If German troops landed, who would keep villages running, treat the wounded and stop panic on the roads? Britain had thousands of committees ready for exactly that

If German troops landed, who would keep villages running, treat the wounded and stop panic on the roads? Britain had thousands of committees ready for exactly that.

By June 1942, the government said that between 6,000 and 7,000 Invasion Committees had been established across Great Britain.

I came across them while looking at Britain’s invasion preparations. Most of what I had been reading was about roadblocks, stop lines, pillboxes and the Home Guard, so I was interested to find how much planning was also taking place in individual towns and villages.

One of the early schemes began in Norfolk in 1941. Major-General E. M. Steward, Zone Commander of the Mid-Norfolk Home Guard, believed there needed to be direct contact between local Home Guard commanders and the heads of civilian services. After discussions with the ARP Controller, police and local authorities, informal parish Invasion Committees were started. The idea spread through Norfolk and was later encouraged more widely.

The make-up of the committees varied. Police, Civil Defence, local government, food officials, the Women’s Voluntary Services, fire services and military representatives could all be involved.

Hansard, the official written record of debates and proceedings in the UK Parliament, gives a good idea of what they were preparing for. Volunteers might be given jobs digging trenches, clearing or blocking roads, removing debris or helping with first aid. Committees also arranged messengers in case telephones failed, looked for alternative drinking-water supplies, made plans for distributing food and kept records of useful equipment such as tools, stirrup pumps and sandbags.

Civilian movement was another concern. The fighting in France in 1940 had shown what could happen when large numbers of refugees crowded the roads. Britain’s “stand firm” policy was intended to keep people off roads needed for military movements unless they had been ordered to leave.

There are records from Flitton in Bedfordshire that give us a much closer insight into one of these committees.

Flitton’s members included a food organiser, an ARP representative, a police representative and a Home Guard officer. A Fire Service officer and a WVS representative joined in May 1942. They met every two months in the Parish Church Rooms.

The minutes contain some very specific details. Fire equipment was inventoried. Emergency cooking was discussed. Military exercises were organised. Six local women volunteered for emergency cooking in July 1942, and the Home Guard agreed to dig a slit trench so villagers could see how one should be constructed.

Two noticeboards were also requested because the village did not have suitable boards for the committee names and other notices to be displayed. One was to stand beside the telephone kiosk in Flitton and another opposite the garage in Greenfield.

On the 24th of April 1942, the schoolmaster at Flitton and the headmistress at Greenfield were to allow children to copy sketches of slit trenches from a circular sent by the ARP Controller. They would take the drawings home and get their parents interested in constructing them. By the meeting on the 22nd of May, the drawings had been completed and sent home.

Nearby Little Barford worked slightly differently. It was a sub-area of the Tempsford Invasion Committee, but it had its own reception, first-aid and other defence facilities and was expected to use them independently if circumstances required it. Its plans named the people responsible for emergency food, first aid, the fire service, special police, WVS, vehicles, labour and messengers.

Flitton’s committee remained in existence well into 1944. Its June meeting that year was cancelled because it was considered unnecessary. When members met again on the 21st of November 1944, they heard that the County Council no longer considered the Invasion Committee necessary.

For years, people in villages like Flitton had been meeting, organising equipment and making plans for an invasion that, thankfully, never came.

Sources & research: Bedfordshire Archives; UK Parliament, Hansard; Ministry of Information Digital Archive.

Image info:

Members of the Orford Invasion Committee, Suffolk, 1941. Ministry of Information Second World War Official Collection / Imperial War Museums, D4847. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.