Post-Blitz London: The Local Response

“I have had enough. There seems no end of it, and a great weariness of spirit overtakes me at times.” One can still feel the palpable fatigue of Vere Hodgson 75 years after she first recorded this diary entry for 17 March 1945, as the focus now moves on from the period of the main London blitz to the final remaining phases of raiding that had yet to be endured in the capital, and in a variation to the course so far taken this chapter will adopt a simultaneous thematic approach looking across all six boroughs together. During this time it shall become clear that the preceding years of the blitz have helped prepare and condition the response to continued air raids, and how for the Londoner where one happened to be located persisted in shaping wartime experience until the very last weeks of conflict.