Despite the Cold War and Second World War receding into the past their relics seem to be topical again and specifically, shelters.
On the BBC Travel show last night the presenter was taken through so-called ghost Underground rail stops in Berlin to a truly vast subterranean fall out shelter with huge rooms containing hundreds of bunk beds. It could feed two thousand people and even had it's own air filtration system. Long abandoned, it looked to be in working order to me but the Regierung have decided it's too dear to fix up shelters like these, of which there are many in Germany.
Unterwelt Berlin
A few years back the Missus, Bill and me visited a similarly complex set-up in York, not too far from Moonbase. Unlike the Berlin shelter, the public can visit the York Cold War Bunker with the National Trust owning it.
National Trust
It was fascinating to see the web of miniature shelters spread out across Yorkshire, including a tiny military two-manner literally up the road from our house! Recently sold to a private buyer, you can still see old pics of it's interior online.
https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/upton-roc-post/
When I was a kid the neighbours had an air-raid shelter in the garden. A remnant of WWII, they kept their two big smelly dogs in it! There were bunkers out on the Ribble estuary too I seem to recall.
Here's one near Preston Docks as was.
I probably made one for my Action Men in the garden. After all, it was only twenty years since the end of World War Two when I was five.
Little bunkers pop up in the British landscape over the place and some much older fortifications stem from much older conflicts including entire sea-forts in Wales left behind from the Napoleonic Wars!
As I write I'm keenly aware of perhaps the biggest surface bunker I've ever seen. It's literally a hundred feet from where I'm lead in bed writing! As big as a block of flats, the Kuniberg bunker is gargantuan reminder of the futility of war and the paper-thin lessons of history. Massive, monolithic, forbidding, its right next to our bakery!
Having just watched Fallout on Prime I suppose shelters are on my mind. Having said that, a quick dose of the global News and the worlds trembling silos I feel like hunkering down too sometimes.
Have you got a bunker near you readers or a relic of some past struggle?
When we lived in Mittelbach there was a WWII pillbox/bunker a short distance from our house. Our house lay at the bottom of a hill and we would walk up the narrow, steep side road to the top of the hill. Right where the paved road gave way to the dirt road was a small bunker overlooking the street below on one side, and the hills and valleys to the other. I also worked in a bunker at Zweibruecken and have been in the HTAC and KTAC at Osan AB.
ReplyDeleteBlimey Ed, you've been all over! How long did you live in Germany?
DeleteOctober, 1962: my Father took me with him to visit a place that was actually selling personal underground bomb shelters! They dug up your backyard and stuck it in. Big concrete structures, like a giant vitamin pill, with air and water filtration systems, storage shelves, and bunk beds. Double-locked hatch on top, to keep out mutants! They were so creepy - they looked like tombs to me. We did not order one! SFZ
ReplyDeleteSounds so completely Cold War SF. What a vivid memory it must be. How old were you?
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