Britain’s Face Alters in Summer

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21242, 12 October 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

Britain’s Face Alters in Summer

Preparations For Nazis :: Thorough Precautions

OFF0 FF SEASHORE RESORTS lie hidden mine fields; barbed-wire spans erstwhile bathing beaches; as nightfall comes sentries pound lonely promenades; behind gun-guarded cliffs flat land is staked and ditched, wide roads barricaded; towns are studded with machine-gun posts; on remote hills are guns and searchlights; in remote fields are constant watchers; in remote villages local defenders stand to arms from dusk to dawn. This, says Mr J. A. May in the Christian Science Monitor, is wartime England. Such scenes as these in a vastly changed and continually changing Britain, present vivid visual evidence to all who journey here that Mr Winston Churchill’s famous peroration—“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the street, we shall fight in the hills”—was no mere rhetoric but a simple statement of a literal intention.

Road Markings Obliterated Britain now is disguising fair nature with hard-favoured resolution. Many of its finest parks are pitted and scarred with defence works against aeroplanes and parachutists, mechanical excavators have gorged great mouthfuls out of parts of its most beautiful countryside, sandbags and barbed-wire and all the ugly paraphernalia of battle preparation disguise many of its stateliest buildings, its most ancient bridges, its famous streets and avenues. There are no signposts now at the crossroads to tell the traveller where he is going. Even milestones have been wrenched out of grass verges or have had their legends defaced with a chisel. If you do not know which road to take you must wait and ask a policeman, or a passer-by, who may be a local defence volunteer, thus providing an opportunity for those who patrol the streets to satisfy themselves that you are not an enemy parachutist or a suspicious character. Usually barricades are of barbed-wire, but quite often these days, one comes up to stone or concrete barriers across the roads, business-like arrangements with the look of permanent fixtures. Some-where-in-England in a narrow winding road leading past picturesque old houses toward the main streets of an ancient town, the writer was stopped three times in one mile, once by soldiers at a wood-and-wire barrier, again by sentries a little further on at a concrete barricade, a third time by a patrolling policeman. Thorough'’

This town is inSgn area where they do . things thoroughly, and. although it may ** not be typical, it is an example of an ordinary small British coastal township f in these summer clays. On walls throughout the town, in restaurants and hotels, are scvere-looking police notices, warning aliens—and that

means Americans too—that in the particular county which this township graces, no person who is not a Britisher, as per regulations, may leave his or her place of residence after 8.30 p.m. for any purpose, without special permission. Nor may he or she drive in a private car or ride a bicycle. Yes, they are thorough here. They have near this town a famous beauty spot, a lovely place of fields and flowers and trees and in the very midst of its beauty they show their thoroughness again. Along the motor road that leads there, spaced at intervals on either side, are tall, thick and ugly iron pylons which would break the wings off any plane that tried to land there. On the flat land in the com fields nearby around the public footpaths, are 12-foot stakes, nastylooking iron poles thinner at the top than at the base, sticking up in a regular patterned formation, a few yards between each. From a distance it seems as if the fields had grown crops of pikestaffs. Outside the town cricket club—it is still managing to lay its regular Saturday afternoon matches with rivals from neighbouring villages and towns—stands a sentry, with fixed bayonet. Down on the sands, too, the parashots have their dusk-to-dawn patrols. Quite a few beaches of Britain, which were in former years packed tight with holidaymakers even during the night (many would sleep on the shingle) now boasted barbedwire entanglements. Here, Somewhere-in-England, there is a promenade curfew, and after nightfall none may walk the seaside promenade—except the local defenders with their bayonets fixed and ready. On some stretches of sand notices warn off would-be bathers or boaters on account of mines. Park Scarcely Recognisable At least one park wherein many a visitor to England has enjoyed a walk is now scarcely recognisable. There are, on the open spaces, artificial mole-hills and artificial rabbit-holes, bigger far than natural mole-hills and rabbit-holes have ever been in England, and arranged so as to overturn and wreck any troop-carry-ing plane that attempted a landing. In a wood clearing is an A.A. gun or two and some searchlights peering out of small forts made of sandbags. In London the system of sandbag forts dominating the corners around Whitehall and other homes of Government, seems to have been completed. It is well to remember that behind the barricaded beaches, sentried street corners. gouged and bruised parklands that one can see. are pressed forward preparations invisible and secret for defending this country at every point with surprise tactics and specially trained troops. The face of Britain changes, alters somewhere, somehow every day, but its resolution remains unchanged, and at a constant pitch.