Longmate - How we lived then: a history of everyday life during the Second World War

Norman Longmate was born in Newbury, Berkshire, and educated by scholarship at Christs Hospital, where he was deeply influenced by an inspiring history teacher. After war service in the army he read modern history at Worcester College, Oxford. He subsequently worked as a journalist in Fleet Street, as a producer of history programmes for the BBC, and for the BBC Secretariat. In 1981 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 1983 he left the BBC to become a full-time writer.

Norman Longmate is the author of more than twenty books, mainly on the Second World War and on Victorian social history, and of many radio and television scripts on historical subjects. He has frequently been employed as an historical adviser by film and television companies.

Although nearly 90% of the population of Great Britain remained civilians throughout the war, or for a large part of it, their story has so far largely gone untold. In contrast with the thousands of books on military operations, barely any have concerned themselves with the individuals experience. The problems of the ordinary family are barely ever mentioned food rationing, clothes rationing, the black-out and air raids get little space, and everyday shortages almost none at all.

This book is an attempt to redress the balance; to tell the civilians story largely through their own recollections and in their own words.

Acknowledgements for the use of illustrations are due as follows: Messrs. Hitchcock Williams, i; Radio Times Hulton Picture Library, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 36, 43, 44, 46, 48, 51, 55, 59, 64, 69, 70, 72, 73; The Imperial War Museum, 5, 42, 49, 50, 54; the late Mr Walter Lee and Grantham Public Library, 6, 7, 40, 41; the Womens Royal Voluntary Services, 9, 47; Mr Reece Winstone, Bristol, 16, 18, 67, 68; the Controller of Her Majestys Stationery Office, to whom acknowledgement is also due for the use of quotations from official documents and advertisements in the text, 63, 65, 66; the Corporation of Kingston upon Hull, 31; Syndication International, 37; Keystone Press Agency, 45, 56.

It has not proved possible to trace the original copyright-owners of the remaining photographs and apologies are offered for any inadvertent breach of copyright in these cases.

Our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today.

WINSTON CHURCHILL, 8th May 1945

We often hear about the food situation and envy the fortunate people in England. This was the entry written in one Guernsey farmers diary in mid-October 1941, for while no German soldier ever set foot on the mainland of the British Isles except as a prisoner, one British possession, the Channel Islands, suffered the full rigours of enemy occupation. Their experiences show what might have happened had the Germans disembarked at Plymouth and Dover instead of St. Helier and St. Peter Port.

When the war began the Islands were assumed to be so safe that children were actually evacuated there from Southampton and as late as March 1940 advertisements were describing Jersey as the ideal resort for wartime holidays in Summer. The press also made much of the news that half the male population of Hermone manhad joined up, and that the defence of Brecqhou rested on a seventy-year-old man riding a donkey called Clarabelle. The Islands awakening was harsh and sudden. On Wednesday 19th June it was announced they were being demilitarised and that everyone wishing to leave must register at once.

The evacuation, planned in panic and haste, ended in muddle. No clear lead was given to a public desperate for guidance, and though priority was promised to women with small children and to men of military age, who might otherwise be deported to Germany, it was neither necessarysince there was ample shipping space for everyonenor in fact provided. Some people, dismayed by the long queues and lack of information, gave up and went home again, while the men were given no chance to tidy up their affairs, and families were needlessly split up. There were agonising scenes as children pleaded with their parents to come with them, though one small girl bravely tried to comfort hers, when they tried to prepare her for years of separation, by assuring them she would do her best to forget all about them. Confusion was so complete that while practically no-one went from Sark, where the famous Dame, Mrs. Hathaway, advised those with land to till to stay, almost everyone left Alderney where the leading citizen, an Englishman, gave the opposite advice. On Jersey, meanwhile, people planning to leave were publicly denounced as rats and rabbits, so about four-fifths stayed, and on Guernsey an equally misguided poster campaign urged the public Dont be yellow, so that half remained, to provide cheap, if unwilling, labour for their countrys enemies. In retrospect it is perfectly clear that the Channel Islands should have been wholly evacuated. The total numbers involved were only 93,000, far fewer than the contingents of evacuees easily handled by many individual British cities in September 1939. As it was, those left behind soon had the feeling of having been not merely abandoned but forgotten and apart from a few Red Cross messages, limited to twenty-five words, and delivered months late, received no news of their absent families and relations until after the war.

After the departure of the last ships, far sooner than was really necessary, an uneasy calm settled on the Channel Islands broken by air raids on both Guernsey and Jersey, where lorries loaded with tomatoes were mistaken for military vehicles and nearly 40 people were killed. But The Battle of the Tomatoes was not repeated and for the rest of the war the few civilians killed on the Channel Islands were the victims of British bombs aimed at German shipping and fortifications. The demilitarising of the Islands was now, too late, announced to the world and two days later, on Sunday 30th June, the first Germans landed on Guernsey. Their commander obligingly agreed to enter the house of the Attorney General by the side door to avoid waking his children, who were sleeping in the hall, and on Jersey the immaculately, dressed and monocled German officers formally accepted the surrender of the Island from the governor even though he was dressed in his oldest gardening clothes. Later encounters between the Islands authorities and the Germans were marked by much military saluting and civilian hand-shaking. One leading member of the States, the Guernsey parliament, insisted there must be no thought of any kind of resistance and the Attorney General appealed to its members to make this occupation... a model to the world, with the strictest conformity with orders and regulations issued by the German commandant and the civil authorities.

Remembering that the Channel Islands had been abandoned to their fate by the British government and that people there were, like those in the other occupied countries, still stunned by the speed of the German victory, it is not hard to understand the reason for this policy. But the line between non-resistance and active co-operation was clearly hard to draw and it is hardly a matter for pride that the Channel Islands should have been the only enslaved country without a resistance movement, though one can feel grateful that as a result they were spared the murders, massacres and atrocities which marked German rule elsewhere. The price that had to beor at any rate waspaid was that in the Channel Islands British civilians, however unwillingly, raised food to feed German troops, built emplacements for German guns, and oiled ammunition for use in invading the British Isles.