The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

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.