Blitz: When World War Two Came Home
448 pages
Tearless
Greater love hath no man than this; that he lay down his life for his friends.
Blitz? Yes, I was a child of the Blitz: I remember hearing, but only later comprehending, Chamberlain’s Declaration of War because, at age three, I was in our local church – it was a Sunday – with my parents and I thought it was God speaking. And just a year later, sheltering at night in our small cellar, hearing the mesmerising pulsating drone of German bombers, the sound of the AA gunfire, and of the thud and noise of bombs falling on Portsmouth. And the unforgettable sight and smell of burnt-out shells of houses. But I saw no corpses.
So, yes, I do remember the Blitz. Air raid sirens, barrage balloons, Black Out, gas masks. Evacuees, watching dog fights during the Battle of Britain, shrapnel, vapour trails, ‘Window’, and our Home Guard and ARP Warden. So much for us and the children of our generation in the Hope and Glory and Goodnight, Mr. Tom films.
What then for the grown-ups? Utterly grim. And even worse for the firemen and ambulance crews and Civil Defence. Anyone could die, or be grotesquely wounded, any time, anywhere. And, at the beginning, for night-after-night and day-after-day. Shell Shock (now PTSD) bottled up by some, bottled down by others. Both led to tremors and nightmares.
So, here again, John Nichol, raconteur and wordsmith, exercising his masterful depth of research, founded on human and documentary evidence, and topped by his usual captivating style of writing. And again, we weave between WW1, WW2 and today.
Curious, even alarming, how John Nichol’s book uncannily and then suddenly, with a lump-in-the-throat, rekindled long-forgotten but vivid memories of my childhood days. Nichol’s book is a long 1940s Good Friday and a semi-sunlit 1945 Easter Sunday.
Only aircrew who have the misfortune to need to bale out, as indeed did John Nichol, could see, and then often experience, the results of what the weapons they had been ordered to loose had wrought beneath them. And this essentially lends all the more credibility to the tale he has crafted.
We visit Tyneside and the Clyde; Hull; Coventry and the Midlands; Bath, Canterbury, Exeter and Norwich; Portsmouth, Plymouth, Belfast and Liverpool; London, its Docklands and, for good measure, St. Paul’s Cathedral.
We take a glance too at Cromer, Great Yarmouth, Guernica; Warsaw; Rotterdam; Caen and St. Lo; Cologne, Lubeck, Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin; Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is nothing new about a Blitz. Even a quick glance at daily TV news will reveal modern blitzes world-wide such as upon Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Burma. The citizenry there all know at this very day what it is like to live and to die in a blitz.
As an aside, Uncle Sam does not: The only US citizens who know about Blitz are those who were in UK in 1943 and those who had the misfortune to be in the Twin Towers in New York on 11th September 2001. But Nichol does take us to our own Grenfell Tower.
Whom then is this book for? I understand that WW2 is now taught in schools as History: So I am History. Who wants to know about me, or those of our generation? We are old farts; yesterday’s men. Well, there are still a few of us left who will be interested in recalling how we all felt at the time; the stoicism, the ‘Britain Can Take It’ attitudes. But sheltered by our loving parents from the worst of it.
So, if WW2 is now being taught in schools it is for everybody. And those now at school might learn that we really did all grew up without refrigerators or central heating or washing machines or dishwashers or TV or cars or computers or mobile ‘phones or the NHS or Welfare State hand-outs.
And also, for our military and staff colleges, because I well remember my Term Officer at Dartmouth telling us that while, in 1940, he was on Sub’s Courses in Portsmouth (Remember Sub’s Courses?!) his days were spent on professional studies and his nights as an ARP Warden.
Why? Well, if only to prepare ourselves for what might yet happen again because, as we all know, those who care not to learn from the lessons of history are condemned to relive it.
So, finally, in the hope of inspiring growth of some backbone, might we also offer a copy too for the Prime Minister whose primary duty is the Defence of the Realm? Always supposing you can catch one during the fashionable Downing Street game of Musical Chairs.
Blitz? Yes, I was a child of the Blitz.
