Original subtitles

Twenty years...

September 3rd, 1939.

London was at peace on this Sunday morning.

'I am speaking to you

'from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street.

'This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin

'handed the German government a final note

'stating that unless we heard from them by 11:00

'that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland,

'a state of war would exist between us.

'I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received,

'and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

'This country is at war with Germany...

'This country is at war with Germany...

'But it is evil things that we shall be fighting against.

'Brute force, bad faith,

'injustice, oppression and persecution.

'And against them, I am certain that the right will prevail.'

London is calling.

London calling to the world.

This is London. Here is London.

Calling to a world at war.

The air-raid alarm is sounded in the first hour of war.

An unknown plane approaches the coast.

Londoners enter the war shelters.

Protective balloons are sent up.

Well, Hitler didn't waste any time, did he?

What's this, our rum rations?

Here you are, plenty of room.

The warden is on duty.

He is the link between the simple citizen and the protective services.

His principal equipment is friendliness.

Friendliness.

It has become the war-time equipment of all Londoners.

Oh, thank you. It's terrible, isn't it?

- Isn't it quiet? - We won't hear much, will we?

I hope old Hitler can hear what I'm thinking.

People joked, but in their hearts was devastation.

Twenty years of peace and of building up had been overthrown.

The devastation of war claimed even the blades of grass

that brightened the grey winters.

The long-forgotten earth of London has seen the light after barren years.

It is put to barren use.

Sandbags, sandbags,

millions of sandbags.

Those rows of bags, those earthworks,

are rising like a tide in our streets.

We want these to be the last earthworks.

That is why filling sandbags is everybody's business.

Men and women left everything that they were doing

and hurried to shovel sand.

They ran to and fro like ants, each with his tiny burden.

But the bags and the boarding and the trenches

were but the external signs of a great upheaval in London's inner life.

The hardening of London's face, the growing ruggedness of the streets,

meant a warming of the heart and a quickening of the sympathies.

The thousand classes of London,

some from their damp basements and some from their luxury flats,

came to work for the public good.

In those first critical hours, they did indispensable work

which no leader could have ordered and no money could have bought.

They built bastions, dug trenches,

shaped the raw earth with their hands to make the city safe.

At that moment, Londoners saw a remarkable thing.

A generation of young men, born in the last war,

and brought up in contempt of militarism

and the bogus romance of the battlefield,

went into uniform willingly and with clear understanding.

Because they found they had grown up in a world where there was no peace.

These were London's children.

Now they carry arms.

But they're still our children.

The defence of London is in young, firm hands.

But some Londoners must keep their feet on the ground.

The Monday morning workers left their tube trains to face a new world

where everything seemed strange.

But trade went on. They bought covers for their gas masks.

The shining facades of the West End put up barricades,

sometimes of paper and glue.

London's white war paint was to be a guide on the darkest night...

...sometimes.

Even Scotland Yard's stout walls were made stouter still.

While citizens turned into policemen came out to man the streets.

The resources of the great city were mobilised

to deal with fire and explosion.

The aged and ill from the hospitals of London

were taken to the country to escape alarm.

Meanwhile, the children, too, were leaving London.

Three quarters of a million children had been moving out of the London region

during the weekend.

For this was a city of children.

London has many monuments to the dead past,

but the real London is its young life, its future.

London is the cradle of tomorrow.

And not just the slate and stone,

the bricks and mortar of an ancient and toiling city.

The mothers stayed.

Steps don't get so dirty these days, do they, Mrs Hawkes?

No, you're right. But it gets dead quiet, doesn't it?

Funny it takes a war to give us a bit of peace and quiet.

Some of the anonymous millions did get into uniform.

For weeks, women had practised driving ambulances.

Three thousand taxi drivers became godfather to a fire pump,

At almost every corner, a balloon was tethered.

Sometimes on London's waterway.

One side of a street might be sunny and civilised,

the other like a road in France with army convoys hiding under the trees.

In quiet backwaters of a civilian city, its young men trained.

It was a time for saying goodbye.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

They have gone off, like the children.

But they have gone the other way.

Goodbye.

From the National Gallery the old masters have gone into the country.

Here is the British Museum, hallowed by the footsteps of many nations.

Scholars and students have gone back to the busy world.

Under this roof, men have ceased racking their brains,

and there is peace, even for dictators.

And here is a hanging.

Another gentleman who is going to the country,

when they can get him off his pedestal.

The pigeons' friend is going,

but we have now a living cockney monument built by cockney hands.

Any Londoner wandering round the East End

would find the full picture of a patient world.

Of adaptability and enterprise.

Of the plodding round of labour in dangerous places.

Of deep-water docks in the biggest sea port in the world.

Of the grooming of great ships.

These must be hidden from aggressors as they sail on their lawful occasions

bringing the people's food.

Back in the West End life is flowing by in the old channels.

Till we see a map in a window with flags of hope pinned on Poland.

Warsaw, like London, was still untouched in that first week of war.

The nations were waiting.

And in London, the men and women of many nations were waiting

to register as foreigners.

100,000 people from other lands.

They're part of London, part of its broad culture, its tolerance.

Some are without a homeland when war comes passing by.

Many Londoners' pets were killed to avoid air-raid suffering.

Others were evacuated.

Animals were labelled like children and taken to the country.

For the women of London, it was a revolution.

The children were in the country,

some of the men were in uniform.

Others, the anonymous million in mufti,

kept alive the trade and industry and arts of London.

So the women had to face a new life.

Above all, endurance was the woman's inheritance.

But in the new trappings, there was the old spirit.

♪ Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye

♪ Cheerio, here I go, on my way

♪ Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye

♪ With a cheer not a tear... ♪

♪ Mother dear, I'm writing you from somewhere in France

♪ Hoping this finds you well

♪ Sergeant says I'm doing fine, a soldier and a half!

♪ Here's the song that we'll all sing, this will make you laugh

♪ We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line

♪ Have you any dirty washing, mother dear? ♪

Night must fall.

And with night will come for many a wakeful sleep.

On the darkest night, the gleaming river may yet betray London.

There are faithful sentries overhead.

And from the ground, men watch.

Through the long hours, the droning night patrol is heard

on a million pillows.

In the West End, the safety men test the lights in empty theatres.

The playhouses of London are locked for the first time

since the Puritans closed them nearly 300 years ago.

But no one has ever stopped the cockney voice of London.

It is neither night nor day

when we find again the plodding round of labour.

Night or day, it is always the birthday of an aircraft.

And in the blackout, with the streets in almost total darkness,

a city of shadows.

The hospital is awake, ready.

The hospital and the arsenal.

Only one beam can be seen from the sky.

The beam that guides the gunner.

No guns spoke through the night,

and London, with relief, turned to a new day.

For this is not twilight that has come to England.

It is dawn.

And dawn, we hope, for more than England.

And in the clear daylight stands the London front,

the front of the anonymous million,

a civilian people whose name has gone spinning across the world.

London. London calling.

And when you hear it, you know that that front is still intact,

and that its ideals are still cherished.

You know that the grass is still growing and babies are still being born.

And men still whistle at their work in England.