Rural and Urban Perceptions of the War

I suppose any good history should attempt to cover all sides of the story. What a number of my relatives have told me about the war has led me to question the idea of one nation pulling together under the ‘Dunkirk spirit’, certainly in the early days of the war.

There was a perception, particularly in the first days of the war, that the 1914-18 war was about to be repeated. Many considered WWI to have been a criminal waste of human life, directed by incompetent leaders and for objectives that were in the interests of the political elite not ordinary people. It is easy to forget that there were only 21 years between the first and second world wars. Most people over the age of 30 can clearly remember 1982 and even in an era of huge technological, social and economic change the 1980s still don’t seem that long ago. The appalling crimes of the Nazis and moral justification for the Second World War were not widely recognised in 1939.

My grandfather, from Skipton in Craven, told me that his father ‘read the signs’ from the newspapers in the late 1930s and became convinced that the ‘madness’ was going to start again. He used his local contacts to get my grandfather a job in a protected occupation that would be exempt from conscription and insisted that he change jobs immediately. My great grandfather was adamant that he was not going to lose his only son in a repeat of 1914.

Even after war broke out, there was a real sense in some rural areas that the war was something that was happening elsewhere and to other people. In the first months (years?) of the war, few bombers made it as far north as Yorkshire, and even when Leeds, Bradford and Hull began to experience the Blitz that Londoners had been weathering for some time, it still seemed a long way away from rural North Yorkshire.

As many have noted, rationing was nowhere near as hard for many people in rural areas. My grandparents told me that those with money and/or connections could get extra food from local farms. Many had friends or family who worked on farms or owned small landholdings (farms were smaller and employed many more labourers than they do today). Obviously, imported goods like bananas were almost impossible for anyone to obtain.

Petrol was also very difficult to come by and even those who were lucky enough to own automobiles could not afford to use them. My grandfather, like many young men today, had a passion for tinkering with motorbikes and cars and saved his wages for several years to buy an old second hand Morris before the war. When the war began, he was afraid that his car would be requisitioned by the army and convinced one of his uncles to hide the car under a tarpaulin in his barn. It remained in the barn until 1946.

The contrast between the experiences of rural and urban areas during the war could not have been clearer for Anne, my wife’s great Aunt. She grew up in Thirsk, North Yorkshire but moved to London in the 1930s to train as a nurse.

Living in central London, the horror of the blitz was an ever-present feature of her life. During the war she was a nurse in a central London hospital and also a Fire Warden in Brixton. In addition to the horrific burns and blast injuries she witnessed by day and the physical destruction of the blitz she saw by night, she also had to contend with losing friends and colleagues on a daily basis. Everyday at work, there was an uneasy period at the start of the shift as they waited for the rest of the staff to turn up. Then someone would say, ‘Well Lucy or Gladys or whoever is not here but she is from Bow and they got it bad last night’. Then the shift would start and no one would say anything more about it.

On another occasion she told me how she was travelling home after a hectic shift when the tram in front of hers received a direct hit. There was nothing to do but get off the tram they were travelling on, file past the scene of devastation and walk home. She said that she walked the three miles home in a complete daze and when she arrived had no idea how she had managed to get there.

Eventually she got some annual leave and went up to Thirsk for a few days holiday. She described how peaceful and unchanged her hometown seemed. People were just getting on with their everyday lives, the war seemed very distant, except for those who were waiting for news of their relatives in the armed forces. After her short break Anne made her own way to the station and set off back for the blitz. She felt that none of her relations had any real idea of what she was going back to and was very hurt that no-one accompanied her to the station. She cried for most of the 5 hour journey back to London. The contrast between life in Thirsk and London affected her deeply and she recounted this story to me on a number of occasions.

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