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miraculous occurrences into the battle for the mind in Latin America.
    The excitement and the danger of wartime came at night. When Greene was not on duty as a warden, he would wander around anyway, sometimes with Dorothy Glover and sometimes with Muggeridge, who found that
     
    there was something rather wonderful about London in the Blitz, with no street lights, no traffic and no pedestrians to speak of; just an empty, dark city, torn with great explosions, racked with ack-ack fire, lit with lurid flames, acrid smoke, its air full of the dust of fallen buildings.
     
    Muggeridge observed Greene’s longing on these evenings for a bomb to fall on him.
    On nights like 26 September when he was on duty, Greene could legitimately feel that he was actively involved in the war. The autumn of 1940 was an especially satisfying moment for ARP wardens. From the start of the war, official civil defence manuals had insisted on the wardens’ importance, stating that there would be a great need in air raids for ‘persons of courage and personality’ with sound local knowledge to serve as a link between the public and the authorities. But Violet Bonham Carter, President of the Women’s Liberal Federation and a close friend of Winston Churchill, reported in the Spectator in November 1940 that during the phoney war wardens like herself had been regarded as ‘a quite unecesssary and rather expensive nuisance’. They appeared to spend their days in basements, listening to gas lectures in the intervals of playing darts, emerging at nightfall only to worry innocent people about their lights or perform strange charades with the traffic. Now that the raids had started, the wardens had their reward for months of training and waiting. ‘We are conscious, as never before in our lives, of fulfilling a definite, direct and essential function.’
    Bonham Carter was particularly proud that this new service was self-created and democratic; the wardens’ posts were run by local authorities and staffed by volunteers. As civilians, the wardens were not subject to military discipline and were unfettered by red tape and rigid regulations; ‘in an essentially human task we are allowed to behave like human beings.’ Many of them did not even have uniforms; the only pre-requisite for the job was a tin hat. This kind of war work was especially satisfying for women like Bonham Carter who were determined to play an equivalent role in society to men. John Strachey considered that women who were sharing the danger of the war by engaging in civil defence work were undergoing some of the most satisfying and valuable experiences they had ever been offered. As far as he was concerned, a woman’s life was no higher or more sacred than a man’s, and it was ‘mere cant’ to pretend that it was.
    Bowen, like Bonham Carter, was proud that she was risking her life alongside her male counterparts. In a longer draft of ‘London, 1940’ she outlined the liberating effects of war for women, who were no longer having to dress according to the expectations of male society.
     
    Those who don’t like scratchy stockings go bare-legged. You see everywhere the trouser that comforts the ankle, the flat-heeled shoe for long pavement walks.
     
    Both Bowen and Greene appreciated the opportunity the war gave them to become acquainted with their fellow wardens, with Bowen later describing the warden’s post as a fascinating focus of life. ‘We wardens,’ she wrote, ‘were of all types – so different that, but for the war, we would not have met at all. As it was, in spite of periodic rows or arguments on non-raid evenings, most of us became excellent friends.’
    Bowen provided a tribute to these wartime friends through the character of Connie in The Heat of the Day . As tired as everyone else, Connie may occasionally slumber beside the telephone but she can, at any moment, ‘instantly pop open both eyes and cope’. She also maintains standards, despite the privations