As I disembarked from my flight at Heathrow airport I was filled excitement complemented by a significant tiredness. From the airport I utilized the subway system to get as close to the hotel as I believed possible. My approximation was off and I proceeded to take thirty minutes where ten would have sufficed. However, as I found throughout my time in London, it is often best to only have a general idea of the direction one wishes to go in so that exploration is done along the way. This was also the same mentality I used when going about the many various World War II sites throughout London.
The memory of WWII varies across the belligerents that engaged in the conflict nearly eighty years ago. The war is commonly referred to as the People’s War in England and this perspective was omnipresent in the various sites we visited. The idea of the People’s War entailed the fact that WWII in England was fought not just by the military, but by every individual in the British Isles. Our first stop to further develop our understanding of this perspective as a group was in the Churchill War Rooms. Personally, this was the stop I most looked forward to in London. The rooms exist in essentially the same state as they did the end of the war in 1945. It was from here that Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed the war with his cabinet. The museum portrayed the People’s War mentality effectively with a combination of posters, objects, and speeches from the time. The most immersive portion of the museum was Churchill’s speeches playing in the background. It was as he spoke the famous “we will never surrender” line that I was looking at some posters about the involvement of women in the war. Specifically, I was looking at one that discussed mothers and wives sending their husbands and sons off to war and the woman was holding her child’s hand. Personally, I reflected on the struggle families faced between duty to country and family. This is a struggle not uncommon to nations at war, but it is one that was especially painful for a people that had fought World War I only about twenty years prior. The strain of WWI on the English was far greater than anything experienced by American society. The map room at the museum also made the loss of civilian life for the English much more tangible. Within this room there was a chart that tracked the V-1 and V-2 rocket strikes.
A chart showing various statistics regarding “flying bombs”
This chart was just the beginning of my experiences with the memory of V-weaponry. The most emotionally moving of these experiences was when a few friends and I visited the Guard’s Chapel. It was in this location on June 18, 1944 that one of these weapons struck the chapel, killing over 200 of those inside. To stand in the exact spot where this occurred and think about how such a large structure was simply annihilated was breathtaking. No individual was safe from these terrifying weapons, civilian or military. When we visited the Imperial War Museum I had a chance to see both a V-1 and a V-2. I had seen pictures of these weapons before, but seeing them in person further developed my appreciation for their destructive capability. In this museum I also came across a display of the various armbands and helmets worn by the civilians in London that assisted in its survival throughout the war. They were uniforms, identical in purpose to those utilized by soldiers in the British military. This, along with many other exhibits and experiences, makes it difficult to distinguish the soldier from the civilian when England was under attack.
V-1 (front/smaller) and V-2 (back/larger) rockets
Part of the memorial to the fallen Royal Guards at the Guard’s Chapel
My favorite site I ventured to outside of the group activities was the HMS Belfast. This British warship is anchored in the Thames River, its final resting spot after a long service to its country. During WWII, this ship protected convoys in the Atlantic and also supported the Normandy Invasion. The most significant damage the ship suffered during the war was when it struck a German mine. I was able to stand in the exact spot where this mine ruptured the ships armor. The mannequins and plastic props may seem corny initially. However, as I toured the ship these, combined with speakers playing a mimic of noise on the ship, helped me appreciate what it was like to be a sailor in the Royal Navy. I was especially surprised by the amazing labyrinth of passage that existed on the ship and how small most of the passages were. It is easy to imagine after my tour how important discipline must have been when the moment of battle arrived otherwise chaos would have reigned.
Forward turrets of the HMS Belfast
My time in London was the perfect start to my WWII journey. England was the last stronghold of liberty in Europe after the fall of France, an idea not lost to Churchill and the British people. I know am able to have a much greater appreciation for what the war cost the civilians of England in the People’s War. On an unrelated note, I am currently studying the 37th Infantry “Buckeye” Division that fought in the Pacific during WWII. I was able to locate the division on a British map tracking U.S. forces in the map room in the Churchill War Rooms, which I found intriguing.
37th Infantry Division tag below a map of U.S. Pacific movements