They say the war is over. But water still
Comes bloody from the taps.
from ‘Redeployment,’ Howard Nemerov

In April 1961 the BBC Light program broadcast the first episode of a new radio drama: The Avenue Goes to War. It was based on the R. F. Delderfield novel of the same name. 

It’s the story of one suburban street in South London, the people who lived there, and of what happened to them post Dunkirk and the fall of France, when the phony war – the Sitzkrieg – was over and the Battle of Britain began and the bombs began to fall. 

I had warmed up the radio and was looking forward to the program which promised to be really interesting.  A few minutes into the episode there’s the wail of an air rain siren. My mother, who was tidying something in the kitchen, inexplicably burst into tears. 

Nemerov published that poem in 1987 years after his service as a fighter pilot. He flew fifty seven missions with a total of 750 flyings hours 200 of which were in combat. 

This is a section of his Army Separation Record: 

The Blitz was twenty years in the past. My mother had accompanied children evacuated from London.

Both showed how delayed response to extreme stress shows up in daily life long after the events themselves have past. My mother’s tears and distress were an involuntary reaction to memory set off by a sound effect in a radio play. 

It Took Me That Long To Stop Shaking

We are familiar with lingering effects of trauma from the literature of the WW1 and more recently from the fuller recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that emerged after Vietnam. As he describes it in his memoir Goodbye to All That (1929), Robert Graves had all the symptoms of PTSD.

Graves called it war-shock and the Army Medical Board that awarded him a disability pension called it neurasthenia. Like the blood coming from the faucet in Nemerov’s poem, Graves had nightmares and hallucinations that persisted for years: 

Shells used to come bursting on my bed at midnight, even though Nancy shared it with me; strangers in daytime would assume the faces of friends who had been killed… I could not use a telephone, I felt sick every time I travelled by train, and to see more than two new people in a single day prevented me from sleeping. – The War Is Too Much With Us

Nemerov and his navigator were the only crew to survive the war, from an initial class of twelve crews at his OTU (Operational training Unit). Decades later later he was asked why it had taken him over forty years to write of his war experiences:

He looked at me across the table, his neon blue eyes unblinking.”Because it took me that long to stop shaking.” Note to Chapter 12The Final Mission of Bottoms Up: A World War II Pilot’s Story By Dennis R. Okerstrom

The Trauma of Aerial Bombardment

Before the war, British government officials, psychologists and others were worried about the impact that aerial bombing would have on the civilian population. There were fears that the trauma would so stress morale that social order would breakdown and people would panic.  

There are reasons why such widespread panic did not happen – reasons glossed over by those who love to promote the mythology of the “Blitz spirit”. 

On a simplistic level, one explanation for the absence of widespread panic during the Blitz was the low death rate. While tens of thousands died in air raids the mortality rate remained relatively low given the size of the urban populations. In London, the 29,890 deaths represented 0.3 per cent of the capital’s population. The highest rates were in Plymouth and Coventry, where in both towns 0.5 per cent of residents were killed. But leadership and planning also helped.

Other pre-war mental health experts predicted that the health effects of the conflict might not be revealed until the return of peace.’ A delayed time bomb of trauma. 

It could be argued that vast numbers of British people suffered from various forms of PTSD in the past-war years. That psychic trauma, however,  was probably mitigated by the work that took place during the war years that laid the groundwork for the post-war welfare state. Social support, employment and economic hope are great creators of emotional stability. 

And so is leadership. Lack of leadership – or malign and incompetent leadership in a time of crisis –  is traumatizing all on its own.

Leadership and Plans

In the middle of the war – in November 1942  – the British Government issued The Beveridge Report, officially entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services (Cmd. 6404).

It was drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge who proposed widespread reforms to the system of social welfare to address what he identified as “five giants on the road of reconstruction”: “Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness”.

Things might be bad for the duration of the war – but out of the collective crisis came the plan for a better and fairer Britain in the future. Such hope helped win the war.

And so – of course – did  rationing. Not being subject to the panic buying and hoarding of essential goods – especially food – and the sense that everyone is in the same boat together, are wonderful stress relievers. But that also takes leadership.

In the absence of leadership and planning, panic and paranoia fill the vacuum.

How’s the supply of pasta and toiler paper where you are?

Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration