As I depart from London, England and browse through the photographs I captured there, I am reminded of just how much World War II seems to have impacted Britain’s national identity. In one photo, a statue of the British home forces, with the men’s hands pointing towards St. Paul’s Cathedral, commemorates the Blitz that destroyed a portion of its walls. In another, the bomber command memorial opens to the sky, with bronze Royal Air Force pilots looking outward toward the heavens. In yet another, Winston Churchill rises in a prominent space in parliament square, indicating his enduring importance in the national ethos. Together, these pictures indicate the permanent impact of war on the British, an impact which today pervades the streets of London. Though we visited several sites directly relevant to the war, I encountered additional references in unexpected places, including Westminster Abbey and the monuments of Trafalgar Square. These sites all shared a common foundation: a focus on the British people and the crucial role they played in Britain’s ultimate victory in World War II. Britain, from 1939 to 1945, experienced a people’s war. The conflict impacted everyone, from those working in the Cabinet War Rooms and Bletchley Park, to the families who sent their men to fight and endured sustained air raids on the home front. The deeply personal impact that war had on the British population was an important component of every monument and museum I visited during my stay.
The Bomber Command Memorial
All of Britain’s war memorial sites emphasized the importance of everyday people, who worked hard to aid the war effort in ways they may not have even realized at the time. At the Churchill War Rooms, which acted as the underground hub of the British war effort, the work of the government relied greatly upon the work of civilians. These employees were telephonists, typists, and personal secretaries who helped make possible the work being done by Churchill and other government and military officials. At Bletchley Park, where the British intelligence staff was housed, civilians fulfilled similar roles, working there as engineers, translators, and typists to help intercept and decode German messages. At the Bletchley site, now a museum, a book has been created to list every individual’s name known to be associated with the site, with flyers available to submit additional names. The museum’s inclusion of this book indicates Bletchley’s ongoing effort to preserve and commemorate the efforts of its wartime staff. The Imperial War Museum had an entire World War II section dedicated to the People’s War. To showcase the experience of living in Britain during the war, this museum traced the experience of one London family from the beginning to the end of the war. This section allowed visitors to see into a typical family home and learn about the lifestyle of its inhabitants, from the ration books used to buy limited groceries and the dresses that were hand sown from recycled fabric, to the newsreels playing in cinemas across the nation.
Particularly striking was all three sites’ emphasis on oral history. Each site made a concerted effort to give voice to the everyday citizenry of Britain who had lived through the trials of war. Videos and audio interviews allowed visitors to hear the personal experiences of individuals who contributed to British victory through their own personal resilience and motivation to keep up the fight. In the Churchill War Rooms, an audio headset shared the story of a typist who had worked in the bunker space. She discussed her perspective on the monotony of her work and the pride she that nonetheless found in aiding Churchill. In Bletchley, a similar setup followed a woman explaining the struggles of working as a translator and living in a world at war. Finally, at the Imperial War Museum, a woman’s recollections of the fear of aerial bombardment and claustrophobia of air raid shelters played inside a replica of a government issued backyard bunker. These oral accounts really touched me, particularly because so many of them came from women who, at the time of the war, were about the same age as I am now. Seeing the ways in which their lives were effected and made drastically different by the war brought home the war’s enduring impact on ordinary people. In many ways, the recollections of these women and their counterparts keep the legacy of the war alive, making it an intrinsic part of contemporary historical memory.
By giving voice to ordinary people, Great Britain has shaped a history of world war II that is rooted in the actions and morale of its wartime population. This was prevalent throughout the sites we visited in London and Bletchley, and made even greater by the personal experiences we heard voiced by Michael Handscomb, who had experienced the Blitz as a child and saw the war through its duration. As a whole, my experience in London opened my eyes to the multiple ways that the war changed individual lives. Firsthand accounts add a strikingly personal facet to historical retellings, and the emphasis of these accounts in London indicates Britain’s desire to keep the personal stories of the past alive for future generations.
Monument for the Blitz located next to St. Paul’s Cathedral