Read Online If Britain Had Fallen by Norman Longmate - Free Book Online Page A

can tell you the exact street corner where barricades have always been raised in the past.’ However, there was sometimes an unexpected repository of knowledge in the district, as a third paperback book suggested: to obtain information on the use of cover, ‘ask your local scouts’, having first, presumably, ascertained that they were not Germans in disguise. ‘Don’t be ashamed to learn from some cocky kid! This is not your personal life only; it is everyone else’s.’ The same author offered instructions on how to make an anti-tank grenade as casually as if advising his readers how to prune their roses: ‘Take an eight-ounce stick of ordinary commercial blasting glycerine …’ it began. To hold up enemy vehicles he recommended broken glass, boards studded with nails, and a blanket slung from a rope across a narrow street, to blind an enemy tank or force a patrol to slow up and become a more vulnerable target. The writer summed up: ‘Your weapon may be a tin can of explosive or a shotgun that will only hit at fifty yards. Treasure it until you have agood chance to kill a German. Even if you only get one, you have helped to beat Hitler.’ Such publications were private ventures and the government was not enthusiastic about private armies outside the regular forces or the Home Guard, conducting campaigns of their own with weapons more likely to harm their users than the Germans. The most useful contribution the ordinary civilian could make to victory in an invasion, the authorities urged, was more passive, to stay where he was, to leave the roads clear for military traffic and to avoid becoming a refugee, spreading panic and hindering the defending forces. As a first step, all those living in coastal areas of Kent and Sussex were advised to move inland, being given practical help and a warning that, if they stayed, they might later have to go compulsorily at a few hours’ notice. Many schools and businesses evacuated to the South-East had already moved, now that so much of Southern England was within easy reach of German bombers, and in June every household in the country received a leaflet, If the Invader Comes, which, besides some barely needed patriotic exhortation—’Think always of your country before you think of yourself—insisted that ‘Your first rule … is IF THE GERMANS COME , BY PARACHUTE , AEROPLANE , OR SHIP , YOU MUST REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE . THE ORDER IS “ STAY PUT ”.’
    To stay put, with roads blocked and supplies cut off, every community would need to be fed, and arrangements were hastily made to establish dumps of food in every village, the rectory, which usually had ample space and a trustworthy occupant, being a favoured spot. While the boxes of biscuits, corned beef, tinned soup, sugar, condensed milk, margarine and tea, were being stacked in attics or outhouses, the invaluable women who were the backbone of every local fête or flower show were called in to plan emergency feeding arrangements. A woman who attended one such meeting, in Smarden in Kent, recalled later how ‘Mrs R, a famous voluntary local caterer, was asked if she would undertake the organisation of public meals. She looked seriously at the chairman and said, “Well, everyone must wash up their own knife and fork.” Good old Mrs R. Germans or no Germans, down to the practical details in a moment!’ Mrs R’s morale was also unshaken as the same witness discovered. ‘I asked her later: “What would you do if a German soldier appeared at your back door?” ‘ Her answer: ‘I should say to ‘im, I should say, “What are you a-doin’ of’ere ?”.’ At Cranbrook, in the Weald of Kent, the older children were pressed into service. ‘When the Germans came everyone was to stay in their houses as much as possible,’ one schoolgirl later remembered, ‘and each side of the village street had an emergency food dump. Our job was to go round the backs of the houses, over walls and through hedges and make sure all was