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Introduction 9
pictures in all kinds of publications, and the response was overwhelming. As may be seen from my thanks and acknowledgements at the end of the book, none of my projects have ever involved so much help from people. Without their contributions this book would never have been written. The truth is that we are doing those wartime heroes proud. We stage exhibitions, publish memorial booklets and dress up in forties’ clothes. In Hemswell, Lincolnshire, there is a former RAF base which is now used as an antique centre, and within one of the ex-forces buildings there is a café devoted entirely to the Second World War lifestyle. The visitor steps into 1940, surrounded by music of the time and by artefacts of all kinds; he can pick up a magazine of that period or even read a copy of a contemporary newspaper. In October 2009, Stockport hosted a special event with air-raid shelters in mind. Matt Davis reported: ‘A special event entitled “Standing Together: Remembering the Home Front” was held in the shelters and Stockport market to mark the opening of the network of tunnels on October 28, 1939 which kept townsfolk safe during the bombing raids.’ Visitors also learned how gas masks were fitted, and two actors, Gert and Daisy, were in costume, providing memories and tales of the Blitz. However, nostalgia is one thing: the actual horror of bombing is something else entirely. Harry Wilmot, who was in Bow Common, recalled an image of the most terrible aspect of that time: Whole streets had been destroyed. All through Sunday and Monday East Enders drifted miserably westwards, looking for shelters: most of them had no baggage; they had lost everything; some carried pathetic and clumsy bundles of their remaining belongings … They had nowhere to rest, nowhere to wash … Sometimes a memory encapsulates the whole trajectory of the experience, as in this account from Mr D A Palmer of Sheffield: I was 6 years old in 1939. Before going in the Army, my father and other adults constructed the air-raid (Anderson) shelter, digging a roughly 8ft by 6ft hole. The shelter came in about a dozen pieces, some curved with nuts and bolts to keep it in place. Our shelter at first was often flooded. But they put in some drains in 1940–41. My father, in