I’ve intended to publish this every year since about 2011, refining it slowly. A year or so ago I tweeted all of these names, these people, because every year I always try to do something or other, perhaps in an oddly selfish way, in some ways to remember them all just for me. All deaths and casualties of war are terrible and sad; but there really is nothing quite as awful as the loss of civilian life which is as entirely avoidable as it is deliberate. I ruminate on this loss every April, a walk to the Post Office yesterday took me up Patteson Road past the rows of houses replaced with simulacra in 1949, each out of time, picture windows ticking off another few seconds past an event 80 odd years ago. The sun lit the glass briefly, and here I am doing this.

The Baedeker Raids on Norwich during 1942 were several things; a response to RAF raids which were part of an Area Bombing Directive of the 14 February 1942 focused on undermining the morale of the enemy civil population in Lübeck. Lübeck is one of the Hanseatic Ports on the Baltic, This was repeated in late April on the seaport of Rostock.

This tactic involved heavy bombing with large numbers of incendiaries – crack open the city’s buildings with High Explosives first, which also hampered rescue attempts by creating rubble and craters, then using any holes created in roofs to scatter small – usually one and two kilo blocks of lit magnesium, phosphorus, jellied petroleum, or thermite encased in aluminium into these openings. They burned for ten to fifteen minutes, and despite the attempts of Fire Wardens on both sides of the North Sea with wet sandbags and buckets of water and stirrup pumps, were terribly hard to extinguish, some of them can melt metal.

The idea was to create a firestorm. It worked in most instances, became refined and caused the horrors of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo later in the war. These could be carried in their thousands and proved to be very profitable for the developers and producers such as ICI. A Heinkel He.111 could carry over one thousand, it’s estimated that over 50 million were dropped on Nazi Germany alone between 1939 and 1945.

It is estimated that 90 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Norwich in the first raid on the night of the 27th of April 1942. The raids continued two days later and on through May, with further related attacks through to September. Attacks were also made on Bath, Canterbury, Exeter and York, later expanding to King’s Lynn, and Ipswich as well as more combined strategic targeting of Sunderland, and Bristol.

All these cities have something in common – notable cultural heritage, this includes large tracts of wood-framed medieval and Tudor buildings within the fabric of the city… they burn well. It is, basically, a piece of cultural vandalism, one with a huge human cost. Most of the cities also all had some strategic element of note, although this really was a side-issue as most cities do, so while Lubuck had a port, which was part of the target, Norwich had aircraft design and manufacture, which in these raids wasn’t targeted, but the focus on the first night was the North City with a concentration around City Station to the North of the River Wensum, now Train Wood which fed supplies and people to the north.

Patteson Road, Norwich, 28th April 1942, Photographer Unknown.

In my head I just keep coming back round to the line undermining the morale of the enemy civil population, because that’s what this was for in most instances. And when you look at the pictures of our city in 1942, or scroll through the blow list of the dead, these… human being; whole families, children, parents, grandparents, wives, cousins, aunts and uncles, people’s friends – breathing, smiling human beings who you chat to and have a cup of tea with, you know it must have worked.

We are a network, a hive, and society is a sum of all of us. When it’s damaged it affects everyone, Since the Second World War ended, cities across the world have continued been besieged, bombed and shelled for no other reason. We can witness this same depressing pattern happening now – Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Somalia, Palestine. And without being glib you’d think we’d learn from history about how authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and systems operate, but we don’t.

And this, well, it’s for the Hubbards, the Lockwoods, the Potters and the Jopps, for all of them here, the ghosts I walk with and know.

Please note: This is not a full list as it doesn’t include those who died during other raids on the city outside the Baedeker Blitz. This is something which also need to be completed. As a rough total for Norwich deaths seem to stand at around 340, injuries at over a thousand, these figures don’t necessarily take into account marginal areas of the city, or the county more widely. They also do not necessarily reflect deaths in service, so it will always be a bit of a guess.

This list will be periodically updated with links to data on each person where accessible.

Fight war not wars.