WITH the 70th anniversary of VE Day just behind us, and the anniversary of VJ Day next month, Bournemouth historian John Cresswell profiles the sometimes forgotten heroes of the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and Civil Defence forces.

AS the war came to an end in 1945, Bournemouth, like every town in Britain, returned to a sort of normality: there were victory parties and civic parades to cheer and thank the armed forces for their years of service.

Often – almost as an ‘also ran’ – there were contingents of the protectors of the home front.

Aerial bombardment was experienced during the Great War and, during the 1930s, it was feared the Germans could unleash a decisive blow within minutes of a war occurring.

The British government formed Air Raid Precautions (ARP) committees in 1935, requiring local authorities to find personnel.

Poole council was the first to suggest the conurbation of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole establish a joint ARP, and negotiations started in August 1935. Whilst Poole held some valuable targets, Bournemouth was thought not likely to be intentionally bombed.

The concept of ARP was to establish a network of command within a town borough, focussed on a system of wardens who would know their own areas and patrol them.

At a bomb fall, a warden would rush to the scene and assess the situation. He would immediately report to his post, which would telephone a report centre in Bournemouth Town Hall. Personnel there would call in such rescue squads, fire brigade, ambulances and police as needed.

The ARP system consisted of teams of trained volunteer wardens, young messengers, heavy rescue teams to deal with ruined buildings, light rescue to deal with extracting victims, cleansing officers to attend to poison gases, first aid parties both at and off-scene to deal with casualties and despatching the serious cases to hospital – or to the mortuaries. Backing them up would be the police and later the Home Guard to direct traffic and protect homes from looters.

The Women’s Voluntary Service and YWCA would provide mobile refreshments for personnel working long hours at bomb sites. Housewife services spent hours preparing bandages. Animal welfare groups co-operated to deal with homeless, wounded or shell-shocked pets.

Many places were commandeered for ARP purposes. A variety of buildings from beach huts to public houses held the 100 or so warden posts. The baths were used as decontamination posts, and church halls for distribution of gas masks, first aid clearing posts, etc.

Some of the organising personnel were waged, and so were telephonists at the control centre, but the rest – several thousand of them – were volunteers. Several died or were injured serving others.

The Home Guard was formed in 1940, and within a couple of days some 2,000 able-bodied men had volunteered at Bournemouth police station. Their aim was to engage enemy parachutists, but as the invasion scare diminished, they played a useful role during the bombing.

Before hostilities started, there was much dissatisfaction between the three boroughs, each eventually going independently; there were also personality problems, with Cllr Harry Mears eventually taking control. There were many complaints that it was all a waste of money as the ‘Phoney War’ persisted. However, when the Battle of Britain suddenly became the Blitz in mid-August 1940, the mood changed. The first bomb fell on Southbourne on the night of September 2 1940. No-one was killed, but the ARP theory was quickly put into practice with good result.

For some nine months, Bournemouth was bombed. Much of it served little strategic value to the enemy. Most of the bombing it came at night, as bombers passed overhead on missions to the industrial towns to the north, or on one occasion to Coventry. Hardly a corner of the borough escaped, with perhaps only Grovely (or Shelley) Manor being a target more than once.

When the Germans turned their intentions on the Russians with Operation Barbarossa on June 22 1941, the nights in Bournemouth became quieter.

By 1942 the rise of faster fighter-bombers brought in new tactics by the Luftwaffe. The South Coast was to experience a series of lightning daylight raids, with aircraft coming in under the radar, dropping some dozen bombs and making a quick getaway. Bournemouth received some three of these, but the most disastrous was May 23 1943 raid on the Metropole and Central Hotels and Beales, when on a quiet Sunday morning nearly 200 people, mostly Allied troops, were killed.

Less well remembered were similar but smaller ‘tip and run’ raids later in 1943. The final raid came on April 24 1944 with a random series of incendiary bombs.

At the end of 1944, the Civil Defence controller, Cllr Mears, declared the air raids had killed 200, with some 500 injured, and about 1,000 buildings destroyed or badly damaged.

Whilst other parts of Britain were suffering V2 attacks, conventional bombing had ceased. The Home Guard was stood down at the end of 1944.

Civil Defence operations were gradually run down, with a final drumhead parade on May 13 soon after VE-Day. On May 27, 1945, the Civil Defence flag was handed to St Peter’s Church, where it still hangs. There was no apparent official cessation, there were no messages of gratitude nor mentions of the deaths of 17 Civil Defence and 12 Home Guard personnel.

The concept of Civil Defence was to continue into the Cold War, with Cllr Mears still in charge, but the vast majority of wardens resumed normal life. Seventy-five years on, the Civil Defence story is all but forgotten, immortalised only in Dad’s Army as whining upstart Warden Hodges.

Their history in Bournemouth is obscured by the smoke of contemporary secrecy and the passage of time. Any first-hand knowledge would be gratefully received.