From War to War, by Christopher Mead Armitage

Sunday, the 3rd of September 1939, is a day more vividly etched in my memory than most days since then, because on that day Britain declared war on Germany. On September 1,1939, Germany had invaded Poland, an event the poet W.H. Auden described as marking the expiry of “the clever hopes…Of a low dishonest decade.” The policy of appeasing Hitler, which had enabled him to annex Austria and seize Czechoslovakia unopposed, had proved a disastrous failure. Two days later, on Sunday the 3rd, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke on BBC Radio to announce that the British and French ultimatum to Hitler to withdraw his forces from Poland had gone unanswered and therefore Britain was at war with Germany. Aged eight, I was too young to realize the implications of that announcement, but my parents knew -- my father had served in the British Army in the First World War—and the temperature in our living room seemed to drop to near-freezing. “ Come on” said my father, and we went into the garden, tore up the grass, dug a short trench, and roofed it with sheets of corrugated iron and sandbags. This air raid shelter was to be our refuge on the many nights when the air raid siren wailed. At first we even carried the cage containing our pet budgerigar with us, but he was so upset at going underground that we reverted to suspending his cage under the oak dining room table for some protection if the house was hit by bombs. Our first primitive shelter was later replaced with a more substantial brick shelter with bunk beds and enough room to allow our next-door neighbors to join us. I learnt to recognize Dornier bombers from Heinkels by the noise of their engines. On one raid, an incendiary bomb fell close by and was extinguished without much difficulty, but bombs gutted the church at the end of the street. Rationing became a feature of daily life. Butter, sugar, meat, petrol, clothing were among the commodities rationed, for which coupons were issued. As a growing boy, I continually needed larger clothes beyond my allotment of coupons. Extra ones were donated by my uncle Hubert, a wounded veteran of the Battle of Beaumont Hamel in World War I. Bananas were no longer imported: space could not be taken by them on ships that had to transport war materials across the Atlantic -- ships which were lucky if they escaped the deadly German U-boats. Yet civilian morale generally seemed resolute, fortified by Churchill’s speeches and a belief that belt-tightening and sacrifices were shared burdens. Black-market profiteering by “spivs” was not common, or at least not discussed in my hearing. Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascist Party, was imprisoned, and vigilance against “Fifth Column” spies was urged. At night a blackout was enforced: light must not emerge from windows – if it did, the air raid warden would come knocking at the door. Some windows were taped across to prevent flying shards of broken glass causing injuries. The practice of evacuating children from major cities to live in safer parts of the country met with variable results. Separating of families upset some children and parents. New environments could be disturbing, even frightening. Differences between social classes in matters of eating, sleeping and hygiene caused problems. (Some children from the slums had never slept in a bed or alone in one; others had never seen a cow.) Evacuation overseas, in which I was scheduled to go to live in California with friends of the family, was abandoned after a ship carrying children was sunk by U-boats, with loss of life. By 1940 the Nazis had conquered western Europe and were gathered on the far side of the English Channel with the intention of invading England. Adults clearly recognized what that would mean, but we schoolchildren were largely shielded from the danger. The prevailing attitude was to “carry on” as normally as possible. Though one of my teachers, Mr. Dunn, joined the Royal Air Force (and was killed), I enjoyed learning German from Mr. Hirsch, a German who was, I believe in retrospect, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany. Certain wartime events made a strong impression on me. The evacuation from Dunkirk, which some hailed as if it were a victory despite Winston Churchill’s pointing out that wars are not won by retreats, was soon followed by the Battle of Britain. The Royal Air Force’s defeat of the Luftwaffe was an exhilarating victory and essential for stopping Hitler’s planned invasion of England (though the number of German planes destroyed was exaggerated by British propaganda at the time). I was not the only boy who longed to be old enough to fly a Spitfire.