The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

In the year or so before the onset of the Blitz civil defence personnel moved from training to practice. Regular exercises were held on every aspect from the blackout to evacuation. Since many of these exercises also depended on the cooperation of the population, they were a test of how disciplined the larger civilian body might be. This sometimes had mixed results. The evacuation practice held on 26 August 1939 to prepare schoolchildren and parents for the real thing met with a low turnout, for schools were still on vacation.³⁹ Blackout practices began from the mid-1930s. Usually held in the middle of the night when most people were fast asleep, they seem generally to have been judged a success. A large blackout test in Leicester in January 1938 also involved mobilizing gas decontamination squads and firemen, although the effort to judge it from the air was inhibited by steady drizzle. A large-scale practice in the Manchester area in spring 1939 was given a higher degree of verisimilitude by the decision of Salford ARP to use fireworks and a controlled explosion to simulate a raid, followed by the demolition of an old property block to mimic bomb destruction.⁴⁰ With the outbreak of war, combined exercises for all the emergency services (fire, ARP, first-aid, rescue and demolition) took place on a regular basis. In York there were eleven practices in November 1939 alone; in the London Region major exercises were held throughout the Phoney War, explained in detail in operational orders that replicated military operations. Like military exercises, civil defence practice was run by umpires who awarded points to successful teams and observed deficiencies.⁴¹ Whether the practices really prepared the domestic front line for what was to come is difficult to judge. ‘We come here ready for at least death,’ complains Henry Green’s autobiographical hero, ‘and then we get into trouble for not doing under our beds.’ Green found the months of inactivity harder to bear than the real thing. ‘Now it’s on us,’ he continued, ‘not nearly as bad as we thought.’⁴²

The period of almost a year between the outbreak of war and the onset of heavy city bombing exposed many problems in defending a large urban population against the anticipated horrors of air attack. Though the civil defence organization was largely in place by the end of the summer of 1940, and subject to regular rehearsals, the behaviour of the wider population, who were only compelled by law to comply with the blackout regulations but with no other aspect of ARP, was open to wide variation. The carrying of gas masks, almost universal at the onset of hostilities, declined rapidly. By March 1940 only 1 per cent of Londoners could be observed with them. Even after the onset of the Blitz, Factory Inspectors found many workers defying the instruction to carry their gas mask to work; the Ministry of Labour had to remind all firms to hold respirator practice at least once a week, preferably just before the dinner hour.⁴³

Popular compliance with evacuation also declined sharply over the course of 1939–40 as homesick mothers and children returned to their families and homes. On 1 September 1939 a vast exodus of 1,473,500 people left the threatened cities to be rehoused in small town and rural areas – unaccompanied children, mothers with babies and pre-school infants, the disabled, the blind, and pregnant women.⁴⁴ This official transfer was accompanied by voluntary evacuation by those (generally wealthier) whose presence in the cities was not required by the war effort. The foster households were paid 10s 6d per week for each child (8s 6d if there were two children); those aged 16 or over yielded 15s each, but many were set to work on farms and in other small businesses to pay for their keep. The bulk of evacuees chose to return home, around 900,000 by January 1940. A large number had not even evacuated in September 1939. In London, for example, only 34 per cent of eligible schoolchildren actually left the city in 1939, in Birmingham only 14 per cent. By May 1940 there were only 254,000 schoolchildren still evacuated in the whole country. Poor organization, an absence of effective welfare facilities and a failure to make adequate health inspections all combined to undermine the initial plan. So hostile were many city-dwellers to repeating the experience that a new government plan to register all children for evacuation when the bombing really began met with wide indifference; over 1 million parents refused to register when asked or failed to respond at all. The effort to get the most vulnerable members of the urban community into relatively safer reception areas collapsed.⁴⁵