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Information Leaflets in the Event of War (1938/1939)

ChrisM

ChrisM

Super Moderator
Staff member
when reading these war leaflets only brings home to me what a very dangerous..worrying and unsure 6 years people had...once again i take my hat off to them all..how they all coped i will never understand

lyn
 
Thanks, johnny. Not specifically Brum of course but I'm sure Birmingham residents would have received copies of these.

I've one more to add, from 1938, but if any member of the Forum has any further original ones - and there were a number of similar ones - which they would be willing to scan and share, I should be happy to put them online for everyone to see, with due acknowledgement of course. (The index page for all this stuff which I have online shows mainly Home Guard training manuals; but I'm including domestic material as well as it gives a useful background to the terrible times through which our parents and grandparents lived - http://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/J16Manuals.htm ).

Pete - very useful that, on the page you showed, someone (perhaps with a sense of history, bless him/her) took the trouble of recording the date, presumably the date on which it hit the doormat.

Chris

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Well, I was only two years old at the outbreak of WW2, so I was unlikely to read these tracts. There can be few here who can recall them. My guardian, who looked after me, seemed to take it all in her stride and kept a look out for me when I was at school, later in the war, particularly when there was an air raid. Bombing did not cease with the early war 'blitz' and continued on a smaller scale throughout. The edges of the city and in particular Solihull and Shirley were known, by the Luftwaffe for certain industries - some moved due to war damage of their original premises - and for tip and run bombing.
 
I was eight when the war started, but I can't remember any of those leaflets. Having said that, in those day there were certain things never spoke about in the front of their children, such as death, so perhaps we were shielded from such scary material. I do remember though of my parents talking about things they were ordered to do, such as putting sticky tape on all the windows in order to reduce the risk of being hit by flying glass if bombed. Also to find ways of blacking out any light from windows at night. I still remember the local Air Raid warden on occasions shouting loud " Put that light out" if someone hadn't shut their blinds
 
I've just put online the last of the immediately prewar booklets I currently have, entitled "National Service" (HMSO 1939). Not the N.S. that a few of us remember, but the options open to younger - and perhaps in some cases, not so young - members of a previous generation as they pondered on the likely advent of war and how they were going volunteer their services. All before conscription of course.

This is a fascinating summary of all the possibilities covering both Civilian Services (including ARP in its widest sense, Police, Fire Services, Nursing and First Aid, Evacuation Support, Women's Land Army, Mercantile Marine, Coastguard and others); and the Armed Forces (Regular Service, Reserves and Auxiliaries in all the many branches of the R.N., the Army and the RAF). What decisions were having to be made, in Brum and everywhere else!

Worth a glance and safe to click on: National Service (HMSO 1939)

Chris
 
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