Some diarists wrote about the difficulties of making their way in the dark of the blackout, a ban on all light pollution to try to deter those elusive air raids.Ĭhristopher Tomlin, a paper salesman from Lancashire, wrote about the short-lived attempt by the government to shut down movie theaters at the beginning of the war. We learn about the rules and regulations forcing people to carry their gas masks with them everywhere-and how many adults began to leave them behind when the feared Luftwaffe bombers didn’t immediately appear. It is no surprise then that the diarists spend time detailing domestic matters.
Some of us try on our gas masks and adjust straps…We sit there keeping perhaps rather self-consciously calm and cheerful.”ĭespite the initial efforts to prepare Britain for attack, the period until spring of 1940 has become known as the “Phoney War” because little seemed to happen before Hitler’s blitzkrieg across Europe. She wrote that the national anthem followed Chamberlain, and her family all sat in silence before retreating to their own rooms, no doubt stunned at the news.Įllen Porter, an evacuation officer based in London, wrote about an air-raid siren that sounded over the capital the day of the declaration: “I go to the basement, where I have previously been working with four others. Rice, who would have to evacuate her home in Surrey for Cornwall, wrote again after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s radio announcement announcing that Britain was at war.
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