being
scrutinised by a commissionaire managed to pass a friend’s camera box as
her gas mask box. Another man
and his family were turned away because they weren’t able to be as
deceptive as the girl. |
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Having
to carry a gas mask around with you all the time was a nuisance if you
were an adult but if you were a child it was fun, if a bit cumbersome.
One boy remembers: |
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"The
rubber fitted really tightly around your
face. If you blew
into the mask you could make great
farting noises", |
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The
gas mask smelt of rubber and steamed up when you breathed into it.
One girl called Margaret, from Bishop Auckland, remembers
practising an air raid once: |
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"We
put up the seats and squeezed under.
The trouble was I held my breath
because no one had told us you
were allowed to breathe in the gas
masks, then when you did breathe,
you felt sick because of the build up
of fumes from the materials they
used," |
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The
gas masks were all very well for protecting people against the gas but
then the government found out about Arsine, in May 1940, and had to take
in all the gas masks and fit them with a Contex filter.
It was a bit like a small tobacco tin fastened to the end of the
mask with adhesive tape. This
was another small change which entailed a lot of hard work during the war.
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Some
children were scared of the gas masks so the government made them look
like Mickey Mouse. They then
had to be changed to fit on the new filter.
The gas masks had quite an emotional effect on children as they
were very scared of them. They
were too young to understand how they worked and that is why they did
things like Margaret and didn’t breathe in them.
It was a big change for a child to go suddenly from only carrying
around their school kit to having to carry around a gas mask that they had
to keep practising putting on. |
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Babies
had to be protected from gas as well.
They didn’t have gas masks
like everyone else, they had a whole suit to wear.
Someone had to stand and pump air into the suit all the time
otherwise the baby would suffocate. My
Gran remembers how she got my Uncle used to his: |
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"I
would put him in it for about
half-an-hour each day, just after he
had had his tea.
At first he screamed and screamed
but he became use to it after
a while. The only
problem was that where we were living
at the time there was no fear
of us being attacked by gas so
I had to put my son through
that terrifying experience every night for
no real reason" |
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This
was a frightening change if you were a baby.
You would be used to your normal comfortable clothes then have to
wear a horrible suit that probably hurt, and would be very uncomfortable.
If your mother was not pumping enough air into it then it would
have been very difficult to breathe.
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Another
change that the government made to prepare Britain for a gas attack was to
paint the pillar boxes in a different type of paint.
Instead of the ordinary red pillar boxes they painted them in a
yellow paint. When there was
gas in the air it would change colour and the air raid wardens would know
that there was gas around and could warn people to put their gas masks on.
They would do this by walking through the streets with a clapper.
You had to wear the gas mask until the all clear was given.
Having the pillar boxes painted a different colour did not really
affect people at all. They
would still be able to post their mail the same way as usual but one thing
to do with mail that did affect people was that it was censored.
You could not send letter they way you used to be able to.
It was an invasion of privacy in a way but it was for the good of
the British people. If a spy
got a hold of important information about were the armies were stationed
then it could ruin a lot of things. My gran remembers how my grandad managed to tell her where
he was without anyone else knowing. |
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"We
used to have a secret code that
only I and you grandfather knew.
He would write me letters from
all over the place and I would
be able to tell exactly where he
was and what had happened to his
group" This
was quite a big change for the British population. Before they had been used to being able to write letters to
anyone saying whatever they liked. Now
nothing was really private. |
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Among
the preparations for the bombing of Britain was evacuation.
This had an enormous emotional effect on families.
It was a huge change for both children who were evacuated and hosts
who took in the evacuees. The
government made plans to evacuate children over 5, mothers with children
under 5, pregnant women and disabled people.
They decided that they would be safer in the country rather than in
the big cities. It would also
leave fewer mouths to feed and fewer injured and dead to deal with from
the bombing that was expected. The
government divided the country up into three different areas.
The areas were the evacuation areas, the neutral areas and the
reception areas. An
announcement was made on the radio on the 31st August 1939, informing all
parent’s that the following day would be the beginning of evacuation. A Jewish women remembers having to wake her children up at
5.30 am to get them ready. She
remembers the tears of her eight year old daughter and how her sister only
a year older took it so well. |
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The
emotional effect throughout the entire period of evacuation was gigantic.
Neither the children nor their mothers knew where they would end
up. Alan Burrell remembers
leaving his home town: |
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"I
thought it was a Sunday School outing
down to the seaside.
And I looked out of the bus
window and I saw my mother crying
outside and I said to my brother,
"What’s Mummy crying for?" and
my brother said "Shut up". ‘ |
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The
pain and fear that both mothers and children felt on September 1st 1939
would have stayed with them for the rest of their lives. |
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On
the other hand there is evidence that some children were really looking
forward to going away. One
boy remembers the train journey as being a great new experience for him.
He talks about the fact that he had never been out of his own town
before and now due to evacuation he was going on the journey of his life.
He was seeing things like cows and living in the country he was
learning where milk really did come from.
"So it’s no just made in a bottle then?" Being
evacuated to some people was the best experience of their lives while for
others it was the most traumatic one ever.
One girl was very grateful for evacuation: |
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"/
thank God I was evacuated: not because
I avoided danger… But because it changed
my way of thinking.
It made me love the country.
I could never live in town again.
I know that I found refuge...
after an unhappy home life." |
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Many
children became homesick. It
was a big change for them to go from their ordinary everyday life to live
with strangers. They did not
know how they would be treated, what was expected of them.
Carries War is a book about an evacuee and her brother.
They go to live with a family in Wales.
The man is very strict and tells them off a lot.
They are only allowed to walk on the stair carpet once a day as it
might wear it out. They are
not used to this but the girl tries her best to keep the man happy. Although this book is fictional it is written by an evacuee
and she shares some of her experiences in it.
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Evacuation
changed throughout the war. In
the beginning there were millions of children evacuated but then when
there was no bombing between September and Christmas parents took their
children home. Some children
were evacuated again the next year while others who hadn’t come home
stayed out in the country for all of the war.
Some children came home themselves: |
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"Micky
and I walked home with the odd
lift we thumbed. My
mum opened the door and nearly fainted.
"What you doin’ here," she said.
"Your Dad’ll kill you!" (Jim
Willis, London.) |
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There
are a lot of myths about evacuation.
One of them is that the evacuated children were all dirty, and that
they never used the toilet. |
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"The
children went around urinating on the
walls. Although we
have two toilets." |
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This
is not true about all evacuees as some children were very clean and were
disgusted with some of the hosts views of evacuee’s: |
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"How
I wish the common view of evacuees
could be changed...
It is just as upsetting for a
clean well-educated child to find itself
in a grubby semi-slum as the other
way round" |
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There
is also a myth about most hosts treating their evacuees as slaves: |
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"A
few hosts... treated
their evacuees as guests or as they
were their own children but the majority
treated the girls as unpaid maids".
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This
may have been true in a few cases but there are plenty of memories to say
that this was not generally the case.
In Carries War, Carrie talks of working in her host’s shop.
She says that she really enjoys the work and loved helping her
hosts stack the shelves. |
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Another
over-exaggerated myth was that people only picked the pretty girls and the
big strong boys. "Children
were picked if they were the cleanest
and the poorest were always left
till last" |
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"Big
boys who looked sensible and useful
were quickly chosen".
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Obviously
when a farmer needed a big boy for his farm work he would take him but a
woman MP describes how women in moorland villages in Durham |
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"Went
home weeping because they had not
a child allocated to them" |
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Also
a man MP recalls how he would regularly see fights e.g. one time, on North
Wales station two men fought for the privilege to take home two Liverpool
boys. |
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Evacuation affected people in different ways.
It had a great emotional impact on the mothers who were sending
their children away, not knowing whether they would ever see them again,
or whether they were going to be looked after properly.
The hosts were also greatly affected.
They had been used to sharing their house with family and then
suddenly they had an extra child or two living with them.
They could be a very dirty family and get a very clean child or
they could be a very clean family and get a dirty child.
One quote that sums up evacuation came from a headmistress at
Chepstow school: |
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"One
half of Britain at least is learning
how the other half lives’. |
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The
people that were affected the most by evacuation were the children.
They were torn away from their families at such a young age.
They had no idea what was happening to them.
They were scared not only by the journey but little things like the
labels they had to wear. It
made them feel as though they had lost their identity: |
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"Our
labels were pinned on and I felt
sick... I felt I
was leaving my name and identity
behind when we left." |
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How
a child of 5 was expected to cope with the change they faced through
evacuation is hard to imagine. Evacuation
affected most people a great deal. |
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At
the two extremes there were a few children who were not evacuated at all
and a few who where evacuated completely out of the country for example to
stay with relatives in America. Evacuation
was not compulsory but at the time it seemed like the best thing.
Today you would not even consider packing a five year old’s
suitcase and sending him or her off on a long train journey to somewhere,
hoping that they would find a home. |
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Evacuation
also affected children’s education.
The schools had to close down in areas where there was heavy
bombing expected. Some
children would only be at school for half a day a week.
Also children had to stay off to look after younger brothers and
sisters as their mothers would be out at work.
The war disrupted children’s education.
When they were evacuated they would have to share schools with
other children. Sometimes
they used chapels and churches to hold lessons. It
was difficult to go from a class full of all your friends to a class where
you hardly knew anyone. Sometimes
the other children would be nasty to you.
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"They
are not friendly when you start going
to their schools" |
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So
evacuation was a huge change, with great emotional and physical effects on
people and it also carried an awful lot of myths with it.
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Throughout
the course of the war British imports became disrupted. This meant that food, clothes and other materials that
Britain imported became more and more difficult to get a hold of.
The price of food rose making it possible for only the rich to
afford. The essential foods
were snatched up by the rich very quickly leaving the poor people with
very little choice but to starve. The government decided that the only way to stop this was
to make sure all the food was shared out equally. It was called rationing and it was used towards the end of
the First World War. |
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At
the same time the government took steps to make Britain more self
sufficient by producing more of it’s own food which could be then shared
out equally among the British population.
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The
government set up a Ministry of Food.
People who worked there knew a lot about food as they were already
from the food industry. They
knew how long things could be stored and how to store them. Stuart Robertson, worked for the Ministry of Food in London
and he thought that "it was a very practical
ministry" It had a radio programme that was on every morning after
the eight o’clock news, it was called Kitchen Front.
Mothers would sit and listen for all the tips on how to cook
healthy meals with very little. They
tried to get people to eat as many potatoes and carrots as they could.
There was no shortage of root vegetables and plus "carrots
help you to see in the dark,
so they would be very useful during
the Blackout". |
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Before
rationing was enforced the government sent out application forms to every
household asking them to fill in details of every person living in that
house. When the forms were
handed in at the local food office you would be issued with a ration book
was issued for each person. During
the war everyone was issued with an identity card, or national
registration number. This was
one way the government made sure that there were no spies about.
This was yet another change although it did not affect peoples’
lives very much. On the front
of the ration book would be a number that corresponded to the owners
national registration number. The
ration book also carried a serial number and a stamp which was the region
and local office number. D.Fuller
remembers his mother’s ration book’s: "My mother’s
ration books were L86. L for London and 86 for the
food office in Wimbledon" |
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Rationing
was a massive change and it greatly affected almost the entire population.
Both adults and children. You
could no longer go to a store and get whatever you wanted.
You had to carry your ration book and get it
stamped.
If you were pregnant then you could get extra things.
You could get an extra pint of milk for only 2 pence and special
orange Juice, which could be used on pancakes instead of lemon juice.
Children were the most greatly affected by rationing, or a least
they though that at the time. They
actually weren’t really affected all that much. Sweets were rationed.
They were allowed 2 ounces (56.7g) per week. One girl remembers |
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"We
ate them all right away, but my
brother Gerald used to hoard his
in a cardboard box.
We used to drool over his box,
but he wouldn’t let us have any.
Then he got a girlfriend and
he gave her a bar of chocolate!"
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Children
thought that rationing was hard as they couldn’t eat as much as they I
wanted when they wanted |
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Rationing
affected the rich and the poor in different ways. For poor people rationing was a saviour.
Suddenly from being very poor and not being able to afford enough
food for their families they had adequate food and a healthy diet.
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"‘The
poorest people in Britain were best
off during the war”.
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For
rich people it was not a good time. They
were used to being able to go into a shop and buy everything they wanted
whenever they wanted it. Due
to rationing they could no longer do this.
They had to live the same way as everyone else.
They had to share the food around.
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This
was obviously a great change for them.
It didn’t hurt them to share the food around.
In fact it was they probably had a healthier diet.
One quote sums up what happened during rationing |
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"The
poor became richer and the rich became
poorer" |
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One
way for people to obtain extra food was the black market.
It sold illegal, stolen food.
People would break into factories and steal thousands of pounds’
worth of goods. |
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"We
had a well known factory broken into
one weekend. Thousands
of pounds’ worth of stockings were
stolen, and they found their way
on to the London black market"
(J. Joiner, Leicester
CID), |
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People
stealing things from trains became very common. "In 1941, about £1 million’s
worth of goods was stolen".
People just wanted to have that little bit extra.
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With
rationing came a lot of hard work. To
begin with people had to grow their own food and keep their own animals in
their back gardens. Women had
to say goodbye to their beautiful flowers and hello to an ugly vegetable.
This had no emotional effect on people but it left them with more
work
to do as they had to look after their vegetables because if they didn’t
they’d have nothing to eat. This
was part of the Dig for Victory. |
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There
was meat available but it was rationed.
Bacon was one of the first foods to be rationed along with sugar
and butter. The government
said "that people can do without some
things but in order to live needed
others". Because
meat was a food that you had to eat some of to stay healthy it was
rationed. If you wanted to
have more meat then you had to look after your own animals.
People would keep chickens, ducks, geese and hens at the end of
their gardens to kill and cook themselves.
This was quite a big change and more hard work as people had to
feed the animals and look after them.
Often when it came to the time to kill them they had become so used
to having the animals around that they found it difficult.
The animals became family pets instead.
One woman remembers |
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"We
had a chicken living in our back
garden. The children
and I became so fond of it that
when we went to kill we didn’t
have the heart. We
had too eat loads of vegetables to
make up for it" |
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One
myth was that farmers were hardly affected by rationing. The petrol rationing was the only thing that affected them.
This was not true at all. Sir
Emrys Jones, a War Cultivation Officer, said that during the war farmers
went through "...more changes probably than
in the whole history of agriculture,"
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Before
the war Britain imported 60% of it’s food.
During the war this number changed dramatically.
By 1945 Britain was only importing 30% of its food.
This left even more work for farmers.
They had never been so busy. "Plough
Now! By Day and Night’ was a slogan
used to encourage farmers to work harder and longer hours.
This caused a change to the machinery that the farmers used.
The ploughs were fitted with lights so that the farmers could work
later at night and earlier in the morning.
A lot more farming machines were invented, which made farmers more
productive. |
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It
was not only food that was rationed during the war clothes were also
rationed from the 1st June 1941. You
would get coupons and have to buy an outfit using the coupons, for example
a shirt was five coupons and a jacket was thirteen.
You had to use your coupons not only for clothes but linen as well.
Each person would get 60 clothes coupons a year which changed
through the war to 48. You could get children’s sandals without coupons.
Betty Brown remembers: |
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“On
Saturday mornings, we used to queue up in front of Doggarts to see if
they
had any sandals in.
They used to get them in once
a week. You could
get kids’ sandals without coupons"
(Bishop Auckland) |
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People
would only be able to buy a few outfits a year. They were told "One simple jersey
can do the work of several if
you wear a necklace one day, none
the next and with rolled up sleeves’.
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People
swapped clothes and mended old ones.
Once a jumper became too small you made it into something else.
My gran remembers buying her son some trousers in the winter time.
When they became too short for him to wear as trousers she simply
cut some of the legs off and made them into summer shorts.
With the remainder of the material she fixed patches on other
clothes. You didn’t throw
things away. One slogan that
was put out by the Board of Trade was "Make-Do and Mend"
If something could be fixed then they fixed it.
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This
was quite a big change for people who before the war had been used to just
throwing things out when they were too small. They now went to clothes swap shops and swapped an old
small coat for an old big coat. It
was actually quite a practical solution.
Obviously when your child is growing they are going to need a lot
of new clothes. It meant that
you didn’t have to keep buying new clothes since you could keep swapping
for sizes which fitted. |
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Another
thing that was rationed was water. This
was because there was a shortage of fuel, which was also rationed, heated
water had to be rationed. |
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"As
part of your personal share in the
Battle for Fuel you are asked to
NOT exceed five inches of water in
the bath" (Notice issued by the Ministry of Fuel for
display in hotel bathrooms, October 1942).
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This
was a hard change for people who were used to having a nice hot deep bath
and now had to have a shallow colder bath.
Families probably all shared the same bath water.
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So
rationing affected most of the population to a greater of lesser extent.
Poor people became better off and rich people became worse off.
Children although they thought sweet rationing was very harsh
weren’t really affected too badly.
They had to learn to eat vegetables and like them.
It made them a lot healthier as they were eating less sweets and
more vegetables. Farmers were
affected quite a lot even though people think that it was only petrol
rationing that affected them. They
had to work long hard hours and hire other labourers to work for them.
Rationing was in many ways very good for Britain.
There was a lot less waste, people learned to share and make do
with what they had and generally ate a healthier diet.
The government managed to save a lot of people’s lives by
rationing foods. |
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During
the war it was not only people and animals that were affected by
rationing, the landscape was affected too.
Ten million acres of grassland were ploughed up to plant corn in
it’s place. Then it was
realised that there weren’t enough farmers to look after it, so the
government invented the Land Army. Women
went to work in the Land Army. |
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A
woman’s lifestyle changed dramatically during the war.
Before the war there was a great deal of unemployment, men went to
work and the women stayed at home. During
the war the men had to go and fight, so there were a lot of jobs that
needed to be filled and who better to fill them than the women.
The types of jobs that they did were farm work, munitions work,
factory work, working on buses and some even worked in steel mills. Women were given a chance during the war that they hadn’t
had before - to prove to the men that they were just as good at working as
the men were. |
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Some
of the jobs that the women did were very dangerous especially the work in
a munitions factories. They
could be blown up at any minute. They
also worked very long hours, for very little pay.
If you weren’t married then you could be posted anywhere in the
country if you worked in a munitions factory. |
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One
of the myths of war work was that everyone was happy to do their bit.
This was true in some cases. Many
women loved being given the chance to work even if it did mean little pay.
However some employers decided to take advantage of the women
workers. They made them work
longer hours than they were supposed to and cut their\l wages.
The employees didn’t like this and all sorts of arguments went on
in Y factories. One woman had
to change jobs a few times because she refused to work for the amount of
pay she was given. |
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People
who refused to fight were called conscientious objectors.
They were either made to work or put into jail.
The jobs they did were not ~ very nice so the feeling was that the
conditions were better out fighting than being at home working.
They were usually put down the mines.
One man remembers how proud he was when he used to come up from the
mines at the end of the week. |
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"lf
we had reached our weekly target of
coal then the flag would be flying
when we reached the top of the
tunnel. It made
us feel so proud standing there knowing
that even though we weren’t fighting
we were doing our bit for the
war”. |
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This
made the miners feel as if they had done their part for the war effort.
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The
war created a lot of new jobs. The
Land Army, the W.V.S, an Air Raid warden and the Home Guard were all new
jobs in Britain. Anyone who
worked for them experienced a great change.
The Land Army was set up to help farmers with rationing. It was made up of women.
By 1943 nearly 80,000 women had joined the Women’s Land Army.
They filled the men’s jobs as they were away fighting.
They worked on tractors, milked cows, planted potatoes and dug
ditches. Most women enjoyed
working for the Land Army even though it meant long hard hours for very
little pay. The women were
issued with clothes |
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"We
were issued with special clothing which
was quite smart and all good quality
stuff. We had a
green tie and green pullover,
fawn corduroy breeches and thick fawn
socks up to the knee.
We had brown strong boots but
we couldn’t wear them, they were
too hard. We had
a beigy-brown three-quarter length topcoat,
but wore fawn overalls when we were
working" |
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This
was another great effect for women. Yet
again they were being allowed to work.
They were being given a chance.
The Land Army changed their lives greatly. Instead of being in the busy cities they were out in the
fresh air. It was good for
their health and spirit. |
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A
service which was formed purely for women was the Women’s Voluntary
Service. They were mainly
older women. They did all
sorts of jobs like driving ambulances, running canteens at railway
stations, running nurseries for working mothers, knitting socks for the
soldiers and collecting metal for aeroplanes.
This service although it was voluntary would boost women’s
spirits immensely. The war
work that the women did affected them greatly.
For the first time they were being allowed to work and get paid for
it. Even though some companies did take advantage of the women,
the general feeling was that they enjoyed working. |
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Being
an air-raid warden meant that you had too have an up-to- date list of
inhabitants, particularly the very old and very young.
They handed out questionnaires to find out how many people were
living in each house and how many people they could put up if they needed
them. They issued gas masks
and checked things like whether people were complying with the 5 inches of
water in the bath rule and the blackout regulations.
Air-raid wardens wore helmets, eye shields, torches, whistles and
carried memo pads. They had to watch for fires and sound the siren if their
area was under attack. They
then had to give the all clear when the attack was finished. They watched for fires and went around searching for
trapped people after a raid. It
was not only men who worked as air-raid wardens, women did as well .
Barbara Nixon was one of them: |
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"/
was given a tin hat, whistle and
a Civil Defence respirator (gas mask).
The Post Warden took me on a
tour of the seventeen public shelters
in our area".
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Being
allowed to work was a massive change that affected the lives of women all
over Britain. If it wasn’t
for them who knows whether women would be working in highly paid jobs
today. It not only affected
the lives of the women then but has affected our lives today as well.
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The
Home Guard was for men of any age. Men
had to go and watch railways, roads, docks, coastlines, factories and all
centres of war production. It
was mainly older men who enlisted into the Home Guard.
At first they didn’t have a uniform.
They wore a bandage with L.D.V printed on it.
The didn’t have weapons either as they were all being used in
battle. They had table legs,
and a few weapons left over from World War One.
Eventually they got a uniform.
The men said that "It made us so proud
walking down the street in our uniforms.
Even though we were not outfighting
it made us feel as if we were
doing our bit." |
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One
of the most horrific experiences that a British civilian had to go through
was the bombing, which occurred in Britain throughout the war.
The Germans decided to terror bomb Britain.
This was repeated bombing in one place over a long period of time.
Lots of major cities and ports were wiped out by the Germans terror
bombing. |
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One
of the major bomb attacks was the Blitz.
London, was the first city on the Germans’ list to experience the
terror bombing. On 7th
September 1940 the Blitz began. One
air raid warden remembers that day being |
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"One
of those beautiful early autumn days
which feel like spring and can make
even London streets seem fresh and
gay" |
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Little
did he know at the time that for another 56 nights the Germans were going
to bomb it. The wail of
sirens was going to be heard through out London for a long time. On the first night London and it’s docks were attacked by
350 bombers which were escorted by 650 fighters.
They dropped over 300 tons of bombs on the defenceless British
civilians. They were not
prepared for such an attack. There
were 18,000 people killed or seriously injured that night. The first night of the Blitz was Known as "Black
Saturday" Houses were destroyed lives were ripped apart. It was a horrifying
shock
for the Londoners to come up from their air raid shelters and find their
houses destroyed. Entire
terraces became rubble in only a matter of hours.
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London
glowed from all the fires that were started from the small fire bombs.
These would make a clattering noise as they hit the ground.
The East end of London was badly hit one night.
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"We
saw a white cloud rising.. afire engine went by..
The cloud grew to such a size...
there could not ever in history
have been such a gigantic fire... nearly every fire appliance in
London was heading east." (Raiders
Overhead). |
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A
girl remember the fires in the east |
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"I
remember that I was cycling home
during a raid and I actually thought
that the sun was setting in the
EAST. It wasn’t
until later that I realised that
it was the docks on the Thames,
all burning" |
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The
fires not only destroyed people’s belongings, but they also destroyed
their lives. They no longer
had anywhere to live or any food, money or belongings.
Barbara Harrison remembers how one night she and her family were
asleep in their air raid shelter that was inside their house.
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"The
bombs dropped, ..flattening our house and
two others. We were
all fast asleep... We
started to choke on the brick-dust...
We all emerged full clad and
shod, and totally unscathed, into amazed
embraces of friends from up the road,
who took us back to their house
for the rest of the night".
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Everyone
was willing to lend a hand when people needed it most.
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One
of the common things said about the Blitz was that everyone got up and
carried on as usual. Even
though in one night 430 people had been killed and every railway line into
London was out of action, people still managed to get themselves to work
as usual. One girl remembers
how one morning she managed to get to work despite various obstructions |
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"The
tube was closed at Balham. I hitched a lift from a
lorry driver who took me to Elephant
and Castle and from there I walked
to the city...We were not allowed
to cross London Bridge..
Rubble and glass were all over
the place.,. Then
I crunched up to the office".
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It
may have been the case that some people did try to continue to work their
daily routine, but to say that "The people of London
awoke this morning and went to work
as usual, shops opened as usual and
everyone just got on with it"
was more propaganda than fact. |
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It
is obvious people who had lost everything, house and family, the night
before would not just go into work as usual.
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The
Blitz must have had an extremely traumatic effect on people.
They lost things from cups and saucers to their entire life, their
job, house and family in one night. It
must have been a tremendously upsetting, frightening experience.
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"After
six months’ quiet, it was frightening
to hear the anti-aircraft guns blazing
away during the nightly bombing raids’
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Even
though some people were absolutely petrified of the bombs there were some
who enjoyed the bombs. One
boy remembers being in his bedroom in Newgate Street, Bishop Auckland, and
the siren was going off. He
remembers watching a German bomber being chased up the street by a
Hurricane. They weren’t
firing but his father in a panic came to get him.
He remembers saying, |
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’No,
wait a bit, some more might be
coming.’ He reluctantly went down to
the cellar ‘hoping some more would
come the next night.’ |
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For
children the bombing changed their lives greatly. Not only was there evacuation but there were other things
happening to them as well. They
wouldn’t go to school much because of the raids and since they would
have to stay at home to look after younger brothers and sisters because
their mothers were at work. Children
were allowed a lot of freedom during the war.
They roamed the streets freely.
Parents were too busy with work, clearing damage and salvage to be
with their children all the time. The
children had an exciting time during the war as well as a scary one.
Boys seem to enjoy the war more than girls.
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"it
must have been an exciting time for
boys during the war as they used
to pretend they were Germans or Japanese
fighting the English.
My brother collected army badges and
belts, and swapped them with mates.
They revelled in it all." (Mrs.
E. Topping) |
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Also
they used to go and search through all the rubble looking for shrapnel.
They would make dens and clubs in the ruins of houses.
One boy remembers he was with his mother and father in the middle
of an air raid when his father discovered a hole in the back of the
shelter. They had to move. He
later remembered that his friends and his "War effort had
been to dig a Fox Hole (or
try) we had chosen the back of
the shelter" With children being allowed to roam free they
could do what they wanted. In
the above case this could have caused his family to die.
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At
first London was not prepared for all the bombing.
They couldn’t cope with all the casualties. |
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"People
who have lived here all their lives
don’t know the way outside their
doorstep. I have
never seen a place so beat.’
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To
protect the people from the bombing the government issued them with
Anderson Shelters. These were
metal shelters. You had to
dig a hole at the end of your garden and construct this metal house.
One girl remembers planting some tiger lily bulbs next to the
shelter. They never blossomed
once but when the shelter was removed ten years later they suddenly
blossomed. |
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They
weren’t very comfortable to stay in.
Some families would spend the whole night in them.
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"We
would have our evening meal then
go straight down into the air raid
sheltep= |
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Not
everyone would go into a shelter. Some
would go down into a cellar, Mrs Lindley’s remembers her cellar: |
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"At
home we had the cellar re-enforced
with timber-like pit-props and an emergency
exit coming out by the front door-step.
It was cosy down there with rugs
on the stone floor and easy chairs’
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A
survey in 1940 revealed that only 40% of Londoners took shelter during a
raid. The rest stayed in bed
or under the stairs. |
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Having
to get up three or four times a night and go and sleep in an uncomfortable
shelter was a huge change for the British.
They were used to spending a night in their own comfortable bed and
now they had to go outside and down to the shelter every time the siren
went off. Some people set up
the shelters in the house. One
boy remembers his front room shelter.
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"It
took up most of the front room
which was a bit annoying when I
wanted to run around, but it was
quite good for playing other things.,,
the best thing about it was being
able to climb on top of it
and use it as a stage to dance
on. It made a
lovely clanging noise when you jumped. Unfortunately dancing on top made
bits of rust drop off onto the
blankets’ |
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The
shelters were also put up in schools.
Children said that they didn’t use them much except in practices.
Schools would have air raid practices just like we have fire
drills. Sometimes they would
hold classes in them. Which
was an exciting change for the children and the teachers.
Instead of having their normal lessons in a classroom they would
have them in a small, concrete shelter.
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People
also sheltered in Public Shelters. Undergrounds
were used. People were sick
of having to get up two or three times a night they decided that if they
just went somewhere safe they could at least get a good night’s sleep.
People would go really early to the stations just to get a good
place to sleep. They would buy tickets and refuse to move from the station
or walk along the lines to the next station.
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"I
would scoot out of the train ahead
of my family and under the legs
of people, unravelling the three or
four scarves tied around me. I bagged any space I could
along the platform. "
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There
was about 60,000 people sheltering in London’s 79 Underground stations.
People would queue for ages. At
first the place was horrible to stay in "The stench was
frightful, urine and excrement mixed with
strong carbolic, sweat and dirty humanity". |
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Gradually
conditions got better, when the Salvation Army and the Women’s Voluntary
Service started to run shuttle services of buns and drinks.
On 3rd March 1943 there was an underground disaster, which had the
highest number of fatalities. 173
sheltering Londoners were crushed to death in a rush to take shelter from
an impending air raid. |
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Sheltering
publicly was a great change for people.
They had to share spaces and sleep with people that they didn’t
even know. It affected them
in the way that they had to put up with conditions they were not used to.
People’s sheltering techniques changed throughout the war.
At first they would go down into the shelter then some would go to
public shelters while others would just risk it at home in bed.
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London
was not the only place to be badly hit by the Germans monotonous bombing.
Coventry and other major industrial and important cities were also
badly hit. The raid on
Coventry started on 14th November. Compared
with London Coventry was small and compact.
That night the whole of the city was wiped out as swarms of bombers
attacked. 568 people were
killed, and 863 were seriously injured.
21 factories were bombed and 9 were damaged so much that people
could no longer work in them. Everything
was destroyed. This was "the
collapse of peoples ordinary lives". From that night everything was going to change.
People were told to "Boil all drinking water".
The telephones were dead. This
affected peoples lives greatly. They
were very frightened and did not know what was happening to them.
The factories had to start working very soon afterwards.
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"Some
of the factories were just covered
in tarpaulins. The
only heating would be from coke braziers. And they stuck at the machines
day and night , twelve hours at
a time, seven days a week"
(Jack Jones, Transport and General Workers’ Union). |
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This
backs up the feeling that people just got on with their lives during the
Blitz. |
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The
Blitz is absolutely full of myths. There
is one about when an air raid siren went off nobody ran to the shelters
they just walked, calmly. "It
was not done to run’.
This is obviously a myth as when people were scared they would
start to hurry to get to the shelter as fast as they could.
They would not just walk along as if they were out on a Sunday
afternoon stroll. If there were bombs dropping everywhere then they would run
to safety as quickly as possible or they would die. "You had to run for
your life when the bombs started
falling". I am
sure that if people thought it was a false alarm then they would walk
slower. One woman from Bishop
Auckland remembers: |
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"The
family used to hide in the cellars
when the sirens went off.
However, that day we realised that
grandad wasn’t there.
We rushed up in a panic to
look for him and there he was
standing on the street corner looking
into the sky and saying ‘It’s a
false alarm. I can’t
see any planes’ " He was in no rush to
take shelter. |
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Another
myth of the Blitz was that everyone worked together to help each other.
The British came together as one.
J.B Priestly said that "We all got on
very well together" |
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It
is almost certainly true that when people had been bombed their neighbours
would help them out but it was a bit much to say that everyone joined
forces. This was more
propaganda than fact. |
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So
the Blitz had a great effect on the lives of the British Civilians.
The bombing caused not only the loss and damage to property and
lives but a lot of emotional discomfort too.
People went through lots of changes.
They had shelters to go to and had to get up three or four times a
night to go to them. Some people’s sleeping arrangements changed dramatically.
They no longer slept in the privacy of their own house they slept
in public shelter, like train stations.
Some people lost everything they owned during the Blitz.
Children’s lives changed dramatically by the fact that they were
allowed to do pretty much what they liked.
They were given a lot of freedom but also a lot of
responsibilities. The Blitz had a huge effect on most British civilians and
changed their lives dramatically. There
were a few people who didn’t experience any bombing at all but they got
evacuees instead. So the
Blitz did really affect them as well.
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The
Blackout affected British peoples’ lives dramatically during the war.
The Blackout was introduced because the government thought that any
light being shone would show the German bombers where towns and factories
were. The blackout rules were
announced
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"All
windows, doors, skylights or openings which
would show a light must be screened
offso that no light can be seen
from outside. Do
not use a light in a room
unless the blind or curtain is drawn"
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People
had to buy big thick heavy curtains to cover all windows and doors.
Sometimes they didn’t have the material so they would just paint
the windows black. This was a
great change for people. Suddenly
they had complete blackness. They
weren’t allowed to let any light out so no light got in.
It affected people because they had to have their lights on in the
house earlier. |
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Street,
lights were turned off as they would show off an easy target for the
bombers. Cars had to have
their headlights blacked out. After
only a few weeks 4,000 people had been killed on the roads.
There more people killed on the roads than in the bombing.
They decided to make it safer they would leave little slits in the
headlights to let a little light through.
Traffic lights had tiny little slits in.
"Everything was inky black".
This was a great change for people.
They were used to being able to walk down the street and ‘ be
able to see where they were going when it was dark.
They could no longer do this.
Mr. Clare remembers
his mother’s story of how she was walking home alone one night and she
heard footsteps behind her. She
started to walk faster and so did the footsteps.
Eventually she started to run and when she finally got to her front
door she turned around to see her husband behind her.
He had been following her all along but she wasn’t able to see it
was him. The fact that people
didn’t know who else was out scared them.
It was very dangerous for a people to be walking around the street
alone at night. They didn’t
know whether they were about to fall down a hole or walk into something.
It was especially dangerous for women as they were wandering the
streets on their own and could not see who else was there.
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"At
first "doing the black-outs’ was
an exciting ritual every evening, but
when the novelty wore of it became
merely another chore" (K daughter of a
farmer from Sussex). This
shows how the blackout changed throughout the war.
People liked the excitement of being all in the dark but after a
while it was boring. |
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People
believed the idea that the bombers could see any tiny amount of light so
much that they didn’t even light a cigarette in the streets |
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The
Air- Raid wardens checked that the Blackout procedures were being
followed. If they weren’t
then the offenders were fined. |
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The
Blackout affected the British people greasy.
They could no longer have the light on with the curtains open, have
car lights on, light a cigarette in the street or feel safe walking the
streets at night. The
government decided to paint lampposts and kerbs white so that they were
more visible during the night. Another
change was that cows were painted with white stripes, because they
sometimes wandered onto the roads and if they were all black you
wouldn’t be able to see them. |
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Above
are the main things that affected people during the war.
There were many other things that contributed to changing
people’s lives during the war. For
example propaganda affected peoples’ lives greatly during the war.
Everything was positive trying to keep the British people’s hopes
up. The government didn’t
want their own country turning against them so they produced masses and
masses of posters, newsreels and radio broadcasts to keep their people
going. Entertainment is
another thing that changed during the war.
People went out more to films.
Even though the cinemas were shut for awhile.
There were more parties. Woman
had more babies throughout the war as there was a chance that they
wouldn’t see their husbands again.
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The
war affected the lives of British civilians a lot in some cases and not so
much in others. Everyone was
affected though. Lots of
peoples’ lives changed in so many ways throughout the war.
They turned their lives upside down to stay alive.
It is impossible to say that everyone was affected in the same way
because this is not completely true.
Each individual was affected to a greater or lesser extent in their
own individual way. |
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