Letters from the Blitz

Telling America the Truth about the British Experience of War

Richard MacAlpine

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780750994293
• eBook ISBN: 9780750995825
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

When war was declared in September 1939, everyday life for British citizens changed almost overnight. At the time, Winifred Graville of Sheffield, a gardener, writer and speaker well known in her local area, wrote a series of letters to her American cousin in Penn Yan, New York, describing the hardships and typical daily struggles her city experienced during the Blitz. At a time when American public opinion was strictly isolationist, Winifred's cousin convinced the editor of a local newspaper to publish excerpts from 150 letters in the hope of influencing public opinion in a small way. In Letters from the Blitz, Richard MacAlpine has gathered the published letters into a fascinating collection. At times poignant, often humorous, and always beautifully written and full of detail, Winifred's letters clearly illustrate the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' attitude of the British people during that difficult time and provide an insight into wartime life.

LETTERS FROM THE BLITZ

October 5, 1939

The war has very effectively stopped all lecturing in this country. I was hoping that my agent would arrange a lecture tour for me in America within the next year or two, but am much afraid that too will be stopped.

You folks, safe on the other side of the world, have no idea what it is like here. Not a streetlamp in Britain anywhere, not a light may show, even shops as well as private houses must present an absolutely black appearance from outside from sunset to sunrise. No chinks or faint glows, just utter blackness. Then too, every single person, children included, must by law carry their gas masks if more than five minutes away from home. Whenever I feel mine an awful nuisance, I just think perhaps some day I shall be only too thankful to wear it. As it is, I feel suffocated in it. I do not anticipate wearing it with any pleasure.

Unfortunately, Sheffield is one of the vulnerable areas. Thousands of children and mothers have been evacuated by the government or have taken themselves to country districts considered safer. Being out after dark is a real experience, for buses and trains are so darkened that you cannot recognize the person next to you and you cannot distinguish the money for your fare and as for crossing the streets, you hold your breath and bolt hoping for the best. Fortunately we have plenty of food, all of us, and there does not seem to be any likelihood of any shortage. I listen to the weekly broadcast from America by Raymond Gram Swing, though I do not know who he is or what position he holds in America.

Perhaps some day we may be able to meet, that is if the German aircraft are kept away from our country. Up to date we have not had a single air raid in Britain, our air force has chased them off every time. Even an optimist cannot expect that to happen indefinitely. This country has been flooded with refugees of all nationalities. I am afraid the poor things may have to suffer again, if luck favors the German aircraft at any time.

November 4, 1939

The weather has been very foggy with torrential rains. We are very tired of it, but feel secure from air raids with the fog. The last two nights I looked out of the door on my way up to bed and I literally could not see the door step although I was standing on it. I do not remember such darkness, but we are thankful for it. It is protection.

Sheffield is an armament city – armor plates, shells, steel plates for the battleships and submarines etc. are all made here. We are built on hills and all around and in the city are anti-aircraft guns. If we know where they are, we are asked not to tell even our best friends, as there are spies here. They will get them sooner or later we know, but they can be very dangerous. For instance, there are about 100 to 200 air balloons round the very dangerous works and one day they were taken down (for inspection, I believe) and that afternoon Germany broadcast in English saying that they knew our balloons were down and mentioned a gas decontamination centre recently made in a residential area and one or two of the big works by name, saying they would shortly be bombed.

Those of us who live close to anti-aircraft guns have been told when they are firing during a bombardment, that we are to lie down flat, face downwards, on the floor with our mouths wide open and our ears stopped up, if there’s time to get cotton wool. If not, cover them tightly with our hands in order that our ear drums will not burst with the concussion etc. A friend who lives in a block of flats opposite a barracks has been ordered to board up all windows for the duration of the war. The tenants of the flats have to pay for it themselves. It looks dreadful. All the shops underneath boarded up too.

If you want to get authentic news, listen in (if your set is powerful enough) to the BBC news at 9 o’clock every night. The Ark Royal, the Repulse, and the Iron Duke are not sunk up to date in spite of anything the Germans may say. We are not starving yet either and there are no food queues. We are to be rationed with butter and bacon, but most of those two supplies come from abroad and will not store. We are compelled by law to carry our gas masks and wear identification disks. All over the city every few yards air raid shelters have been made for our safety, if caught when out from home. They are underground, made of concrete and very cold. I dread having to rush into one. I just hate to see children carrying gas masks. The little mites ought not to know the horrors of war. Thousands of people have shut up their houses and gone into the country for the duration. Only those whose work keeps them or those who cannot afford to leave are staying here.

I have just had a ‘gas mask’ made for my canary. He is a very great pet. The ‘gas mask’ is a large glass jar with a screw top and the sort of stuff our masks are composed of fitted into the top so that the air will be freed from poison before he breathes it. I don’t want even a little canary to die in agony with poison gas if I can prevent it. Frankly, I dread gas attacks far more than ordinary air raids. I feel suffocated in the mask, though the doctors fitted mine properly and inspected it a week or two ago to see that it was still functioning all right. I don’t know what anyone would do who had a cold in the head!

I forgot to mention about the wireless news – that there is a German broadcast every night in perfect English, pretending to be London and giving the most awful lies as news. It says terrible things about England and the British. We all put it on so as to have a good laugh. We don’t mind a bit. The news is really intended for Americans and other gullible neutrals. Though no one in Europe believes a single word that comes from anybody in Germany, it might impress people who do not know that it is not really English.

November 8, 1939

The peace project of Belgium and Holland sounds all right on paper. The fact is however, that they are scared to death of Hitler and who can blame them? There can be no peace with the Nazis. They have broken their word too often. So I am afraid it will not come to anything. Hitler would like it. He has been declaring that the British navy has been swept from the seas and then goes on to say: ‘Britain cannot be allowed to be the dictator of the seas.’ The two statements, like many of his, do not fit.

December 9, 1939

Did you see the King and Queen when they were in the USA? They are idolized over here. She is tremendously popular in all classes of the community. She broadcast to the women of the empire a week or two ago, a simple, homely, moving little speech delivered in a quiet, clear voice. Sundry working women have said to me: ‘She might have been an ordinary woman in an ordinary house like this.’

The war goes on, getting more and more terrible, but our anti-aircraft force is wonderful and up to now the German air force has never penetrated inland. In many cases, they never even reach the coast. A girl was telling me about her mother, who lives 15 miles in from the coast of Yorkshire. Some German mines washed ashore all those miles away and every window in her village was smashed with the explosion. Her father has started to keep fowls. He has two black cockerels which he has named Hitler and Stalin. None of the hens will have Hitler anywhere near them!

December 12, 1939

The New York Times made me very cross reporting that four of our fleet had been sunk by German aircraft. Up to the time of this writing, their aircraft has never managed to hit any ships at all. Nor have their bombers ever got through our coastal defenses. Not yet. But at the rate they fly now, we are about eight minutes flight from the coast. So by the time you receive this, U-boats and mines permitting, we may have had a horrid time. But I have great faith in our air defenses.

December 28, 1939

A neighbour was very interested in the picture in the Rochester Times Union of the British aircraft sinking the submarine. Such pictures are not allowed in our newspapers. Next week we shall be rationed for butter and bacon. We are allowed four ounces butter per person per week. As I easily eat eight ounces, I’m going to have to scrape (literally.) One of my friend’s brothers is going to get me two pounds next week.

January 7, 1940

The Germans broadcast quite frequently that their planes have been over Britain. Up to the time of writing, no enemy plane has penetrated our defenses. They have all either been met in the North Sea and driven off or else they have been shot down at the coast. This makes quite a number of people think we are safe from attack always, but sensible folks know only too well that state of affairs is hardly likely to last until the end of the war. Some planes are bound to get through at some time. They may get into Britain, but they are very unlikely to get out again! Besides, once they begin bombing civilians the Germans will have to have a taste of their own tactics.

Tomorrow we begin rationing three-quarters pound sugar, four ounces butter, and six ounces bacon each. The maid and I will have one-half pound of bacon for breakfast per week between us instead of our usual two pounds! I am not complaining – no one complains – but what is one to eat?

We have had very keen frosts and thick fogs for almost a fortnight. The sun came out for about half an hour this afternoon and now the fog is as thick as ever. It spells safety from air raids but, oh dear, it does make things so black!

Today at midday we were told by BBC news that enemy planes penetrated over the Yorkshire cliffs, so they were not very far away. Anyhow, they were driven off without doing us much damage. They were also over Thames estuary, Newcastle, Firth of Forth, and Norfolk coast. They are beginning on us at last. Yesterday a.m. I was at work in my study enjoying the bright sunshine which was flooding the room, when I suddenly heard the sirens – air raid warning! I jumped up and looked out of the windows and a friendly van driver called out: ‘Don’t be alarmed. It’s only practice!’ I had completely forgotten they were practicing all over Yorkshire to see if the sirens and equipment were all in working order. The siren quite close to this house is awful. You can have no conception what it sounds like. The wailing of the damned in torture is an angelic choir compared to ‘Wailing Willie’ as I have named it. It’s awful going up and down, makes you go cold through and through. Your stomach drops down and your heart jumps up and your legs feel like daisy stalks. After a few minutes you are able to walk about, but feel like an empty cocoon when the insect has left it.

Each night when we go to bed, we fill the kettle with water. We are not allowed to draw water during an air raid in case of poisoned water. Set a little tray with teapot and cups and saucers, leave a candle and matches in readiness in case all electricity has gone. Upstairs we place a thick, warm coat and frock together with our gas masks where we can find them without delay in the dark. I always have my handbag with the door key and my money in it. No one knows what they might have to do and if we had to run out of the house because it was being bombed. I might as well take such money I possessed with me!!!

Yesterday I sent off two local newspapers which gave descriptions of the bombing and machine gunning of fishermen trying to get into their lifeboats after the vessels had been sunk – barbarous and disgusting behaviour. What a day of reckoning awaits the German nation! I only hope they won’t destroy all our vegetation with poisonous gases. Apart from the loss of crops, we do not want our gardens, nor ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ utterly ruined beyond redemption.

January 30, 1940

The snow in the garden is four feet deep. Thousands of folk had no milk or newspapers yesterday. The country is having the worst weather since 1869 – in Sheffield the keenest frost ever known. Nine out of ten houses have no water. Traffic everywhere is disorganized. Yesterday we had no bread or newspapers. I have not had my Sunday Times yet and it is Tuesday! Many main lines on the railway are blocked with snow. Everything is very bad connected with transport. The Germans somehow know. Yesterday they attacked the whole of the coast from Shetlands down to the English Channel at 9 a.m. all at once. Not one broke through our defenses! So they bombed and machine gunned ships that were unprotected, that is had no guns on board and there were some sad homes as a result. As soon as our aircraft come to grips with them, they turn tail and scatter off to Germany as fast as they can.

The maid is going out bread hunting, as my baker for some reason unknown to me is unable to deliver up here. Although I rang him up and ‘said a few words.’ So I will bring this to a close and she will post it for me.

March 5, 1940

I am wondering what Mr. Sumner Welles (Under Secretary of State) will say to America when he gets back. I cannot think that an astute people like the Americans will put much faith in any of Hitler’s peace proposals.

What I tell you about conditions here are absolutely true and there are some things I’d love to tell, but we are asked to be most careful, as information of no seeming value might be very useful if it fell into enemy hands. We have been asked to let friends and relatives abroad know how we are going on, as in some parts of the world there is great anxiety about friends in Britain owing to the exaggerated broadcasts of the Nazis. Their bombers have been very active off the east coast. A girl was telling me this a.m. that she had just come back from the Yorkshire coast (her home) and was having tea in a house overlooking the bay of a famous watering place, when they saw two of our destroyers and German aircraft having a battle. Everyone seized coat and ran out to watch. The Germans didn’t hit anything more than the sea and when our airmen arrived on the scene they turned tail and flew back as usual with everyone on the front cheering like mad!! Many dead bodies have been washed up on the coast and the undertaker told the girl’s father that the skipper of a fishing vessel had been so badly hit with machine gun bullets that his body was like a sieve. He had hardly been able to prepare the poor fellow’s body for burial, so riddled with holes was his corpse. The fishing vessel did not happen to be armed, so they could not protect themselves. Who would want to be governed by people who could behave like that to innocent unarmed folk pursuing their daily occupations as usual? The lifeboat went out to the rescue of some men who had their ship torpedoed under them and the Germans bombed and sank the lifeboat.

There are no food queues and there is no food shortage and up to the moment of writing, no enemy aircraft has got into England. The one brought down at Whitby (Yorkshire) was of course at the coast. There is plenty of food though not always of the kind one usually prefers. The alleged lamb that we had at the weekend was I am sure the identical ram that accompanied Noah on his cruise on the Ark and I am wondering if after hours of stewing once more, it will be less like India rubber than it was when we tried to eat it on Saturday! Tho’ in all fairness, I am bound to admit that our meat is not usually so tough.

I too wish the war was over, but I am afraid there are some very bad times ahead for all concerned and I am quite sure it will spread and that there will be neutral countries who have to come in out of self-protection. The Nazis will stop at nothing to gain their own ends.

How love...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Letters from the Blitz: October 5, 1939–November 23, 1942
• Conclusion
• About the Editor