How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On

by Anton Rippon

  To the British, however, the Blitz came to mean only one thing: nightly aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe. Throughout the autumn, winter and spring of 1940–41, the nation came to dread the wail of air-raid warning sirens, particularly in the big cities of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Coventry, Hull, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast, but also in smaller towns and even, on occasions, isolated villages.

  Altogether some 43,000 civilians died during the Blitz on Britain. Almost 140,000 more were injured, and more than a million homes were damaged or destroyed. Yet far from dampening the spirits of British men, women and children, this danger and deprivation served only to strengthen their resolve. And it was laughter that seemed to be the national anaesthetic. It helped the British through the bombing, not least because they could chuckle at themselves, which was just as well when one considers what outsiders sometimes thought of them.

  According to Walter Graebner, London correspondent of the American news magazine Time, the besieged Londoner was a very special creature:

  Londoners are admirably suited to standing up to the blitzkrieg. Small and wiry, they can step quickly into low, cramped Anderson shelters and dugouts. Phlegmatic, they express practically no emotion when death and disaster strikes near.

  Unused to a high standard of life, they don’t grumble when they lose their home or possessions and their jobs. So long as they can have three or four cups of tea a day and go for walks, their two most cherished desires have been satisfied.

  Because for centuries they have braved one of the worst climates in the world, sturdy Londoners do not find leaking roofs and damp shelters unbearable. Because they have fought so many wars in the past, they don’t look upon this war as a calamity, even though it’s coming down on top of them.

  So Londoners just had to laugh at themselves. As one newspaper commented of Graebner’s description, it conjured up an astonishing picture of a race of inscrutable dwarfs, crouching philosophically under a steady stream of water pouring from a busted ceiling, surrounded by dripping walls and moving only for an occasional walk in the world’s worst climate.

  The paper ended: ‘Mr Graebner’s Londoner seems a cross between a happy alligator in a damp cave and an undersized tramp asleep in a tea-chest.’

  That they were certainly not – but when it came to raising a laugh with a quip, there wasn’t a breed to beat them. When an old man filed into an air-raid shelter one night, carrying under one arm a long-handled spade with which to deal with incendiary bombs, and under the other a harp – presumably for a little entertainment – one cockney said to her friend: ‘Blimey, there’s a bloke wot’s backed ’imself both ways.’

  As far as Britain was concerned, life had to go on as normally as possible. Nowhere was this more apparent than at golf clubs where special rules had to be devised to deal with the interruption caused by air raids.

  In 1940, Richmond Golf Club in Surrey conceded: ‘In all competitions, during gunfire, or when bombs are falling, players may take cover without penalty for ceasing play.’

  However, another rule said: ‘A player whose stroke is affected by simultaneous explosion of bomb or shell, or by machine-gun fire, may play the ball from the same place. Penalty: 1 stroke.’

  A typical example of golfers’ sangfroid was shown by the following rules: ‘The position of known delayed-action bombs are marked by red flags at a reasonable – but not guaranteed – safe distance.’ And: ‘A ball moved by enemy action may be placed as near as possible where it lay, or if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole, without penalty.’ Well, you couldn’t say fairer than that.

  Indeed, British sport in general took the Second World War in its stride. In July 1944, at Lord’s, a cricket match between the army and the Royal Air Force was stopped when a doodlebug was heard approaching the ground. The players lay on the turf, and spectators disappeared under the stands. But the rocket flew over the ground and landed in Regent’s Park. Middlesex and England opening batsman Jack Robertson dusted himself down and celebrated the narrow escape by hitting the next ball for six. An outraged Wisden, the cricketer’s ‘Bible’, later reported that this was ‘the first flying-bomb to menace Lord’s during the progress of a match’.

  Watching football as the Battle of Britain raged overhead could be a tiresome diversion. The Home Office had ruled that play must be stopped whenever the air-raid alert sounded. Clubs attempted to counter this with a system of ‘spotters’; even after the alert sounded, play would continue until the spotter on the roof of the stadium signalled the actual presence of enemy aircraft.

  It wasn’t just the bombs that caused problems, though. The blackout was as much a nuisance to sportsmen as it was to the general public. But they coped with it. Southampton FC’s coach driver, returning from a game at Cardiff, became lost in the blackout, then he hit a brick wall, and finally the vehicle suffered a burst tyre. The players were forced to spend the night in the coach, not arriving back in Southampton until lunchtime the following day. The players of Wycombe Wanderers had probably the worst experience. After a Great Western Combination game at Slough, the Wycombe team had to walk the fifteen miles back to High Wycombe.

  The blackout also caused problems for players training after work. Harold Atkinson of Tranmere Rovers recalled the dangers: ‘The part-time training was on a Tuesday and a Thursday and you ran around the ground at your own risk. We used to sprint down the side of the pitch in the dark, and there were more injuries caused by training in the blackout than there were in proper matches.’

  Young and old, people coped. Writing to America in thanks for Bundles for Britain – a collection of clothing and other items sent from the USA for those bombed out of their homes in Britain – an elderly Scottish woman said: ‘When the air-raid siren goes, I take down the Holy Bible and read the twenty-third Psalm, then I put up a wee prayer, take a wee dram of whisky, get into bed and pull up the cover. Then I tell that Hitler to go to hell.’

  Going the rounds in Hull – as we have already seen, the second most bombed city in England, with ninety-five per cent of its buildings damaged or destroyed – was this definition of the perfect air-raid warden:

  He must be as brave as a lion, strong as a bullock, wise as an owl, industrious as a bee.

  A warden must be prepared to be blown up, thrown up, burned alive, shattered, splattered, flattened, and be able to act as wet nurse, dry nurse, doctor, undertaker, Spitfire Fund collector. He must be agile, servile, deaf, dumb, and unconscious if necessary. Above all he must be able to speak BBC English, repair a phone, anticipate the sirens, and suffer criticism without thought of retaliation.

  The war often brought out the best in people, especially during the Blitz. One North-East farmer, anxious not to abuse the system for claiming compensation for damage, registered his claim thus: ‘Repairing broken glass in piggery £3; replanting hedge £1; bomb crater fifteen feet deep by thirty feet across is well placed for making a new farm pond that will be entirely acceptable to animals.’ The Blitz certainly produced some wonderful characters.

  In December 1944, Chaplain K. Evans, RNVR, who had worked as a curate in London during the earlier war years, told the West Australian newspaper about the time he asked an elderly member of his Bermondsey congregation how she managed to remain so calm at what was the height of the Blitz. She told him: ‘I comes in, I sits down and reads me book. I says me prayers. I says: “To ’ell with ’itler,” and then I goes to sleep.’ Like that Scottish lady, that was her recipe for a restful night.

  Relating another anecdote, Evans said that when a stick of bombs was dropped it was often possible to count them and estimate where the later ones would land. This happened once when he was conducting a service. The congregation counted. The sixth bomb fell on one side of the church, the seventh landing on the other side in the road. But in relating the story to a friend afterwards, one old lady said: ‘And when we got outside there was the creator right in the middle of the road!’ On occasions, in
cendiary bombs were referred to as ‘insanitary’ bombs.

  On another occasion during a raid, the curate went with an ambulance to a public house that had received severe damage. Right in front, and in the middle of the road, a woman was sitting laughing uproariously, an empty glass in her hand. The blast had sucked her out of the door, and when the curate asked her why she was laughing, she replied: ‘Blimey, that’s the first time I’ve been out of the pub before closing time.’

  Bombed-out shops and stores managed to carry on, with notices such as ‘More Open than Usual’ advertising that they were still trading, although when beer was in short supply, one publican’s chalked notice told would-be customers simply: ‘Sold Out. Gone Out.’ Another sign, spotted on a bombed-out store, read: ‘This is nothing! You ought to see what the RAF have done to our Berlin branch!’

  And when passers-by saw an office manager and his secretary seated on the pavement outside what was left of their office, with a typewriter, cups of tea and a plate of biscuits on their shared desk, they knew that they were keeping calm and carrying on.

  In August 1940, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Ray Sprigle was in England to report on the war and to see just how Britain was keeping calm and carrying on. That August, filing a story from ‘the South-West Front’, Sprigle told of an experience he underwent when the air-raid siren sounded as he slept in his hotel.

  Sprigle stumbled down to the air-raid shelter, to find that he was the first to arrive. It was, wrote Sprigle, a ‘de-luxe’ shelter with white-topped tables set out in an adjoining room that also contained a piano.

  One by one, the other guests came in, quite calmly, and sat around while the manager’s wife poured them tea as the raid went on overhead.

  Eventually one guest, uninvited, began to play the piano, with one finger, knocking out probably the only tune he knew.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be grand if Jerry dropped a bomb on him?’ said another guest. That did not daunt the player, but then one lad in the corner decided to compete by doing impressions of a cat and dog fight, and a hen laying an egg. Then everyone started singing, first ‘South of the Border’ and then ‘The Last Roundup’.

  The hotel manager told Sprigle that he recently visited a friend. He arrived to find the friend picking through the wreckage of the family home. When the previous air raid had started, the man had put his wife, two daughters and the family’s two pet dogs under the stairs, while he and his small son sheltered in the sitting room. A bomb had come straight down the chimney.

  The man said that he had shaken his arms and legs and ‘as none fell off, I figured I was all right’, and then he extracted his wife, daughters and dogs from under the stairs that had collapsed on top of them. Remarkably, none of the family was injured. As they emerged into the street, an old man was walking past. He stopped to survey the wreckage of a pub on the corner that had also suffered a direct hit.

  ‘Hell of a thing,’ said the passer-by, ‘when an Englishman can’t get his dram or his beer because of that blighter in Berlin.’

  ‘All over England,’ wrote Sprigle, ‘people are taking these air raids in their stride . . .’

  I was working in London, in Cannon Street, at the time of the doodlebugs – the flying bombs that came over, then cut out, and fell to earth. It was nerve-wracking. Once that engine stopped, you just waited for the explosion.

  One lunchtime, people were streaming out of their offices when we heard one coming over, so we just dived onto the pavement – which was muddy as it had been pouring with rain – and then there was silence, followed by this almighty bang a couple of streets away. We all got up and started off again when over came another. Same thing – dive on the pavement, silence, big explosion.

  As I was getting up yet again, a little chap in front of me, wearing a cap, was also climbing to his feet. He looked at me and said: ‘Gettin’ kinda ’umdrum, ain’t it?’

  Etta Stern, Surbiton

  One night we were in a communal shelter in Bermondsey, just after the warning siren had sounded, when a friendly ARP warden shone his torch down the stairs and shouted: ‘Any expectant mothers down there?’

  Quick as a flash, a rich cockney voice shouted back: ‘Cor blimey, mate! Give us a chance. We’ve only been down ’ere five minutes!’

  Honor Helm, Hastings

  In the early days of the London Blitz we were living in Stratford, E15. Prior to going to the Anderson shelter it was our practice to cut sandwiches and make flasks of tea because we knew that Jerry would regularly arrive shortly before 6 p.m. This particular night the East End was his target and it was very hectic. He was giving us a good going over.

  My wife and I, with our baby son, were quite comfortable inside the shelter, and around about 1 a.m. we decided to have a cup of tea. After about half an hour, I had a feeling that I would have to run the gauntlet to the outside loo, but owing to the shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns I decided to wait until a lull occurred. But eventually it became a question – excuse my French – of shit or bust.

  Suddenly, miraculously, a lull occurred and I said: ‘Now’s my chance!’ I dashed from the shelter and reached the toilet safely enough. I proceeded to drop my trousers, but just as my bottom touched the toilet seat, a mobile 3.5 ack-ack gun went off about fifty yards from the house. My head hit the toilet ceiling and I simply ran and dived headlong back into the shelter, causing quite a commotion because I landed on the tea table and on my wife. My trousers were still around my ankles and to this day I don’t know whether I accomplished what I’d set out to do.

  J. Edmonds, London

  I was in Bobby’s restaurant in Bournemouth and the sirens sounded. One of the waitresses, a lugubrious type, seized an umbrella, put it up and said loudly: ‘Peace in our time.’

  G. RODDA, PUTNEY, LONDON

  I’m hard of hearing, so the sirens and the bombs didn’t unduly worry me, as very often I didn’t hear them. One night, there was a particularly bad raid over London and many buildings were destroyed, some not far from my home. In the morning my neighbour came in for coffee and exclaimed: ‘What do you think of last night’s terrible raid?’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘I slept all night, didn’t hear a thing.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, in such a jealous way, ‘you’re just lucky that you’re deaf!’

  Cecilia Morgan, Golders Green, London

  It was during the Blitz on London in 1940 and a stick of bombs had fallen in Pembridge Crescent, Notting Hill Gate, and failed to go off – UXBs we called them.

  It was thought that one had penetrated the sewer (a brick one about thirty feet deep) and the bomb disposal sergeant said that he would remove it. I asked him how he would get it out and he said he would go into the sewer, tie a rope to the bomb and pull it out. So I gave him a safety lamp to use, and then he said, ‘Oh, by the way, are there any rats down there?’

  And when I said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Well, I’m not going down there, then. We’ll dig for it instead.’ And he made his men dig a hole thirty feet deep and got the bomb like that. He was prepared to face an unexploded bomb – but not a rat!

  G. A. Shapland, Lancing, Surrey

  Bodiam in Sussex, 3 September 1939. Lots of Londoners were picking hops. We’d just heard that we were at war. About half an hour later, we heard a lot of planes coming. As we’d already been kitted out with gas masks, we just put them on, thinking they were planes with gas. And there we sat, in the hop garden, with our masks on. Eventually some Londoners told us: ‘It’s all right, mate – they’re ours!’

  L. Beaney, Tenterden, Kent

  As a young woman during the Second World War, I lived with my crippled mother and an aged aunt in a ground-floor flat in a large block, surrounded by similar blocks of flats and a few houses.

  During an air raid, we would sit at the end of an inner corridor to be safe from splintered glass, as windows always blew inwards with a blast. On one occasion there was a direct hit on the block next door, and its flying masonry descended
on our own block, causing it to shiver and shake for what seemed like an eternity. Finally it decided to stand firm. Terrified, we clung to each other in the dark on the floor where the blast had hurled us. The flats had coal fires and separate anthracite boilers, and the smell of soot was stifling. All doors but one were off their hinges and, judging by the noise, every window was out.

  Suddenly a flickering light appeared where our front door had once stood; a dark figure, holding aloft a lighted candle in one hand, made its way unsteadily towards us. It was the lady from next door, simply covered with soot, her red-rimmed blue eyes shining out of her black face. In her other hand she held an almost spotless pair of white corsets.

  ‘Isn’t it disgusting?’ she said. ‘New today and now they’ve got a bit of soot on them!’ She was very shocked and had no idea that she looked like a black minstrel. Very soon her equally sooty husband, who bore a bottle of Chartreuse and a mug, joined her. And we all shared a loving cup by candlelight.

  Suddenly two more excited figures entered the corridor. One was the lovely daughter of our neighbours, barefooted, dark hair streaming over her white nightdress; the other was her fiancé. The house nearby where they lodged had been razed to the ground and they were the sole survivors. You can imagine the emotional impact on the girl’s parents. There was also a young schoolmaster we knew. There seemed to be safety in numbers.