27 January 2016

Underground shelters rediscovered


War History Online has an article about some long-lost shelters under London, England:
Life for Londoners during the Second World War was fraught with danger. On the first night of the Blitz, 7 September 1940, over eight hundred German bombs fell on the city, almost all of them between 1800 and 2400.
The raids continued and, in a seven-day period from 7 to 14 October, nearly three thousand bombs rained down. Between September and November of that year, a total of over thirty thousand bombs were dropped on London, killing six thousand people and injuring twice that many.
By the end of the Blitz, in May of 1941, nearly thirty thousand Londoners had lost their lives, and another twenty-five thousand were seriously injured.  More than a million people had been made homeless. Hitler’s plan to demoralize the people and reduce the city to smoking rubble had not succeeded, In fact, it had welded the people into a formidable force, as described by J.B. Priestley in one of his inspirational radio broadcasts at the time:
He said, of Londoners, that “we’re not really civilians any longer, but a mixed bag of soldiers; machine-minding soldiers, milkmen and postmen soldiers, housewife and mother soldiers. Instead of being obscure and tucked away, we’re bang in the middle of the world’s stage, with all the spotlights focused on us.”
The government had already agreed to London Underground rail tunnels being used as shelters during the night but, fearing that the bombing would increase in intensity, it decided to go ahead with the construction of nine purpose-built tunnel shelters, each one providing sleeping accommodation for eight thousand people.
Built deep beneath the existing rail tunnels, these shelters were equipped with rows and rows of bunk-style beds, lighting systems, loudspeaker systems, and tea bars. Each person was allocated a bed for the duration, but could only take clothes and bedding into the shelter; no other personal belongings were allowed.
At the end of the war, the shelters were closed and have remained, largely forgotten, beneath London’s streets ever since. The beds and the lighting remain, as do all the original signs telling people where to go. Now Transport For London, the organization responsible for the city’s public transport infrastructure, is planning to reopen some of the shelters to the public, 75 years after they were last used.
Whether there will be a supply of tea, the Londoner’s traditional beverage, for sale is not known, but if there is, it is certain to cost more than it did in 1941, when people complained it was tuppence a cup, more than double the street price.
Rico says that Berlin paid the price for this later...

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