War Archives - Page 4 of 4 - The Skittish Library

From 1961, the time of the Vietnam war, the Berlin Wall and great Cold War paranoia, comes this Civil Defence Pocket Book – in this case it’s the one for Wardens of the Civil Defence Corps. The organisation was set up in 1948 as a response to the rise of the Cold War, which was first termed in the previous year. This was a new idea – a permanent civilian volunteer unit during peacetime. It was designed to be a force to take control during a time of national emergency, and in particular, following a nuclear attack.

The Wardens duties were to cover local reconnaissance and reporting, and the leadership, organisation, guidance and control of the public. This handbook is supposed to be an aide-memoire of their duties, so not a complete account of all their training. In the end, they might not have had to spring into action during a nuclear war, but the Corps did help with train and flooding emergencies, as well as the primary school tragedy at Aberfan in 1966. The Civil Defence Corps were disbanded in 1968, with the government saying that the threat to national security had now reduced.

The fact it goes straight into the Warden’s duties during a nuclear attack, dictated with a stern simplicity, gives this book an unreal feeling of terror to me. The planning was for a future that didn’t happen, thankfully.

Some interesting information on the history of Civil Defence in the UK can be found here – http://www.civildefenceassociation.org.uk/HistCDWebA5V5.pdf

Civil Defence Pocket Book, Warden Section, 1961

I have a small Sailor’s Bible, issued during World War Two.

But the reason I bought it was because of the hidden treasure I found inside – anything extra found inside an old book being a joy only slightly ahead of finding the previous owner’s name and date on the flyleaf.

But it feels like these should be with someone else, heirlooms from their granddad perhaps. Maybe he had no family, maybe they didn’t know this was here, or maybe they were just pretty unsentimental about this kind of thing. My Grandma was in the unsentimental camp – she threw out the love letters sent to her by Grandad, and would sympathise with this view, I expect.

There’s an Algerian 50 centime note hidden between the pages:

And further on, a heart-wrenching love poem from the Sailor’s wife, Annie, talking about the wasted years of separation:

I have such a sensation of a microcosm of time here – a bible with, possibly, emergency money hidden inside and a poem to remind him of home and raise morale. I wonder if the position of the money, on the page telling the story of the scapegoat, was significant at all.