The Home Front: Final Blows and the Year of Victory

The Great War Illustrated

The

Home Front

Final Blows and the Year of Victory

David Bilton

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright © David Bilton 2018

ISBN 978 1 47383 368 5

eISBN 978 1 4738 7347 6

Mobi ISBN 978 1 4738 7346 9

The right of David Bilton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Home Fronts in 1918: Stick it!

Recruitment and departure

Home Defence, Raids & U-boats

Casualty and Captivity

Food and Money

Women at War

Wartime life

Armistice

Christmas

1918 Home Front Timeline

Bibliography, Sources and Further Reading

Acknowledgements

As with previous books, a great big thank you to the staff of the Prince Consort’s Library and Reading Central Library for their help, kindness and knowledge during the pre-writing stages of this book. Once again, many thanks to my friend Anne Coulson for checking, correcting and suggesting. While some of the pictures come from books mentioned in the bibliography, some are from my own collection.

Introduction

This book is the fifth volume in a series that illustrates life on the Home Front during each year of the war. The many photographs show life through the eyes of those not on the military frontline. The book portrays the life of ordinary citizens and how they experienced the war. Important people appear only as part of the context of everyday life.

This book is not solely about Britain; though the major part of it does record British life, I have attempted to show the international commonality of various themes through illustrations from other Allied and enemy countries. Readers may be familiar with some, but most have not been published since the war, and others have never been published. As the photographs form the main focus of the book, I have quoted liberally from my previous books on the Home Front to provide the historical context, using the experiences of Hull and Reading as often typical but sometimes contrasting examples.

This is a book about the Home Front on an international scale. It is not chronological; it is themed, though topics do cross over. Similarly, the difference between being in the forces and being on the Home Front is a grey area. It took a long time to train new recruits, and that training was done on the Home Front. In many areas, there were more people in uniform than out of it, a fact that became accepted as part of life.

What was ‘The Home Front’? There are many interpretations of the phrase: ‘the sphere of civilian activity in war’; ‘the civilian sector of a nation at war when its armed forces are in combat abroad’; ‘the name given to the part of war that was not actively involved in the fighting but which was vital to it’; an ‘informal term for the civilian populace of the nation at war as an active support system of the military who depend on Home Front civilian support services such as factories that build materiel to support the military front’. More simply it refers to ‘life in Britain during the war itself’. All of these have elements of truth but none fully describe the range of experiences that shaped the Home Front.

If this book is about life away from the combat zone, then some of what happened on the Home Front cannot be recorded here. For those caught in a Zeppelin raid, the Home Front became a war zone; it was not always ‘All quiet on the Home Front’ as assumed by the title of one oral history book. In this, and previous volumes, I have defined the Home Front as the totality of the experience of the civilian population in a country affected, directly or indirectly, by the war. As there were considerable numbers of military personnel on the Home Front, interacting with the civilian population, they too are included.

This again needs some examination. The Home Front was not a singular experience. Life in the countryside was different to that in the town or city, the latter being more quickly affected by change. However, life in the Scottish Isles differed from life in the Kent countryside. Again, life in a coastal town on the east of the country was unlike that on the west. Of course the whole country experienced basic similarities but there were many factors that varied the war’s effects. How could a family who lost their only son experience the same war as a neighbour with five serving sons who all returned? What similarities were there between the family of a conscientious objector and one whose father/husband had been killed, or between an Irish family and a Welsh one?

While there is a common link between all of these examples, what links can be found between Belgian, French, Dutch, German, Japanese or Russian families? All these countries had a Home Front and all were directly affected by the war. There are some obvious differences. Neutral Holland was quickly affected by the war on its borders, and Japan, an isolated Allied Power, fought in the Pacific and escorted convoys to Europe but was otherwise largely unaffected. Both were unlike the other countries which, despite some differences, were all united by an invasion, long or short, of their Home Fronts.

We can add further layers to the civilian experience of the war through the Home Front. Neutral countries had to defend themselves against possible aggression and were on a war footing which inevitably affected civilian life. They were not at war, so nationals of the warring countries were free to move about as before the war and spying was rife. As safe havens, they became the guardians of hundreds of refugees or prisoners of war. And, as in the warring countries, commodities became short because, once at sea, their ships became targets.

Combatant countries on the continent experienced two types of Home Front, the obvious one being the civilians behind the fighting front. But in an occupied country civilians were behind both sides of the line. All shared the same nationality, but lived on the Home Front, very differently, enduring different constraints.

The topic of the Home Front for just one year across only the combatant nations would require considerably more space than is available in a book of this size. As this is essentially an illustrated book it cannot cover any topic to a great depth; the text is secondary, the pictures tell the story. This book therefore illustrates life on the Home Front for civilians on both sides of the wire.

GWI-HF_1 In the 2 January edition of Punch the message was clear.

GWI-HF_2 International Stores was the biggest grocery chain in Britain and was proud of its contribution to the war effort.

GWI-HF_3 The wish for peace was international. A British card suggesting it was time to plant the peace and let it flourish.

GWI-HF_4 A German New Year card wishing the recipient much luck in the coming year. The pigs are wishful thinking as meat was only available in very small quantities and was strictly rationed.

GWI-HF_5 A recycled card: paper was in very short supply. It was sold on behalf of the German Red Cross to raise funds to help the wounded. In the top left is the monument to the Battle of the Nations that commemorates