John Willis (2025) BBC. The People’s War. Unheard Stories: Life on the Battlefront and at Home in World War II.

John Willis had too much material to include in a book of just under 500 pages. The book and BBC oral history project from early in the present century which draws on 47,000 testimonies from ordinary civilians and service personnel. Most go unnamed. Those that are named, represent multitudes.

I was particularly interested in Palestine, Monte Cassino and the Gothic Line 1944 because this is where my father fought. It was a particularly bloody campaign. But, of course, he never talked about it. Although it did bleed through in other ways. When drunk, he’d shout that he wanted to get Paki on the blower. Paki was an ex-comrade with darker skin. The blower was our phone in the hall. McNarmara who’d been in the same regiment would cackle along with my da, as they talked on the blower.

The Second World War was a time when we really were all in it together. This included millions of servicemen and women from other nations including India and Burma. Aircraft crew didn’t usually have long lives. Major mistakes were made in defending Singapore and the Japanese were as brutal as the SS in Far East camps committing mass murder with impunity. On the Home Front, women stepped into men’s shoes and dealt with everything throw at them to make home life work.  Field Marshal Montgomery is portrayed as a mumbling non-entity.

Dunkirk was a pyrrhic victory, 338 000 troops evacuated and around 60 000 dead, but we hear from those left behind or from 

D-Day, 1944 was the largest invasion in modern history. So many things could have went wrong. Tens of thousands killed. But it mostly went as planned. A rehearsal of the invasion at Slapton Sands in Devon had been disastrous with a lack of communication and 749 deaths.

Arnhem, 1944 was a cock-up. Thousands of soldiers’ lives lost.

Belsen, 1945, needs little explanation.

A schoolboy remembers those in the cinema watching Pathe New footage of the camps. (We’re immured to it now). With the film audience rising up and shouting at the screen, ‘Kill them. Kill them—all’. By which they meant the Germans. Such entreaties are now reserved for immigrants (the new fifth column).  

Japan, 1945. Few captives had any pity for the Japanese after Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Ironically, a group of prisoners were saved from the worst of the atomic blast because their prison was made of brick, whereas Japanese housing was flimsy structures that fed into the flames of the blast.  

Homecoming 1945.

Notes.

•     The Home Front (UK)
  
  • Schoolchildren: Young students in Kent and London who witnessed the Battle of Britain and German bomber raids (e.g., descriptions of Dornier bombers flying at low altitudes).

• Evacuees: Children and families sent from urban centers to the British countryside to escape the Blitz.
• Factory Workers: Women who entered the industrial workforce to produce munitions and aircraft, often referred to as "Dilutees."

• Military Personnel (The Battlefront)
  
  • Soldiers in North Africa: Accounts from the "Desert Rats" and others fighting in the Western Desert Campaign.

• Prisoners of War (POWs): Specifically highlighting Allied prisoners held in East Asia (drawing on Willis’s previous research into Nagasaki survivors).
• Battle of Britain Pilots: Personal accounts of the "Few" (e.g., Geoffrey Page) and their ground crews.
• International Experiences
  
  • Colonial Civilians: For example, accounts from children in Singapore during the 1942 Japanese invasion and the subsequent panic of evacuation.

• Victims of Secrecy: Those involved in or impacted by covert operations and the "Secret War" of intelligence.