How to Research your Second World War Ancestors E-Book

Simon Fowler

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 416

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

It has never been easier to research what your parents and grandparents and family members did in the Second World War – whether they were in the armed forces, the Home Guard or worked in factories on the home front. For anyone looking to learn more about their family's past, this book provides all the tools and information to get started, explains what is available online (as well as what is not) and outlines the pitfalls to avoid. A wide range of background information on the war itself will also help place your ancestors' experiences within the wider context of the Second World War. This book provides a comprehensive review of all the available resources, where they are to be found and how to make the best use of them; not just for the United Kingdom, but also for the Commonwealth, Europe and the United States. An essential guide, it makes an increasingly important aspect of family history both interesting and accessible to anyone looking to learn more about their past.

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First published 2025

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CONTENTS

Preface

Routine Orders

1. Introduction

2. Starting Your Research

3. Common Sources

4. The British Army

5. The Royal Air Force

6. The Royal Navy

7. The Home Front

8. The Wider War

Appendix 1. The Korean War (1950–53)

Appendix 2. Army Service Records

Appendix 3. Abbreviations

Appendix 4. Battlefield Tours

Endnotes

‘I lived upon this earth in such an age

when man was so debased, he sought to murder

for pleasure, not just to comply with orders,

his faith in falsehoods drove him to corruption,

his life was ruled by raving self-deceptions.’

Miklós Radnóti, Fragment (1944)1

PREFACE

For most people, the Second World War is ancient history, in a way that the Battle of Waterloo, or even the Great War, is. Yet, in many ways, however, the war is still fresh – it is almost as if it ended last year. If you mention ‘the War’ in conversation everybody knows which war you mean. Hundreds of books are published each year on all aspects of the Second World War, many of which enter the bestseller lists. There are endless television programmes, both factual and fictional, of varying degrees of accuracy. It is, of course, taught in school. And, perhaps more seriously as the problems faced by society today become ever more difficult, it is all too easy to fall back into a nostalgic world where Britain was still top dog, when we were led by a charismatic leader, and where the country was united in one common aim. Most importantly, the national story is that Britain came through near collapse in 1940 and endured a great deal until the final and emphatic victory was achieved five years later.

Unfortunately, to be brutal, the truth is somewhat different. In comparison to the Americans and the Russians, by the end of 1943 Britain was no longer top dog, either militarily or economically. There were widespread doubts at the highest levels about the prime minister’s abilities. Among ordinary people, there was a serious debate about the shape of the post-war world, which saw Winston Churchill unceremoniously ejected from power after the General Election in July 1945.

This book aims to help you research your ancestors’ part in the war. It was impossible to remain unaffected by the events at home and abroad and almost everybody played an active part in the Allied victory. Many families have stories amusing or horrific about the experiences retold by grandparents or aunts and uncles that have been passed down through the generations. Or you may remember nightmares as your father’s or grandfather’s subconscious struggled with his experiences on the battlefield.

The Second World War was a global war. Troops from many nations were stationed in Britain: Australian to Yugoslav. And the country welcomed (to a greater or lesser degree) tens of thousands of refugees from Europe, who were either fleeing Nazi persecution, wished to take the fight to the enemy, or found themselves unable to return home due to the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviets. Therefore, this book, where possible, has included material to help readers find out more about men and women from the United Nations (as they were known from 1942) who served in the UK as well as for the refugees and the survivors of the Holocaust.

It is assumed that you are new to family history, so there is material about how to get started and the key genealogical sources that can help. There are also bullet points suggesting how the records might help your research and pitfalls for you to avoid. Unfortunately, it may sometimes be difficult to find information. You may be lucky, but too often you won’t necessarily uncover very much. On the other hand, the chase is part of the joy of family history and who knows what you will find en route.

My personal interest in the war is threefold. There are surprisingly few family stories, as neither my parents nor their relations were in the forces. My father, who was a radiographer in London, told me shortly before his death about X-raying the survivors of the direct hit by a V2 on the Woolworths in New Cross in November 1944, when 160 people were killed and another 135 seriously injured. My mother spent much of the war as a nurse in the East End, having arrived as an 18-year-old refugee from Germany six weeks before war broke out.

Against my better judgment – or so I thought – I was persuaded to write a history of Richmond, where I live, during the Second World War. It turned out to be a fascinating project. In many ways, the town was a microcosm of British society at the time – there were air raids (one in ten houses were damaged in the bombing), people worked in the Hawker’s aircraft factory in Kingston or commuted to war work in London. Meanwhile, local children played happily in the ruins while their grandfathers were on patrol with the Home Guard. Precious days off were spent on the River Thames or in Kew Gardens. There were several hush-hush establishments and even an Italian prisoner of war camp. And, of course, many local men and women served in the forces, although until recently it has been difficult to find out much about them.

Over the past decade, I have been a professional researcher at The National Archives (TNA) at Kew and at other archives and libraries across London, checking the records for clients who wanted to know more about their family’s history during the war and I have incorporated some of this research here. I still find it an exceptionally interesting topic and I hope you will agree – if for no other reason than that the experiences of ordinary people are, for the most part, different from those shown on TV or described in books.

Simon Fowler

February 2025

1

INTRODUCTION

The Second World War was one of the most traumatic events in modern British history, probably in world history. It profoundly affected the lives of every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom. And not only in Britain of course. Tens of millions of people were involved in the war across the globe. For most it was a catastrophe. After the Fall of Singapore in February 1942, for example, the peaceful civilian population was treated almost as badly by the Japanese occupiers as the British and Allied service personnel who became their prisoners. Innocent Europeans from Biarritz to Bucharest, Newcastle to Naples, lost their lives, endured incredible hardships or were forced to flee towns and villages where their families had lived for generations.

We like to think of the Second World War as being just one worldwide conflict. In effect, however, there were three separate wars with relatively little linkage between them. The British were largely involved in the war in Western Europe between 3 September 1939 and 8 May 1945. Some historians see this as a continuation of the First World War, with a twenty-year truce between the two conflicts.

The Russians fought Germany on the Eastern Front, in a horrific war of destruction between 22 June 1941 and 9 May 1945. And, although Britain, America and the Soviet Union were formally allies, this did not mean very much in practice. The West was hardly involved on the Eastern Front, although it supplied large amounts of equipment and munitions. And, in reality, Stalin did what he liked, with little regard to what Churchill and Roosevelt thought about it.

The war in the Far East began in July 1937 with the Japanese attack on China and concluded dramatically with the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Germans and the Japanese were allied, but there were very few ways in which either nation could help each other in practice. Britain was very much the junior partner to the US in the war with Japan.

The war devastated much of Europe and Asia and it took many years for the world to recover. In Britain there was rationing for almost a decade after VE-Day and shortages of material and labour hampered recovery. Much of Central and Eastern Europe had been destroyed to an extent that shocked British visitors. It is not for nothing that the year 1945 is called Jahr Null – Year Zero – in Germany. Six million Jews, Roma and Sinti people, LGBTQ+ people and political prisoners had been murdered by the Nazis. Millions of people became refugees, fleeing vengeful occupiers or devastated cities. Millions of others were traumatised by their experiences in the front line, on the home front, or from being imprisoned in camps. It is little wonder that the peoples of Europe decided that they did not want to go through another war. Churchill and other politicians across Europe discussed how to prevent another war destroying the continent for a third time.

NATO was formed in 1949 to defend Western Europe from Russian aggression. What became today’s European Union started with the integration of steel and coal industries in the early 1950s, leading to a more formal union as a result of the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

By comparison with Germany and Russia, British casualties were light – about half of that of the First World War, although a fifth of these were innocent civilians. But there were no longer really any civilians; everybody from the age of 8 to 80 was expected to play their part in the war effort. In a few memorable words, Winston Churchill summed up the contribution the whole of British society would make towards victory in a BBC radio broadcast on 14 July 1940:

This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age.1

Unlike most family history guides, this book is not about events and the records that describe them, some of which occurred hundreds of years ago. It concerns the recent past, that which historian Juliet Gardiner calls ‘fingertip history’; that is, recalling an age so close that you can still just about touch it.2

Most readers will have memories of stories told by old relations of their wartime experiences, or perhaps, less happily are aware of the nightmares and the physical and mental traumas endured by fathers and grandfathers. The Guernsey journalist Frank Falla, for example, spent nearly two years as a prisoner in Germany for writing and circulating an underground newspaper. Falla’s health was permanently affected by his experiences. Writing in his memoirs The Silent War, he described how pneumonia left him with spots on the lungs and he became a ‘chronic bronchial sufferer’, as he put it. He also suffered from PTSD for two years, during which he experienced ‘severe sweats at night and haunting hallucinations that I was back again in my prison cell at Naumburg’. Fortunately, he was able to return to his pre-war career and made a very happy marriage. But many of his later years were spent in ensuring his fellow islanders received compensation from the Germans and he later wrote his memoirs; an action that helped him to get the bitterness out of his system.3

It is natural to want to know about our parents’ and grandparents’ wartime careers. They probably told us snippets about their experiences, even if their memories might be rather disjointed. Many veterans felt unable to discuss the horrors they had experienced with their children and, perhaps, even with their wives. This book hopes to enable you to put flesh on their stories. But be warned. It is not unknown for veterans to embellish their tales!

During the war, almost everybody actively participated in the war effort, whether as soldiers on the Normandy beaches, working a lathe in an aircraft factory, or helping in a British Restaurant. Every morning the mother of one of my clients packed first-aid boxes that were given to soldiers, before returning home to cook lunch for her family. Their experiences, of course, vary greatly from unbelievable heroism to unbelievable tedium and everything in between. Some of our ancestors had ‘a good war’, but most muddled through as best they could.

The last veterans are disappearing rapidly. As this book was being written, the deaths of men and women who had taken part in the war were announced almost on a daily basis. Among them there were the deaths of HM Queen Elizabeth, aged 96, who had served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and the last survivor of the Dambuster Raids, Sergeant George ‘Johnny’ Johnson DFM, at the age of 101. Charles Lurcher, believed to be the last survivor of the evacuation from Dunkirk, and Pippa Latour Doyle, who was the last surviving female SOE agent, both died aged 102. Aged 23, Pippa had been parachuted into occupied Normandy to gather intelligence on Nazi positions in preparation for D-Day and remained there until Paris was liberated in August 1944.

To have any clear memory of the Second World War as a child you would have to be now nearly 90.

British records relating to the war are now largely available to researchers. They are reasonably complete, although much ephemeral material was destroyed in the 1960s. So far as is known, there have been no losses comparable to the destruction of the army records in September 1940, which saw the loss of a huge number of personnel and related documents of the First World War.4 Only the Special Intelligence Service (MI6) and to a large degree the Security Service (MI5) have not released their records. In addition, some personal records are closed to public access for eighty-five years or longer. An increasing proportion of the key genealogical material is online with much more to follow over the next few years. All the key sources and their locations (both online and in archives) are described in the book.

It helps that many key sources, such as war diaries, newspapers and war grave records, will be familiar to anybody who has already researched their ancestors who fought in the Great War. The two wars were just two decades apart, after all. In addition, the major genealogical resources – particularly the birth, marriage and death registers and probate records – continued to be kept during the war.

For the first time, however, media other than newspapers, played a major part in both recording the events of the war and interpreting them for audiences at home. On occasion, they can still pack an emotional impact today as well as showing how our parents and grandparents experienced the war. And who knows if your ancestor was filmed in a crowd or appeared in a photograph. Again, there is a section describing the sources you might use here.

The book also suggests ways of researching the servicemen and women who were stationed in the United Kingdom from the Commonwealth, America or occupied Europe, or spent time here as prisoners of war.

Britain also took in tens of thousands of refugees before, during and after the war. The best known were the German and Austrian Jews who were forced to flee the Nazis. And as the Cold War began, Poles and other Eastern Europeans who could not return home for one reason or another settled here. Again, there are suggestions on how to find out more about them.

There is also a section about researching the Holocaust. Some of the survivors came to Britain and many British people, including my mother, lost family in the camps.

THE ORGANISATION OF THE WAR

It’s useful to know something about how the war was directed, even if our ancestors were on the whole very small cogs in a very large machines. You cannot understand your father’s or grandmother’s wartime lives without understanding this.

The Second World War was a total war in which the economies and societies were fully engaged in battle with an enemy whose society and economy was similarly organised. Individuals were as engaged as society as a whole, whether as a soldier in the front line or his wife in the munitions’ factory.

In Britain, everybody was expected to participate in National Service – that is the central direction of labour and individual citizens. For the first time, women were as fully involved in the war effort as their husbands, boyfriends and sons. Even outside work, men and, to an extent, women, were encouraged to volunteer for civil defence work or to dig allotments to supplement rationing. Women were expected to look after their families in addition to their war work.

Memoirs and anecdotal stories suggest that most people – in Britain at least – enjoyed their war service. Certainly, it seems to have been the highlight of my parents’ lives and those of their friends. The comedian and writer Spike Milligan later wrote that, ‘The experience of being in the army changed my whole life.’5 Most service personnel were in their twenties and thirties – young enough to learn new skills, even basic ones like driving, and to take advantage of the opportunities they were given.

For some, it was life changing – in good and bad ways. Young women in particular seem to have relished the chances to do something new, whether it be working in a munitions factory or in the SOE.

Many men were traumatised by what they saw and never fully recovered from their experiences. Before the war, comedian and author Spike Milligan, for example, was an assistant storeman in Bond Street. He was called up to the Royal Artillery in 1940, where he honed his musical and comedic skills in a variety of music parties. However, he eventually experienced a mental breakdown after his experiences in North Africa and during the battle for Monte Cassino in Italy. After a period of recovery, he worked as a wine waiter at an officers’ rest camp. Soon after leaving the army, he became a musician before his big break at the BBC. However, Spike’s mental health always remained fragile. He described his wartime experiences in a series of autobiographies.6

CENTRAL DIRECTION

There were essentially two British prime ministers during the Second World War.7 Neville Chamberlain was in charge for the first nine months before being replaced by Winston Churchill in May 1940. Chamberlain was rather a colourless man and not a natural war leader. At the time, he was blamed for lack of preparedness for war, that is ‘appeasement’. But many historians now agree that the Munich Agreement, in September 1938, allowed a vital extra year for Britain to rearm.

Twenty years ago, Churchill was voted the greatest Briton in a BBC poll and, despite his many faults, it is hard to disagree. He brought to the fore an absolute determination to win the war, at a time when defeat seemed inevitable. He was a charismatic figure; somebody – with the cigar, the reassuring bulk and the boyish smile – who could reassure and inspire ordinary citizens in wartime.8 His colleagues were less complimentary about him in private, and although they cheered him as being the great victor, the electorate brutally ejected him and the Conservative Party from power at the 1945 General Election. This was possibly the greatest political upset in British political history.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference in July 1943. This was the first time that the war leaders had met face to face. (Wikimedia Commons/US Signals Corps)

Churchill led a small War Cabinet made up of half a dozen or so senior ministers who had direct responsibility for the war effort. He believed that members should hold ‘responsible offices and not be mere advisors at large with nothing to do but think and talk and take decisions by compromise or majority’. His deputy was Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, who largely looked after domestic affairs, allowing Churchill to concentrate on defence and strategic planning, and also indulge his fascination with special operations – the subjects in which he was most interested. With the exception of Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, the other members of the War Cabinet are now only usually remembered by historians.

The military direction of the war was through the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It was formed of the military heads of the three services. The committee was formed in 1923 but came into its own during the Second World War when it planned many military operations and encouraged the services to work together. General Sir Hastings Ismay acted as its secretary as well as a direct conduit to the War Cabinet (which, in practice, meant Churchill).

Winston Churchill’s signature in a file on Operation Biting, the raid on the German radar station at Bruneval. (TNA PREM 3/73)

THE RECORDS

Although of little or no genealogical value, the records of the central direction of the war are interesting if you wish to know more about particular decisions or military actions.

Formal Cabinet minutes (known as Conclusions) were taken by the Cabinet Secretary. Memoranda were circulated by ministers to Cabinet providing background or asking for decisions to be made by Cabinet. In addition, committees – both ministerial and official (that is, made up solely of civil servants) – were established as and when needed. The system is still in use today. All Cabinet conclusions and memoranda are available online on TNA’s website in series CAB 65 and CAB 66. It is probably easier, however, to use the Cabinet Papers website.

Much useful material can also be found in the files of Prime Minister’s Correspondence in series PREM 3 and PREM 4 and CAB 21 (these are not online). Also of considerable interest are the Churchill Papers held by the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge.

Minutes and Memoranda of the Chiefs of Staff Committee are in series CAB 79 and CAB 80. They can be downloaded from TNA’s website.

There is a useful TNA Research Guide to Cabinet records: ‘The Cabinet and its Committees’.

HOW THE FORCES WERE ORGANISED

It is very easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of when and where each unit was serving as part of which superior force. Unless you decide to do an in-depth history of a particular battalion or regiment, you really don’t need to have this information at your fingertips. Ordinary soldiers were generally only interested in the unit in which they were serving and perhaps had a pride in being part of a particular army, such as the Eighth Army. An airman’s loyalty was largely to his squadron or unit, or even, for many individuals in groundcrew, to the aircraft that they lovingly maintained, and seamen to their ship. In many cases, the real loyalty lay with the comrades they worked, lived and drank with.

In some ways, at least to the vast majority of privates, seamen and aircraftsmen, the organisation of the services was a bit like being at school. Students would know the form teacher and others who taught them – perhaps equivalent to the junior officers (lieutenants and second lieutenants) and the non-commissioned officers (sergeants), with corporals as the prefects, but they might know only by sight the head teacher and heads of subjects – that is, the senior officers.

Britain’s armed forces were (and still are) divided into three services with distinct roles, although there was some overlap. During the war, the services generally worked well together under the direction of Chiefs of Staff and the supreme Allied commanders for each theatre of operation. In one of his first acts when he became prime minister in May 1940, Churchill established a Ministry of Defence to ensure that the services were under his direct control and to ensure that they collaborated with rather than against each other, which sometimes had been the case during the First World War.

The British Army provided the infantry, armour (that is tanks) and artillery (guns). In addition, there were corps providing common operational support across the service, notably the Royal Engineers and the Royal Army Corps, but also smaller units such as the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, the Pioneer Corps, the Army Catering Corps and the Royal Army Pay Corps. Most special force units, including the Special Air Service (SAS), were also part of the army.

It was also the largest of the three services. By the end of the Second World War in September 1945, over 3.5 million men and women had served in the British Army, which had suffered around 720,000 casualties (that is men and women killed, incapacitated in some way, or taken prisoner by the enemy) throughout the conflict.9 Just under a million men served in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, by far the largest unit in the army.

The Army’s organisation changed considerably during the Second World War in order to meet changing situations. New formations were created and disbanded as and when it became necessary. This section is only the briefest of overviews, for more detail refer to G. Forty, British Army Handbook 1939–1945 (Sutton, 1998). The more comprehensive histories of campaigns and battles may also list army formations of whose work they describe.

More about formations can be found in the Orders of Battle, often referred to as Orbats. The Orders give the war establishment of each army, corps and division and when subordinate units join and leave them. They are listed in full in H.F. Joslen, Orders of Battle of the Second World War (2 vols, HMSO, 1960). Military archives and TNA have copies, and it is also sold by the Naval and Military Press. A selection is also available on the Orders of Battle website.

The British Army was divided into several numbered Army Groups under the control of the supreme commanders in the various theatres of operations, who in turn answered to the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington DC. The Army Groups comprised both British and American formations as appropriate. The 18th (and then the 15th) Army Group, under General Harold Alexander, was responsible for armies in North Africa and Italy. General Bernard Montgomery commanded the 21st Army Group in north-west Europe after D-Day. This was renamed the British Army of the Rhine, following the Surrender of Germany in May 1945. In Burma there was the 11th Army Group initially under General George Giffard, who was succeeded by Lieutenant General Oliver Leese and in the last weeks of the war General William Slim.10

Reporting to the Army Groups were a number of field armies. The most important of which were the Second Army which saw action in north-west Europe between D-Day and May 1945 (together with the Canadian First Army), the 8th Army which served in the Middle East and Italy, and the 14th Army which served in India and Burma. Your fathers or grandfathers should not have been part of the 4th or 6th armies, which were fictional bodies that were successfully created to deceive the Germans into believing that the D-Day landings were going to take place near Calais.11

These units were not fighting ones. Their role was to plan and prepare for battle to ensure that the objectives set by the politicians and the supreme Allied commanders were met.

A subdivision of the armies was the Corps, which was usually commanded by a lieutenant general. It normally consisted of two or more army divisions together with additional artillery, engineer, reconnaissance, signals and other units that could be used by the corps or attached to divisions for specific operations. It should not be confused with the Arms of Service (that is formations such as the Royal Artillery, Royal Armoured Corps and Royal Army Medical Corps). Thirteen corps were created during the war.12

Divisions were the highest echelons to actively engage in action. There were 11 armoured divisions, 42 infantry divisions, 2 airborne divisions and even, for a short while, a cavalry division.13 An infantry division was normally made up of a headquarters commanded by a colonel, three infantry brigades and an artillery group. In addition, there could be a wide range of specialist units. In the 51st Highland Division, serving across north-west Europe after D-Day, there was an Ordnance Field Park (for ammunition), a provost company (for policing) and a postal unit.14 Armoured divisions would have included additional facilities to maintain, store and refuel tanks and other armoured vehicles.

Beneath them lay Brigades, which were mainly infantry, but included some more specialist armoured and parachute groups too. Their structure was not dissimilar to the Divisions, which were made up of three battalions, a headquarters and troops such as REME workshops.

But the most important fighting unit was the infantry battalion, which at full strength consisted of about 1,000 men. Battalions were part of a regiment. Each regiment had a depot, which had a number of administrative duties, including keeping the regimental archives.

Regiments, with the exception of the Rifle Brigade and King’s Royal Rifle Corps, were linked to particular counties or cities. The affiliation is usually clear from the regimental title, such as the King’s Liverpool Regiment or the East Surreys. In peacetime, the regiment recruited from the communities in its area. During the Second World War, this link was comprehensively broken; recruits were sent to units where there were vacancies, and increasingly where their skills could be best used by the army.

In peacetime, the regiment was made up of two battalions of regular soldiers, one of which was normally based at home, while the other was overseas, generally in India. In addition, the Third and Fourth battalions were territorial units made up of part-time soldiers or reservists, that is, veterans who could be recalled in time of war. The numbers of battalions grew as the army itself grew. The Worcestershire Regiment, for example, started the war with two regular battalions and added another six as the war progressed.15

An infantry battalion was made up of a Battalion Headquarters Company and four companies. It was usually commanded by a lieutenant colonel, with a major as second in command. Other important figures would be based at battalion HQ, such as an adjutant. An adjutant was responsible for battalion administration and the write up of war diaries; a quartermaster who would oversee stores and transport; and a medical officer, who was on detachment from the RAMC.

The regimental sergeant-major (RSM, the most senior non-commissioned officer) would also be based here, alongside several specialist positions such as quartermasters, cooks, signallers and an orderly room clerk, which were taken up by sergeants. Each company was commanded by a major or captain and was referred to by its letter, normally A to D. A company sergeant-major (CSM) and ‘quarterbloke’, who served as the company quartermaster sergeant (CQMS), were also required.

Companies were then divided into four platoons, under the command of lieutenants and second lieutenants, otherwise known as subalterns. Each platoon was then split into a further four sections. Generally, an individual section consisted of twelve men lead by an NCO, typically a corporal or sergeant.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) was divided into a small number of ‘commands’ at home, including Bomber, Coastal and Fighter commands, and air forces overseas. The commands in turn divided into groups generally on a geographical basis. For example, 5 Group, Bomber Command, was responsible for stations and squadrons in Lincolnshire, and during the Battle of Britain, 11 Group, Fighter Command, had responsibility for much of south-east England and East Anglia.

At the heart of the RAF units were (and remain) squadrons, which are the main form of flying unit. Individual squadrons were assigned to particular tasks – as bombers or fighters – and were equipped accordingly. Each squadron was commanded by a wing commander and normally comprised two or three flights. A flight would normally be equipped with eight aircraft with a squadron leader as officer in charge. Aircrew would fly the machines, but they would be maintained and provisioned by the groundcrew. A Spitfire fighter would be flown by just a pilot, but heavy bombers, such as a Lancaster, might have a crew of six or seven, each with a specialist role: pilot (who commanded the aircraft during a sortie or mission); the navigator; flight engineer; wireless operator; bomb aimer (who also operated the front gun turret); and upper, mid and rear gunners.16

In the UK, squadrons were based at permanent stations. The station might house several squadrons and be commanded by a group captain. They provided a variety of common services from air traffic control, maintenance of the runways, emergency services and accommodation for everybody. The numbers housed could be large. At its peak, RAF Elsham Wolds in north Lincolnshire accommodated 2,500 officers and men. Overseas stations might be rather less fancy, perhaps no more than a strip in the desert or jungle with facilities in tents.17

In addition, there were training units of every kind, of which the best known are the Empire Flying Training Schools in Canada, Rhodesia and the United States that provided basic training in conditions far better than those available at home.

At the heart of the Royal Navy was the ship. Even shore bases, sometimes referred to as ‘stone frigates’, are given ships’ names. HMS Ganges, for example, was the boys’ training school near Ipswich, and many a sailor sat on his heels waiting for a posting at HMS Pembroke, the barracks at Chatham Dockyard.18

The navy was organised into a number of commands and fleets, as well as the Royal Marines, Submarine Service and the Fleet Air Arm These are explained in more detail on the Naval History Net website.

During the war, the Royal Navy sent around a thousand ships and submarines to sea, from aircraft carriers and battleships, each with a crew of many hundreds, to motor torpedo boats manned by an enthusiastic young and undoubtedly bearded skipper, an engineer and a couple of deck hands.19

MANPOWER AND CONSCRIPTION

One constant determined British military policy during the Second World War – that of the lack of manpower. Men and women were needed in the forces, but they also were needed in the factories and the farms to supply munitions and food. Writing after the war, the official historian noted: ‘The manpower budgets were the main force in determining every part of the war effort from the numbers of RAF heavy bombers raiding Germany to the size of the clothing ration.’20

To maximise the effective use of manpower, conscription – formally known as National Service – was introduced. Initially it was only for men aged 20 and 21 for 6 months military training. The scheme began in April 1939, 5 months before the formal declaration of war.

However, you could join up without waiting for your call-up papers. Some 300,000 did so. The advantage being that volunteers could choose which service to join and, perhaps as importantly, allowed men to escape otherwise tedious work in a factory or office for what they hoped was a more adventurous life.

In addition, half a million men had volunteered to join Air Raid Precautions, another sign that people had woken up to the threat of Nazi Germany. Previous attempts to find volunteers for ARP work had been very disappointing; before the Munich Crisis of September and October 1938 war had seemed very distant.

Full conscription was introduced in September 1939 for all men between the ages of 18 and 41. Continuing shortages of manpower meant that the conscription scheme was eventually extended. From April 1941, all able-bodied men and women between the ages of 18 and 60 were required to perform some form of National Service. This might mean full-time service in the Home Guard or Civil Defence (as the ARP became). For most, it meant joining the armed forces or a reserved occupation at home. Britain thus became the first nation to conscript everybody regardless of sex. In Germany, for example, women and girls were eventually conscripted in the last few months of the war, although in practice many women in their teens and twenties had been a member of a Nazi youth organisation or a women’s auxiliary service.21

Initially, conscripts could choose which service they joined. Because of the romance attached to it, the Royal Air Force was inevitably the most popular choice and had the pick of candidates. The British Army being the least popular, a higher proportion of army recruits were said to be dull and backwards than in the other services.

Within the army, men were assigned to regiments based on the need to keep numbers up rather than to meet a man’s particular skills or aptitudes. This was a shocking waste of manpower. The Army Council was told that, ‘The British Army is wasting manpower in this war almost as badly as it did in the last war. A man is posted to a Corps almost entirely on the demand of the moment and without any effort at personal selection by proper tests.’22

From the middle of 1942, recruits initially joined the General Service Corps for their first six weeks of basic training and assessment at a Primary Training Centre so that their subsequent posting could take account of their skills and the army’s needs. About 9 per cent were identified as tradesmen, with particular skills, 6 per cent as potential officers, and 14 per cent were referred for further psychological assessment.23 Although it wasn’t perfect, the scheme generally managed to put round pegs into round holes.

RESERVED OCCUPATIONS

Not all men and were conscripted into the armed forces, however. Many remained in civilian ‘reserved occupations’ which were considered to be vital to the war effort, such as miners, farmers and workers in aircraft factories. Initially, employers could request that the call up be deferred for a valued employee. But as the demand for men in the services continued jobs were increasingly filled by women as their menfolk were called up. Members of the Women’s Land Army for example replaced labourers on the land. By 1943, most workers in aircraft factories were women, only the inspectors, foremen and the most skilled workers were men.24

BEVIN BOYS

Coal mining suffered a severe shortage of manpower, which was particularly important because Britain’s factories and homes depended almost entirely on coal for fuel. In a bid to tackle this, Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour in December 1943, introduced conscription. One in ten young men who were due to be called up to the forces would instead be heading down into the mines. Men were selected by ballot. There was no appeal against this selection.

These conscript miners were known as ‘Bevin Boys’. Some 21,800 young men became Bevin Boys, alongside another 16,000 who chose to go down the mines rather than join the services. Famous Bevin Boys included Stanley Baxter, Eric Bartholomew (Eric Morecambe), and Brian Rix.

Some men hated their time in the mines. Bert Mitchell remembered that:

The conditions were diabolical, I dreaded it from the moment I went there I just couldn’t get attached to it at all. I actually hated it. The conditions, crawling along two or three miles to the coal face to work … plus the fact that the people weren’t very kindly to us because they seemed to think that we were doing what their sons ought to be doing.25

Mr Dowden had a happier time:

We were regarded as a different species to the miners. We spoke quite differently to them and this was a cause of much amusement and misunderstanding. As I had worked at the Post Office the blokes wanted to know if I spent all my time licking stamps!26

FINDING OUT MORE

There are no service records for Bevin Boys, but some records are held at the National Archives. Simon Demissie summarised their holdings in a useful blog posting in May 2013. There is a valuable BBC TV documentary on the Bevin Boys first broadcast in 1983 on the BBC Archive website. The Bevin Boys Association has much of interest on their website: their archives are with the Imperial War Museum.

ARMY OFFICERS

By contrast with all previous wars, officers had to spend at least a year in the ranks before being recommended by their commanding officer and passing an interview and other tests at a selection board. Announcing this policy in 1939, the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, stressed that:

In this Army the star [that is the ‘pip’ on the lieutenant’s uniform] is within every private soldier’s reach. No one, however humble or exalted his birth, need be afraid that his military virtues will remain unrecognised. More importantly, no one, who wishes to serve in the army need consider his state minimised by starting on the bottom rung.27

During the war, some 200,000 men and women received commissions, the vast majority of whom had come via the ranks.

Although the army was a much more democratic body than it had been in 1914, it still preferred men from the right public-school background. The writer Alan Wood spent a year as a gunner before someone discovered that he had been educated at Oxford: ‘I was promptly given a recommendation for a commission and a handsome apology for being kept in the ranks so long.’28

Officers who came from the ranks often found it difficult to deal with the aristocratic and upper-class elites who still formed the majority of pre-war officers. Being an officer also involved some financial sacrifice, largely because junior officers’ pay was less than that of an experienced NCO. There were also other expenses such as mess bills, which might be a quarter of a junior officer’s salary. Henry Longhurst, serving in the Royal Artillery, pointed this out in an April 1941 article in the Sunday Express headed: ‘No drinks or smokes on an officer’s pay’.29 Matters improved when pay and allowances increased to provide for the payment of mess expenses.

‘Fighting Fit in the Factory’, one of the many posters produced by the Ministry of Information to boost the war effort. Artist A.R. Thomson. (Wikimedia Commons/TNA INF 3/160)

Commanding officers were also often reluctant to allow good non-commissioned officers to apply for commissions. The result was that fewer men were being promoted from the ranks than had been expected or met the army’s increasing needs.