Dear Blogger
As this posting does not come as a panel, I have included the Home Front logo to go with the text and pictures.
GAS MASKS
It is likely every family had a family member or knew of a neighbour who had suffered of the ghastly blinding, lung rotting gas which the enemy had used in the `Great War` - including those in government and the forces. So, everyone was terrified of something similar in the next war.
From 1938 the Air Raid Precautions Department was tasked with supplying every single person in the UK with a respirator (gas mask); this would include babies, children, adults and those in hospitals and people with conditions requiring a special respirator.
This would mean the production of 38 million respirators and all to be done without computers or modern communications.
By September 1939 nearly everybody in the country had been issued with a gas mask and were instructed to carry their mask at all times in case of attack.
The fear of German raids using poison gas was high and casualties were expected to be extremely large. In addition to the issue of gas masks, the ARP and civil defence services were trained in dealing with the casualties of raids involving various types of poison gas and chemicals.
We have seen pictures of evacuees all dutifully carrying their cardboard box with its gas mask inside, and I am sure all the evacuees who arrived on Baschurch Station from Birkenhead and Wallasey clutched their cardboard box containing their Gas Mask. However, thankfully the dreaded gas was never used on the British population and doubtless the strange headgear disappeared into the back of a cupboard.
ARP WARDENS, a job for `Real Men` was set up in 1937. As well as yelling "Put that light out" as in Dad`s Army, they had in fact a very important job to do.
During the Blitz in cities round the country, ARP wardens managed air raid sirens, ensured people were directed to shelters and were important communicators of situations as well as first aiders to the injured.
Some 1.5 million men and women served in what became the Civil Defence Service and nearly 7,000 of them lost their lives in the conflict.
The evacuees might well have arrived carrying their gas masks but I don`t think they would have had much use for them in Ruyton XI Towns - unless it was to keep out the farmyard smells which would have come as something of a surprise to them.
