The following summary is based on a report from the R.I.O., South Western Region.
After the recent heavy blitzes on Plymouth, the R.I.O. visited the town and inspected the damage to civilian and public property. He met large bodies of citizens, and watched all the ameliorative services in action. Though he has been in the Bristol area for all the raids, and has worked upon all post blitz efforts, his experiences at Plymouth were not only a shock but were acutely distressing.
A concentrated blitz lasting for five nights has created new aspects of old problems for the Regional organisation of the Ministry of Information. When air attacks develop in this way, with heavy casualties in homes and among the Civil Defence Services when damage is incalculable, and distress and shortages are widespread, the public, for a few days, is unable and unwilling to listen to or comprehend official announcements from loud-speakers, or to read printed directions. At Plymouth, therefore, we evolved, with the co-operation of the W.V.S. and the social services, a scheme whereby visitors went round from door to door in the worst areas, explaining, comforting, and helping.
Following the decision to evacuate the hospitals, the children, the aged and others, experienced broadcasters with loud-speaker vans were sent out into neighbouring towns and villages with appeals to citizens to improvise arrangements for the reception of evacuees. Though the prospects of its success were poor, this effort was essential because all the areas are already saturated with evacuees, voluntary or otherwise, from London and Bristol, and even from Southampton and Portsmouth.
Our experience showed that it is vitally important in blitzed areas that an experienced and responsible officer from the Ministry of Information Regional Headquarters should be available at once for consultation with high authorities, and should have the power to make immediate decisions, and to sanction expenditure, Telephonic and other communications with headquarters is often quite impossible for days.
Another lesson to be learnt from these continuous blitzes is that rest and feeding centres are apt to disappear, and routes to the new ones are often deflected by the closing of roadways and by unexploded bombs. Improvised signposts are, therefore, essential. An innovation suggested by the press department was to have signposts printed with the wording: “Follow the M.O.I. green (or blue) line to the Rest and Feeding Centres”, and with a big arrow to show their direction.
As has been pointed out in previous reports, after heavy raids throughout the hours of darkness, the local organisations of fire fighting and civic administration are apt temporarily to collapse. There is consequentely great need of such information services as we can create. Post-blitz rumours, especially about casualties, and other distortions may not be started by enemy agents, but may be merely the work of neurotic people. The effect on public confidence is the same, however, and as the war months lengthen the necessity for dealing with these problems may become even more acute.
For the present, Plymouth as a business and commercial centre of a prosperous countryside has ceased to exist. The children from two-thirds of it, the aged, the infirm, and the great army of pensioners who always live in dockyard towns and naval ports, will, for the time being, dwell in the countryside around. Given a few weeks, however, all will, no doubt, recover their poise, and the absence of further continuous raids will enable the city to improvise arrangements and resume its shaken life. It would be wrong to assume that the people are broken. But equally it would be suicidal to ignore the implications and symptons of the actual state of affairs, and to avoid probing the disturbing causes of the aftermath of some of the fiercest raids yet made upon a provincial centre.
In addition to the R.I.O's report there is evidence of a good deal of defeatist talk, and such expressions as “What have we to lose?” and “We cannot be worse off” are frequently heard. It is suggested that “judicious plugging by the B.B.C. of stories from occupied countries might have some effect in stopping the rot”. A high percentage of the Plymouth victims are among the families of men in the Naval or Merchant Services, whose morale, it is thought, may be affected.
It is felt that the Government should reconsider its “stay put” policy for towns like these Western ports, where raiding is likely to continue. Many of those who “stayed put” after the first big raids have now been killed.
Nightly evacuation has become a settled practice and involves thousands of people, but except for one or two enterprising local efforts it is still unorganised.
There are reports of sailors children catching pneumonia through sleeping under hedges while the owners of big houses are refusing permission for sheds and garages to be used as temporary refuges by homeless and exhausted people.
There have also been complaints about a lack of human consideration among Municipal officers and those responsible for evacuation arrangements.
