The Home Front as a ‘Moment’ for Animals and Humans: Exploring the Animal-Human Relationship in Contemporary Diaries and Letters

Abstract

The 1939–1945 war — often called the ‘People’s war’ — is imbued with mythic qualities that show the British on the Home Front in a favourable light.1 It is a war which people today still want to remember, as evidenced by the range of new memorials to former war workers including ‘Women of World War Two’ in Whitehall; Bomber Command in Piccadilly; ‘Blitz, the National Firefighters’ Memorial’ near St Paul’s Cathedral; the wide range of memorials at the National Memorial Arboretum; or the new memorial in Bethnal Green ‘Stairway to Heaven’.2Richard Overy’s magisterial The Bombing War has persuasively elaborated the implications of seeing the Second World War as a total war that promoted the idea that ‘all citizens had a part to play and encouraged the view that warrior identity was linked to new ideals of the civil warrior.’3 Although the Home Front is key to ‘total war’ nevertheless little research has been undertaken on the all-encompassing nature of that totality through the inclusion, in different ways, of non-human animals. Domestic animals played a large part in the events on the Home Front not least in creating emotional support for a population under aerial bombardment or acting as signifiers of ‘home’ for evacuees.4