The Churchill War Rooms were the headquarters for the highest level of the wartime government. As a museum, it exhibits focus on the life and legacy of Churchill, punctuated by some very amusing quotations, such as the Prime Minister’s “We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” But, the exhibits also highlighted the others who worked in the bunker and the conditions they put up with. People like his secretary, Elizabeth Nel, and his wife, Clementine, spoke during the audio tour devoted to sharing what life was like for them in the war. Early in the tour, we got a look at the “dock,” a cramped basement area where guards, secretaries, and others slept while having to deal with rats and other inconveniences. The British idea of the “People’s War” was front and center at the CWR: the idea that the war involved every citizen in some way.
At Bletchley Park, the exhibit also focused more on those who worked there than what was actually done. They introduce codebreakers and engineers like the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service), intelligence officers, and mathematicians – explaining their contributions to Allied intelligence and the war effort. A bulletin listed every member of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley in 1939. Speakerphones throughout the compound played recordings of actual Bletchley workers describing their experiences at this critical division. In addition to details about the codebreaking operation, these recordings also shared seemingly mundane information, like how the work bored them, how the compound food tasted, and the joy they felt when some American visitors brought pancakes with them. It became clear that although the museum was meant to educate people about Bletchley Park, it was also meant to celebrate the people behind its success, like Elizabeth Granger and Claude Henderson.
It was clear from these museums that England chooses not just to remember the soldiers who fought in battle, but also the thousands of citizens who were mobilized to support the war effort however they could. This national memory seems to have grown out of the solidarity of a nation ravaged by bombings designed to destroy the country’s morale, instead having the opposite effect. Winston Churchill may have been the head glow-worm, but perhaps during that war, the rest of the British people turned into glow-worms as well.