Welfare and food supply were also overhauled. By autumn 1941 there were 14,000 Rest Centres countrywide capable of holding 5 per cent of the population, and plans to expand capacity to 8 per cent together with permanent hostels for around 200,000 people. The Ministry of Food took responsibility for the provision of food in all shelters accommodating more than 200 people. Detailed regulations were issued for shelter canteens: they could be open during the evening until 10.30 p.m., serving only hot food that could be held in the hand, to prevent the demand for mass feeding. In a ‘poor borough’ cheap tea, pies and buns were recommended; in a ‘better-off borough’ higher-priced coffee might also be served as well as tea, but no buns. Each city had to develop an Emergency Feeding Scheme with cooks and helpers standing by and generous supplies of emergency foodstuffs in special food centres. The city of Leicester, for example, appointed a City Feeding Officer and a Dining Officer supported by the WVS in an emergency. On receipt of the message ‘Prepare to feed!’ six mobile canteens and emergency feeding centres were to go into operation. A typical feeding centre had a warehouse full of stock – 224 lbs of sugar, 2,900 lbs of biscuits, 200 lbs of tea, 50 cases of pork and beans, 23 cases of beef hash; and so on.241 Substantial supplies of food were held in reserve across the country until the autumn of 1944, when the Ministry finally asked local authorities to surrender what they had in store so that it could be used to feed refugees in Europe.
For this extensive and expensive structure, there was relatively little to do between the summer of 1941 and the spring of 1944. The most significant raiding occurred in the spring and early summer of 1942 with the Baedeker raids. The raids on Exeter and Bath resulted in serious fires which took time to overcome. Two attacks on the centre of the West Country seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare at the end of June resulted in 93 deaths and damage to 5,000 houses, but the fires were contained more effectively by the rapid response of neighbouring emergency services, following the lessons of earlier raids in the region. Though packed with holiday-makers, morale in the town was regarded as high; the day after the raids, children could be observed playing in bomb craters on the beach.242 Norwich suffered more heavily than other towns targeted by Baedeker raiding, with four raids in late April 1942. The first one hit with complete surprise and although there was an alert, many people did not shelter and 158 were killed. In the second raid there were 67 deaths, none in the third, and on the final night only one bomb actually hit the city. The city ARP Controller concluded that the Report Centre worked efficiently, largely thanks to a major civil defence exercise – Exercise ‘Scorch’ – carried out some time before. Mutual Aid delivered 81 rescue parties from the eastern region, together with 24 ambulances and 45 first-aid parties, and within days 2,000 building workers were giving first aid to residential housing. The volunteer Fire Guard was judged to have performed poorly under combat conditions, while large numbers trekked from the city each night.243 But when one of the psychiatrists monitoring Hull visited Norwich shortly after the raids, he once again found little evidence of serious psychiatric disorder beyond the category of ‘mildly upset’. A survey of four of the Baedeker-targeted cities (Norwich, Exeter, Canterbury and York) showed that in all but York, where bombing was less concentrated, there were initially high levels of anxiety, substantial absenteeism and evacuation. Exeter lost the equivalent of 3.1 citywide working days, Canterbury and Norwich 2.2 and York 0.6. Nevertheless workers soon returned to work as the raids died away. Two weeks after the raids only 4 per cent of Norwich workers were still absent, 1 per cent in York (a level considerably lower than the usual level of absenteeism), 10 per cent in Canterbury and 10 per cent in Exeter.244 Trekking and evacuation levels declined steeply after the first two weeks as the threat evaporated. Popular behaviour did not differ greatly from the experience of the Blitz.
For the rest of the country and for most of 1942 and 1943 the few raids had only a nuisance value. Yet the system was never able to relax from fear that the Germans might choose to repeat a heavy attack. The RAF was asked by London County Council in autumn 1942 whether it was possible or likely that the German Air Force would retaliate with the kind of heavy area attack (known at the time as ‘Crash Raids’) inflicted by Bomber Command. The Air Ministry replied that it was both possible and likely, if there were enough German aircraft. The Crash Raid differed from previous attacks because of the sheer weight of bombs dropped, the high proportion of incendiaries, and the short duration and concentration of the raid. Fear of German retaliation forced the civil defence authorities to plan on the basis of what the RAF was doing nightly to German cities. The conclusion they drew was that bombing on this scale broke down centralized control of a city area and fractured communications; British cities now organized the decentralization of incident control to smaller sectors and created mobile emergency columns to move from area to area, almost the exact tactic adopted by German civil defence.245 In summer 1943, following the ‘Dambuster’ raid on the German dams, there were warnings about a possible German campaign against the British water supply. After the Hamburg firestorm in July 1943, authorities were put on high alert to expect a possible ‘overwhelming’ raid.246 All these fears proved entirely at odds with reality. When German raiding began again in 1944, it was a shadow of the threat it had once posed.
The talk of Crash Raids and overwhelming bombing had the one advantage that it kept the entire civil defence structure in a state of permanent alert through long periods of inactivity and dull routine. The civil defence forces found themselves in a country still at war but with most of their battles behind them. This placed a growing strain on the permanent personnel and on the millions of volunteers. One local authority asked to reorganize the Fire Guard scheme in 1943 complained that after four years of war ‘the general public has grown apathetic to further re-organisations’.247 The Ministry of Home Security recommended refresher courses at Home Office schools for senior ARP workers and courses were still being run late in 1944. In early 1944 it was decided to distribute live mustard gas to local authorities to try to make decontamination training more challenging. (Gas Identification Officers were instructed to keep the small grey cylinders of gas in a cool, dry place until they needed it for a class; they were to demonstrate it cautiously, standing upwind, holding the cylinder close to the ground and taking care not to shake it.)248 Civil defence workers tried to overcome the inactivity by promoting a sense of corporate identity beyond the shared responsibilities and duties. They organized newspapers and journals, produced artworks for civil defence exhibitions, established choirs and drama societies and ran sports clubs. Tynemouth civil defence performed Handel’s Messiah at Christmas 1943 and arranged concerts for the Stalingrad fund.249 In Belfast, wardens’ posts competed for the Hayes Cup, an annual competition on all aspects of a warden’s duties. James Doherty, whose post won the trophy, recalled that quizzes and sports matches helped to fill the time ‘during the long, dreary war years’.250 This shared sense of identity was stimulated by the establishment of a fully uniformed service and regular parades or paramilitary training. Even some pacifist groups engaged on civil defence work compromised their hostility to militarism by adopting a distinctive uniform, with combat jackets, berets and shoulder flashes.
The most serious threat faced in the last years of the war came from the bombs and missiles directed chiefly at south-east England between January 1944 and March 1945. The first attacks of Operation Steinbock (the ‘Baby Blitz’ in spring 1944) caught the population and the authorities by surprise. There were 1,300 deaths from raids on London and a number of port cities, most of them in the first few weeks before a fresh wave of evacuation and greater care with sheltering once again reduced the level of human damage. By this stage of the war there was shelter provision for over 28 million people nationwide and 6.8 million bunks in public dormitories, but with the first heavy raids Londoners again clamoured to be able to use the Underground system. At the Oval police lost control of the crowd and 200 people broke into the statio
n. The Regional Commissioner and London Transport agreed to reopen the system on 23 February and by early March 150,000 were sheltering each evening, 63,000 sleeping all night. Work had begun on a number of deep shelters in 1941, but although many had been completed they were kept in reserve for military purposes and were not yet open to the public. Despite public demands, the Cabinet decided on 29 February to keep them closed.251 Health officials found the remaining shelters for the most part well lit, clean and catering drinks and food.252 The civil defence organization had its first serious test for two years and coped effectively enough against a modest bombing effort. German aircraft scattered their loads widely and started a large number of small fires, but volunteer Fire Guards succeeded in extinguishing an estimated 75 per cent of them. ‘Bombs dropped haphazard,’ ran London civil defence instructions, ‘though unpleasant, can be dealt with.’253
The impact of the Second Blitz on the public was limited after a first initial shock. Published diaries from the period show little interest or anxiety over the raids, but a constant concern about when and where the second front in northern Europe would open.254 The same could not be said of the missile attacks which began in June 1944 and continued until almost the end of the war. The first warnings about a possible German secret weapon had been confirmed in April 1943 and a committee established under Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, to estimate the nature and seriousness of the threat. Intelligence sources confirmed that there were two possible weapons, a flying bomb and a long-range rocket. Coordination for all forms of defence against the new weapons was made the responsibility of the Home Defence Executive, the military equivalent of the civil defence apparatus. Scientific opinion was divided over the possibility of effective rocket technology. Some forecasts suggested a rocket of 10 tons, capable of killing 100,000 in the first month and turning London into a wasteland in six.255 By early 1944 intelligence estimates began to scale down the threat and a sceptical Churchill admonished his Cabinet colleagues for becoming ‘slaves to our fears’. It was judged that civil defence could deal with any fresh emergency, whatever the scale of the new aerial assault, and the judgement proved sound.256 Four flying bombs (or ‘doodle-bugs’ as the RAF christened them) first fell on the night of 12–13 June, one of them in London at Bethnal Green, killing six people. On 15–16 June a further 40 fell in the London area and the attack continued at a high rate for a further few weeks until anti-aircraft fire, fighter interception and the Allied advance on the firing sites reduced the threat to a fraction.257
Unlike the Second Blitz, the flying bombs provoked a flurry of activity in the capital. Popular discussion of the new weapons sounded, according to the writer George Stonier, like ‘a high-pitched buzz’. Edward Stebbing found the talk endless and the fear greater: ‘I must admit that these things have put my nerves on edge more than ordinary raids. I suppose the novelty of them, the devilish ingenuity, has something to do with it.’258 The arrival of the new menace coincided with the successful Allied landings in France, dampening morale during what should have been a period of growing public confidence. One of the first official reports suggested that popular opinion in London had moved from bewilderment to consternation as the random nature of the threat became clear. ‘The incongruous effect,’ continued the report, ‘was a greater disturbance of morale by a form of attack that caused fewer casualties.’259 Local firms in London reported rising absenteeism and evidence of fatigue, which it was claimed ‘undermined the tonic effect of D Day’. In one company in Battersea, an area in the path of the new weapon, morale was thought to be ‘at the lowest in the history of this war’, with 50 per cent decline in production.260 Opinion polls found that exactly half of respondents thought the new bombs harder to bear than the Blitz. ‘It’s not like the old Blitz,’ complained one Londoner. ‘People are just getting down and disheartened.’261
Evacuation, which had fallen to a countrywide total of 343,000 by March 1944, was resumed again in July with the transfer of 307,600 under formal schemes, and more limited assistance for a further 552,000 women and children voluntary evacuees.262 The civil defences called on resources from other parts of the country. An extra 7,000 wardens were sent along with thousands of spare Anderson and Morrison shelters. Special ‘flying squads’ were recruited to be sent rapidly from one incident to the next.263 Yet in the end the emergency services found the flying-bomb attacks easier to cope with than a conventional raid because they were isolated, easy to spot at once and did little damage below ground level. ‘An almost clock-work precision has been reached,’ ran a Home Security report on the response to the flying-bomb campaign.264 Many incidents were cleared up in an hour; fires were infrequent except with a lucky hit. Casualties were nevertheless high because attacks came by day and by night, with only the briefest warning. Estimates showed an average of around 20 dead and injured for each flying bomb that landed in an urban area, higher than the average of 16 for a landmine or 14 for a ton of regular bombs.265 The worst injuries were caused by flying glass as windows repaired after the Blitz were shattered once more. Research showed that sheltering levels were again low among people who only had access to public shelters, overwhelmingly among the poorer neighbourhoods. Tube shelters were hastily refilled, reaching a peak of 81,240 at the end of July, and three of the reserved deep shelters were finally handed over. During June, July and August 5,482 were killed and 15,900 injured, the highest figures since May 1941.266 The blast effect of the bombs resulted in extensive housing damage once again, but out of more than 1 million homes hit but habitable, only 27,000 still needed ‘first-aid’ repairs by September.
The rocket was an altogether more formidable weapon but its uneven range, poor technical performance and random targeting meant that like the flying bomb, civil defence services could cope with its consequences more effectively than had been expected. The precise nature of the weapon remained uncertain until fresh intelligence arrived shortly before the first two rockets hit the outskirts of London at Chiswick and Epping on 8 September 1944. Because of that uncertainty, Morrison had persuaded the Cabinet in late July to set up a Rocket Consequences Committee to organize emergency measures to cope with the imagined scale of the threat. Fresh evacuation was planned, and the transfer of 120,000 men, including soldiers, to help to restore battered services and utilities. But by the middle of August a report from Air Intelligence finally indicated correctly a small rocket with a 1-ton warhead. The emergency was scaled down and finally abandoned on 1 September.
The rockets proved to be far less devastating than the science-fiction fears had supposed. Only 15 struck in September and 25 the following month. Rockets caused an exceptional amount of physical damage because of the velocity of impact, but with no more than two to six incidents a day during the autumn months, civil defence found it could cope as efficiently with rockets as it had with flying bombs. The public reacted to the rocket threat with less anxiety, partly because simply going to the shelter was no safeguard, partly because the number of incidents was generally small. Mass Observation found a widespread fatalism: ‘If it’s going to hit you, you’ll probably be dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’267 Incidents brought large numbers of sightseers each day, curious rather than fearful. An opinion poll showed that as many as 61 per cent claimed not to be much affected by the rockets, while the numbers using the public shelters as a result of rocket attack were recorded as zero.268 Numbers crowded into the Underground shelters up to August, but during the first two months of rocket attacks the shelter population fell to around 18,000 a night. Evacuation was sharply reversed once again as families judged the rocket a lesser threat and the risks manageable. Between October and December 734,000 evacuees returned to the capital. By March 1945 there were just 454,200 still billeted away from home.269 Missile attacks continued at a higher level in January and February 1945, a bizarre toll extracted from a civilian population whose front-line role had been in abeyance for years and which waited with mounting impatience for an end to the war i
n Europe. Altogether 2,618 died from rocket attacks and 5,661 were injured, a rate of 5 fatalities for each missile. The last rocket fell on 27 March, the last flying bomb two days later. The last bombing raid hit Hull on 17 March, damaging 64 houses. Total wartime casualties from all forms of bombing were 60,595 killed and 86,182 seriously injured.270
The threat of the new weapons slowed down the rate at which the whole civil defence system was to be wound down. Local authorities were told after the first flying-bomb attacks that nowhere could be considered immune and were instructed to keep shelters in good condition, well lit and locked, to avoid widespread vandalism. The reduction in personnel was finally ordered in August and September once it was realized that the threat from secret weapons could be contained. At the same time blackout restrictions were relaxed to a state known as ‘dim out’, with reduced lighting but not total darkness. People reacted to the sudden return of illumination very cautiously after five years of habitual observation. ‘My first impression,’ wrote one Mass Observer, after leaving the window lit, ‘was that the room seemed naked, uncomfortable, incomplete.’ Londoners were found in general to err on the side of continued caution and few lit windows were visible until the end of the war.271 In practice many authorities outside the threatened districts had already begun to slim down the civil defence organization and to prepare for the massive task of dismantling the physical apparatus of protection and welfare. Some of the dismantling was done illegally by the community. It was reported in Newcastle in July 1944 that gangs of youths were stealing doors and bunks from shelters and selling them for firewood. In London so-called ‘marauders’ stole doors, pipes, taps and fencing, while prostitutes openly used shelters as business premises. Householders were breaking up metal Anderson shelters and bunks for other uses or turning the garden shelters into workshops and coalhouses. Authorities were still trying to demolish surface shelters, collect Andersons and Morrison tables and sell off civil defence vehicles well into 1946 and 1947.272 In one case a candidate in the July 1945 General Election was given permission to use a number of surface shelters as Committee Rooms for electioneering as long as all parties were given the same opportunity and he paid rent for the privilege.273 In London sheltering in the Underground declined steadily during the rocket campaign. By January 1945 it was down to 16,000, by April around 10,000. A notice to quit was served on 4 May. On 6 May there were still 334 intrepid sleepers. On 7 May, when Germany surrendered unconditionally, there were none.274
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