Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain

303 Pages·2020·3.856 MB·English

by  Lucy Noakes

CULTURAL HISTORY OF MODERN WAR CULTURAL HISTORY OF MODERN WAR
Lucy Noakes

Death in war matters. It matters to the individual, threatened with their own
death, or the death of loved ones. It matters to groups and communities, D
who have to find ways to manage death, to support the bereaved, and
D Y
I
to dispose of bodies amidst the confusion of conflict. And death in war NE
I
matters to the state, which has to find ways of coping with mass death that SA N
T
E
convey a sense of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice of both the victims CH G
of war, and those that mourn in their wake. O,
NGR F
Dying for the nation explores the experience and meanings of death, grief DI O
E
and bereavement for Britain and the British people during the Second WF
World War, considering the ways that the demands of war shaped the O A R
RN
British emotional economy. While the state had to find ways to manage T
LD
the deaths of thousands, both civilian and combatant, the individually D H
B
bereaved had to find ways to live with grief in an emotional economy that WE E
valued restraint, and in a wartime culture that often saw expressions of AR
RE N
grief as detrimental to collective morale. A
BV
R A
E
Drawing on a wealth of sources, ranging from letters, diaries and memoirs I
TM T
to films, magazines, novels and government planning papers, this study AE I
traces the management, experience and memory of death in wartime INN O
T
Britain. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the social and
N
cultural history of Britain in the Second World War.
Lucy Noakes is the Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex
DYING FOR
N
o
a
k
e THE NATION
s
Cover image:
Barbara Candy:
After an Air Raid - Direct Hit on a School (1943).
IWM ART 17598.
DEATHJ,A GNRIEE FB ARNODO KBESR EAVEMENT
ISBN 978-0-7190-8759-2
IN SECOND WORLD WAR BRITAIN
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Dying for the nation
Cultural History of Modern War
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Dying for the
nation
Death, grief and bereavement in
Second World War Britain
•
LUCY NOAKES
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2020
Cover image: Barbara Candy: After an Air Raid - Direct Hit on a School (1943).
IWM ART 17598.
The right of Lucy Noakes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by
her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7190 8759 2 hardback
First published 2020
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction: death, grief and bereavement in
wartime Britain 1
1 Shadowing: death, grief and mourning before the
Second World War 21
2 Feeling: the emotional economy of interwar Britain 45
3 Planning: imagining and planning for death in wartime 73
4 Coping: belief and agency in wartime 101
5 Dying: death and destruction of the body in war 125
6 Burying: the disposal of the war’s dead 155
7 Grieving: bereavement, grief and the emotional labour
of wartime 193
8 Remembering: remembering and commemorating the
dead of war 229
Conclusion: the personal and the political 265
Bibliography 271
Index 291
• v •
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making. While I have worked, in
various ways, on the Second World War for over twenty years, I have
always circled cautiously around what war does to human beings, both
emotionally and physically. This book is an attempt to get to grips with
death, which is at the heart of war – its management, and what it leaves
behind. The impact of war on the human body, and the emotional,
political and cultural responses to this, are the focus of this study.
I have been the beneficiary of research support and funding that
has made visits to British national and local history archives possible.
Thanks to the University of Brighton, and especially to Paddy Maguire,
head of the School of Humanities, and to the History Department at
the University of Essex. Thanks also to the archivists and librarians
who have made this research easier and often, despite the subject mat-
ter, pleasurable. The staff of Bristol City Archives; the British Library;
Clydebank Local History Centre; the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission; Coventry City Archives; Glamorgan County Archives;
Hackney Archives; Hull History Centre; the Imperial War Museum;
London Metropolitan Archives; the Mass Observation Archive in the
Keep, Brighton; the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; Newham Local History
Centre; the National Archives in London and the National Records
of Scotland in Edinburgh; the Public Record Office of Northern
Ireland; Plymouth City Archives; and the Wolfson Centre, Library of
Birmingham all provided invaluable help with the research for this
book, often directing me to sources that I wouldn’t otherwise have dis-
covered. Particular thanks go to Max Dutton at the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission, for sharing his research on headstone
inscriptions. I wish to thank the trustees of Mass Observation for per-
mission to quote from the archive. My editor at Manchester University
• vi •
Acknowledgements
Press, Emma Brennan, has been both supportive and extremely patient,
as deadlines were passed time and time again.
Colleagues and students at the universities of Brighton and Essex
provided wonderful environments within which this research devel-
oped and, I hope, matured. The often unacknowledged work that
scholars around the world put into organising research seminars,
workshops, colloquia and conferences is recognised, and thanked,
here. The opportunity to share my ‘work in progress’ at research semi-
nars and symposia at the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Essex,
Hanyang, Seoul, Lancaster, Kent, King’s College London, Madison-
Wisconsin, Manchester, Mississippi, Oldenburg, Oxford, Sussex and
Warwick and invitations and opportunities to speak at the British
Academy; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the North
American Conference on British Studies; the Arts and Humanities
Research Council ‘Passions of War’ International Research Network
led by Philip Shaw at the University of Leicester; and the Social History
Society Annual Conference, provided rich and valuable feedback
from colleagues and helped to shape this work in numerous ways.
For thought-provoking conversations, for hospitality and especially
for their generosity in sharing their own ideas and research, I would
particularly like to thank Afxentis Afxentiou, Alan Allport, Stephen
Brooke, Joanna Bourke, Ian Cantoni, Mark Connelly, Alison Fell,
Matthew Grant, Garitoitz Gomez Afaro, Rae Frances, Yasmin Khan,
Senia Paseta, Bruce Scates, Kasia Tomasiewicz and Dan Todman. All
errors are, of course, my own.
I am lucky to be surrounded by a generation of wonderful female
historians, many of whom have become friends as well as inspiring col-
leagues. Sue Grayzel, Claire Langhamer, Tracey Loughran, Kate Newby,
Helen Parr, Gill Plain and Penny Summerfield all read parts of this
book, and were ready with wit, kindness and good coffee or wine when-
ever it was needed. Dorothy Sheridan has been, as ever, an inspiration
and a role model of how to conduct thoughtful and ethical research.
I am also lucky in my family and in the times that I live in: my chil-
dren, Hannah, Calum and Skye, have been able to grow up unscathed
by the horrors of war, but with compassion for the many whose lives are
still destroyed and thrown into chaos by this most terrible of human
actions. I recognise my luck in being a woman living at this point in
history. Growing up at the tail end of the welfare state, I benefited from
a stable household income and a fantastic comprehensive school edu-
cation, where I was taught by committed teachers who had the time
• vii •
Acknowledgements
to help us imagine other worlds and opportunities. I attended univer-
sity on a full state grant. Thanks to my family and to feminism I never
doubted that the world was as much mine as it was that of men, or of the
wealthy and powerful. I have been able to combine a rewarding career
with an equally rewarding family life; I hope that my children and my
students have the same opportunities.
Finally, I am lucky in my partner, Martin Evans, whose appalling
and endless jokes provided a welcome distraction from the grim nature
of much of the research that informed this book. With his own dead-
lines, he still found time to listen to me talk endlessly about this project,
and to read the manuscript with the care and tact that a partner needs
to show when asked to be a critical friend. It’s a thankless task, and I
promise to do the same for him some day.
Lucy Noakes
Brighton, 2019
• viii •
Introduction
Death, grief and bereavement
in wartime Britain
Mrs Lane’s loss
By the end of the Second World War, approximately 369,405 British
nationals, both combatant and civilian, had been killed.1 Among these
were the four sons of Mrs Lane, a middle-aged woman from North
London. Mrs Lane’s sons had all been members of the Royal Air Force
(RAF): Donald had been killed during the retreat to Dunkirk in June
1940, Desmond in September 1942, John in March 1943 and Patrick,
her oldest son, in a flying accident in January 1945. Only her daugh-
ter, Sheila, had survived the war. The loss of four of her five children
must have been devastating, yet, according to an interview in the News
Chronicle soon after Patrick’s death, she ‘felt no bitterness’. Instead,
she claimed, ‘it is a glorious thing to have brought up and educated
four sons who never gave me a moment’s trouble and who have now
so willingly given their lives for their country’. In her pride in her sons
and their sacrifice, Mrs Lane gave voice to a form of maternal, wartime
bereavement which chimed with the mood of a nation that had endured
over five years of war, with all its losses and heartaches. Like so many
others, her sons had died for the nation. Now her grief had to work for
the national war effort.
Yet a closer reading of Mrs Lane’s interview in the News Chronicle
does tell us more of the impact of wartime loss. While her sons may
have been dead, their presence was still visible in her home. The inter-
view took place in her Hampstead flat, next to ‘a sideboard covered
with photographs and snapshots of “the boys”’. The ongoing emotional
labour of grief, and Mrs Lane’s daily struggle with her loss, also became
clear in her remark, ‘in a voice little more than a whisper’, that ‘the
future seems so frighteningly empty, but I try not to think about it. If
• 1 •