This article has been abridged from the first chapter of the 1942 “BBC At War booklet by Antonia White (chiefly known as a fiction writer in the aftermath of World War I, but who also worked for the BBC as a translator during the Second World War).
BBC At War (1942) by Antonia White
It’s interesting to note that, despite wartime austerity, the BBC continued to publish its annual Handbooks and literature such as this. Given the exposure that the British public had to the War (unlike the global conflict which preceded it), and the fact that this was issued at a time when the Allied victory was far from a certainty, I wonder if this was a an exercise in global propaganda; perhaps one of the ways in which Britain was appealing to the Americans to offer assistance (the attack on Pearl Harbor was yet to happen when this booklet was published)?
From Peace To War
“I have to tell you…that this country is at war with Germany.” Into the peace of a September morning, through the air still echoing with Sunday bells, broke the voice of the Premier announcing stress, strain and violent upheaval. For those few minutes the wireless set was the focus of the whole nation’s life.
It was a dramatic moment in the short and eventful history of broadcasting. But for the BBC the real drama had begun thirty-six hours earlier. On the night of Friday, 1st September 1939, you heard for the first time the now familiar words, “This is the BBC Home Service.” Flat, unexciting words, giving no hint of the convulsive changes that had gone on behind the scenes to produce them.
Ever since the days of Munic, the BBC had been preparing secret plans for mobilisation in case of war. Two difficult problems had to be solved. One was that, at all costs, even if the country were dislocated by bombing or invasion, the broadcasting service must continue. The other was to reorganise the transmission system so that it could give no guidance to enemy aircraft. In certain circumstances a continuous strong wavelength can be as efficient a help to an aeroplane as a lighthouse beam to a ship. The extraordinary technical feats accomplished by the BBC engineering staff in reorganising the transmission system so as to give enemy aircraft no possible help in reaching their objective cannot unfortunately be told here.
Early in the evening of 1st September 1939 came the message from Whitehall that sent the BBC to its war stations. All over the country the broadcasting engineers opened their sealed orders and acted upon them. Within an hour and a half the change-over had been effected; at 8.15pm the Home Service was on the air for the first time. For security reasons that new and highly promising child, the world’s first high-definition television service, had to be unceremoniously put to sleep “for the duration.” The BBC was at war.
On the programme side, the first emergency period was soon over. The inevitable contraction to one programme only for home had by no means meant contraction in working hours. New services in foreign languages and the Empire were speedily created. And though there was now only one home programme, it ran for seventeen hours instead of for under fourteen as in peacetime. This means that transmitters now have to be manned at all hours of the day and night – a heavy demand both on the apparatus and the engineers.
By the end of the 1939 the programme service had been built up to something like its pre-war quality. There was still only the Home Service to cater for the ranging tastes of millions of listeners, but, as time went on, the programmes began to reflect the rich and varied life of the Regions much more fully though not so fully as in peacetime. Nevertheless, both among the audience and behind the scenes of the BBC itself, there was a growingdemand for an alternative programme. One most important section of the community particularly needed it – the fighting forces both at home and abroad.
The Forces Programme was planned originally for the men spending that winter of bitter cold and forced inactivity in the front line. Over and over again the items asked for were – “Something to cheer us up…something to keep us in touch with home.” But long before the Forces Programme cam under discussion, the BBC had had its representatives in the front line. Immediately war was declared, a recording car and its crew of commentator, engineer and programme official, landed in France to accompany the B.E.F. and make records under all sorts of conditions. The bitter cold of that winter made it hard to get good records. Sometimes frost patterns would form on the blank discs and ruin the surface. Often the only way to safeguard the discs was for the engineer to take them to bed with him.
It seems a long time since those days in France. In 1939 a BBC war correspondent, recording despatches in a camouflaged car eighty-five feet from the enemy’s front line, was certainly taking risks. A year later a home announcer sitting at his desk in Broadcasting House was taking even more.
With the evacuation from Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, the war-centre shifted to this country. In September 1940, London was in the front line of attack. In October, Broadcasting House received its first direct hit and six people in the building were killed. The BBC was no longer observing the war; it was right in the middle of it.
Broadcasting House turned overnight into a fortress. Wandering through the basements at night you saw corridors littered with mattresses on which tired men and women were trying to snatch a few hours’ sleep. In those first days it was not an uncommon sight to see the Director-General dossing down between a commissionaire and a secretary.
As a result of the first bomb, men and women lost their lives in the service of the BBC. In a second incident, a month or two later, though there were fewer fatal casualties, blast, fire and flood played such havoc that part of the building had to be temporarily evacuated. Working in their own homes, queueing up at public call-boxes, somehow the people responsible for the talks and features due to go out the next few days made their contacts and kept up to their schedule. In spite of every kind of breakdown, the service itself went on unbroken.
