When walking the winding roads of London today, you could easily overlook the role World War II played in the city’s history. No smoldering ruins of bombed-out buildings remain, no wailing air-raid sirens scare those sleeping awake, and no masses of people can be found nestled in the Tube fearful of bombs. But if you look in the right places, you can see that London has not forgotten the war. The Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum in the shadow of regal, downtown London remind passersby that not long ago war came to England. With my travel group, I descended steps into a room of the underground bunker that the British War Cabinet used to conduct the war. I then passed down the halls of the bunker and looked into the rooms where meetings were held imagining bumbling chaos, tense meetings, critical decisions, and a shaking roof as London swallows the bombs of the German Luftwaffe above. As I proceeded through the complex, I moved past sleeping quarters, secret telephone rooms, and map rooms detailing the movement of armies around the globe. A museum dedicated to Winston Churchill sits alongside the recreated War Rooms, showing in great detail his life from childhood to death. Visitors pass by rows of Churchillian artifacts and biographical material. I listened to excerpts of some of Churchill’s most famous speeches, read some of his letters, and watched clips from his funeral.
The recreation of contemporary life found in the Cabinet War Rooms, is found elsewhere in Great Britain. The HMS Belfast sits stationary in the River Thames. Various rooms of the large gray vessel are filled with contemporary World War II items, displaying the hard and cramped life of sailors. I was even able to enter a gunroom on the ship’s deck and experience a simulated naval gun barrage with sound effects and smoke.
The HMS Belfast docked in the River Thames.
I traveled to Bletchley Park on a train heading north of London. The park’s gates are not far from the train station and they open into a sprawling estate full of buildings resembling barracks. The buildings are surrounded by much vegetation, wide-trunked trees and flowering bushes. The place is pleasant, and on a sunny day one would be tempted to sit in the grass alongside the small pond on the estate and not question its history. But inquiring visitors would move past the pond and soon be standing before a mansion, which would be imposing for its size if it were not for its curious architecture. After studying about Bletchley in class and taking a guided tour of the grounds, I learned that Bletchley Park is no ordinary English countryside estate. Shortly before and during World War II, the park was home to the intelligence gathering organization of the British government known as the Government Code and Cypher School. There, during the war, thousands of people, including linguists and mathematicians, worked feverishly to crack and translate enemy codes. Much of the work at Bletchley focused on cracking the code of messages sent from German Enigma machines. The people who worked there inhabited the park’s mansion as well as newly built barracks buildings, which can be found throughout the grounds. I passed through the mansion and some of the barracks, which have been renovated to look as they did during the war. I also visited some of the estate’s several museums, one of which includes a newly constructed Bombe machine, a device that helped the codebreakers at Bletchley in the cracking of Enigma encryptions during the war.
Aside from bringing to life structures that had significance during the war, Britain is also concerned with monumentalizing the country’s efforts. While the War Rooms, HMS Belfast, and Bletchley Park are monuments in their own right, war memorials also exhibit a more standard makeup of statues and stone. A good example of this appears along the paths of Green Park not far from Buckingham Palace. There, on the edge of the park, not far from the last of its trees, I came to a lonely columned building. As I neared the structure, I began to make out the impressive statues standing triumphal on a platform therein. They are airmen, the centerpiece of the Bomber Command Memorial. During the war, Bomber Command was responsible for protecting the skies of London from the nightly raids of Luftwaffe aircraft, and later, taking their own bombs over the skies of continental Europe. The airmen’s gazes are fixed out across the park, past Buckingham Palace, and toward London beyond. Their sure stances and stares seem to declare that they have saved London and that they will save it again if need be. The monument’s position allows the confident airmen to survey the natural beauty of London, and of Britain, as well as the stately beauty of the country’s royal palace that they have preserved from destruction. Not only that, but they have saved the lives of many British people who reflect that natural and refined beauty, a beauty found also in the cold metal of the memorial’s realistic figures. The window above the figures’ heads allows light to shine down and gleam off their skin, a sign to hint at divine approval.
The bronze airmen statues within the Bomber Command Memorial looking out toward London.
Much of Britain’s remembrance of the war seems to show a glorious and almost proud victory. The statues of the Bomber Command Memorial guard London’s skies while the big guns of the HMS Belfast guard the murky Thames. But occasionally a darker not so magnificent side of the war is paid its sad respects. A small silver memorial to the Polish efforts at cracking the German Enigma codes is tucked in a tight, shadowy corner of Bletchley Park. There, those Poles who began to crack the Enigma codes are given some of their due. During our tour of Bletchley the monument was mentioned only fleetingly, and we were told to circle back on our own after the tour to see it if we wished. All of this seemed to point to Britain declaring it did the great majority of the labor in cracking the codes of World War II.
The shadowy Polish memorial at Bletchley Park.
Looking into the Bomber Command Memorial, above and behind the backs of the proud airmen, I saw engraved in the stone, “this memorial also commemorates those of all nations who lost their lives in the bombing of 1939-1945.” The many thousands across Europe who died due to the actions of Bomber Command are remembered as almost an afterthought. After all, though the gazes of the airmen look to the west toward Buckingham Palace, their stares would be strained to see still farther to the graves of those bombed in Normandy or the dust of those burned in Dresden.
Matt McCoy