The London Auxiliary Fire Service fighting a fire near Whitehall road caused by an incendiary bomb. Photograph by William Vandivert. London, 1940.
AFS trailer pump pulled by taxi
Holborn Circus, London
Professional firemen grumbled. The public sneered. In the end, the U.K.'s auxiliary fire crews performed heroically when German bombs rained from the sky in 1940 and 1941.
Writing on the 70th anniversary of the Blitz in the Sept. 7, 2010 edition of The Guardian newspaper, Francis Beckett - author of the book "Firefighters and The Blitz" - said the fire service was "about the only thing the government had got right."
In March 1938, the government created the Auxiliary Fire Service to augment the U.K.'s regular fire brigades.
In London alone, the AFS recruited 28,000 auxiliary full- and
part-time firefighters to supplement the professional fire crews , and they
performed with great courage and determination as German bombs
fell.
However, "the AFS might easily have failed," Beckett
wrote.
"Professional firefighters resented it, while AFS people grumbled
that they were paid less and their conditions of service were inferior."
Members of the public were critical of AFS members for skirting military duty.
In the end, according to Beckett:
"The
situation was saved by an alliance between London Fire Brigade chief Major Frank
Jackson and the leftwing leader of the Fire Brigades Union, John Horner, who
collaborated in persuading regular firefighters to accept the AFS as equal."
