AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS : A WORKING MODEL
By W. T. WELLS
LAST week The Spectator published, under the heading " Design for Air Raids " an article in which the writer, Mr. Noel Carrington, expressed the view that a dug-out in the back garden might well be the safest place for the average citizen during an air raid. That is an essentially unofficial view. For a picture of what the official scheme can offer in the way of safety it is worth while examining the very compre- hensive plans that have been adopted in one medium-sized English borough, Southampton: Just a year ago, on January 4th, 1937, Captain A. J. Phillips took up his appointment as virtually the first Air Raid Precautions Officer of the borough ; for some little time before his appointment the Council had been alive to the necessity of preparing a scheme, and a temporary and honorary officer had done valuable preliminary work. Quite naturally, Captain Phillips found an organisation scarcely in embryo. The two problems to which he first addressed himself were the training of those responsible for the maintenance of essential municipal services, and the education of the public to take an intelligent interest in the work with a view to achieving later what is the central aim of all air raid precautions —their co-operation. There was a third problem, which may seem unimportant, but is in face essential to the smooth working of the scheme ; to obtain a map which was large enough to show the whole scheme in operation, but small enough to show as a whole on any wall in Southampton's Civic Centre.
For the maintenance of essential services it was, with one exception dealt with below, not necessary to go outside the existing departments of the municipal administration, though it has been necessary to recruit volunteers in addition to the regular staff. Each department has assumed responsibilities appropriate to its ordinary functions, and in training personnel for their duties Captain Phillips had available a member of the borough engineer's department, an inspector of police, and the third officer of the fire brigade, who had all passed through the Anti-Gas School at Falfield and qualified as instructors. The borough engineer's department, which has installed a gas-testing chamber, assumed responsibility for the decontamination of roads, buildings and materials. The waterworks department evolved a scheme of supply by alternative lines from alternative sources. The fire brigade was naturally made responsible for fire-fighting ; auxiliary firemen were enrolled some months before Captain Phillips' arrival, and anti-gas training was given to all members of the brigade. Every member of the borough police was given anti-gas training. The Medical Officer of Health took charge of the organisation of first-aid posts and a casualty clearing station ; and the transport manager also had his scheme, to include the conversion of omnibuses into ambulances, to evolve in co-operation with the Air Raid Precautions Officer. This account of the duties of the municipal departments is not exhaustive, but further examples are unnecessary.
The first step in arousing the interest of the public was to organise lectures. Captain Phillips has given a large number of lectures himself ; other lectures have been given both by experts from outside, like Colonel Garforth, and by some of those engaged in helping Captain Phillips inside the borough. Messrs. Boots, the chemists, exhibited a gas-proof room, and Captain Phillips arranged for respirators to be available for members of the public to try on. Twenty-five thousand people visited the exhibition, and many of them had respirators fitted on them : in an emergency, fear of the respirator will not be added to their other terrors. Another most useful feature of the propaganda work has been the publication of a short, simple pamphlet explaining the value of air raid precautions and outlining the steps to be taken : while lectures to the staffs of business concerns are preliminary to the creation of domestic schemes.
The object of propaganda on behalf of air raid precautions is partly to make the general public understand what is being done, partly to make it understand what it has got to do itself; there is also the further object of enrolling volunteers to take an active part in the work. Volunteers are needed to help with first-aid ; and it is also necessary to recruit air raid wardens. The magnitude of the latter task can be appreciated from the fact that three wardens are required to man one post, and that there should be one post to approximately every five hundred inhabitants. In a town of Southampton's size there must ultimately be found at least twelve hundred wardens. Police stations are used as recruiting centres, and appeals for volunteers are circularised from time to time.
The duties of the warden may be roughly summarised as being to give information of any damage to persons or property, or of the presence of gas, to take preliminary steps in dealing with any emergency before other help arrives, to guide people to shelter, and in general to set an example of coolness. In order to get a picture of the working of the scheme as a whole, it is necessary to take a concrete example. An incendiary bomb falls through the roof of a house ; one of the wardens at the nearest post must go to help and make enquiries ; another telephones to the nearest Fire Post, and, when he has given the message, repeats it to the Intelligence Centre at local headquarters. If the telephone is out of order the warden responsible for the message must send the runner attached to the Post, who is supplied by the local Scouts, to the nearest Police Station, Fire Post, First Aid Post or Wardens' Post, to transmit the message.
The nerve centre of the whole scheme is the Intelligence Centre. This is located in Southampton's Civic Centre. Twelve telephone lines, six for incoming and six for outgoing calls, are in operation ; at the time of the exercise in July policemen were on duty at the telephones, but it has wisely been decided that these can ill be spared from their other duties, and eighteen girls have been trained for the work. An operator who receives a message has to write it down and repeat it to the sender. It is then handed to the Intelligence Officer or his assistant, who dissects it, and has necessary messages sent on one of the outgoing lines to the appropriate departments. Meanwhile, the Plotting Officer and his assistant indicate the occurrence to which the message refers on a map which is designed to show the whole of the current situation ; this is extremely skilled work, which involves, if it is to be done at the high speed necessary, those doing it carrying in their heads a complete map of the Borough, with the exact position thereon of each of the four hundred Wardens' Posts, and so on. When the effect of a message is plotted on the map, the message itself is then filed. Adjoining the Intelligence Centre is the Opera- tional Centre, where the Mayor, Town Clerk and Air Raid Precautions Officer are in general control. It should be added that, in the not altogether unlikely event of a direct hit paralysing the Intelligence Centre—for Southampton's fine Civic Centre is a not inconspicuous target—alternative centres are in being, which could carry on the work.
Much useful experience was derived from the exercise, though the scheme was only brought into operation for two wards. For instance, twenty-seven people, thirteen men and fourteen women, who had received a day's special training, were entirely successful in extinguishing nine incendiary bombs ; and it was considered that it would probably be necessary to issue protective clothing against blister gases to all wardens. It showed that, given organisa- tion and training, the horrors of an air raid can be mitigated if not eliminated ; protection against direct hits by high- explosive bombs is probably impracticable, but the number of high-explosives likely to be dropped in any conceivable raid is, happily, limited.
In the space of a year Southampton has organised the maintenance of essential services in the event of air raids ; it has created an organisation of volunteers whose enthusiasm can be gauged by the fact that out of 837 in the July Exercise, 835 were present, and the other two, who were ill, gave notice that they could not attend. The magnitude of this achievement, the amount of training involved, the immense elaboration of detail, in working out, for instance, which are the nearest Fire Posts and First Aid Posts to each Wardens' Post, can only be appreciated when it is realised that Captain Phillips and his assistants had no precedents on which to work, but had to evolve their organisation out of their heads, with the valuable help of Home Office experts. Above all, the need of creating a wholly volunteer organisation presents problems which call for diplomacy and tact as well as powers of exposition and decision : the steps taken at Southampton, of holding a dance, which was a great success, and devoting the proceeds to the formation of a Social Club, may well be followed elsewhere. Much remains to be done : Intelligence Courses for Wardens, the enrol- ment of private transport, the working out of recommenda- tions for the utilisation of laundries for the decontamination of clothing, and the creation of an organisation for the distribution of respirators, .form part of the New Year's programme. That these problems are already in hand augurs well for the early completion of Southampton's scheme.
Previous page
