Kids in London – Take your little soldiers to the Imperial War Museum

After walking the 15 minutes from Waterloo or 10 minutes from Lambeth North, the kids might need to take advantage of the green spaces surrounding the IWM for a run around if they are not transfixed by the two huge guns that sit outside the imposing dome-topped building.

Planes, tanks and rockets

It’s free entry so once you are up the steps you enter the main hall. There’s so much in here it’s hard to know where you to direct your eyes first. Looking upward you can see the higher galleries and around seven planes suspended from the ceiling – a couple are bi-planes and there is a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt. All around at ground level are tanks, rockets and military vehicles and, right at the front, a contemporary display with information and videos from active servicemen in Afghanistan.

Shop and Submarines

Weaving through the assorted vehicles off to the left is a shop – there’s all sorts of interesting stuff in here and a fair amount at pocket money prices as well as things to amuse adults. There’s poppies, Churchill memorabilia, war time ration items, books on Biggles, camouflage outfits and even Airfix models and Corgi models – I was particularly taken with the bottles of dandelion and burdock, cream soda and sarsaparilla. Everything that a young soldier might possibly need!
Emerging from the shop I entered an exhibit especially for children on submarines. You walk through a model sub – with the familiar pings sounding – and inspect bunks and learn how the loos (heads) work (there’s eight complicated instructions). There are interactive activities like changing the ballast to make the sub go up and down, periscopes where you are tested to see how many ships you spot in 15 seconds and I admit I had a go at the knobs and buttons to enable a submariner to escape. There was stuff about sonar and I learned that GB used to have 58 submarines but now has only 12 and four Tridents.

WW1 and WW2

At this point I went down to the lower ground level and was faced with the choice of World War I, World War II or more recent conflicts. There’s a nice ramp with photos on the side and a huge screen of moving stars at the base which is the Centenary Wall – there’s data indicating the 16m who died in WW1 and encouragement to light a light for the military who have fallen.

With War Horse so popular in the cinemas I wondered around 1WW exhibit – loads of glass cases containing uniforms, weapons, flags and equipment. There are areas for the Western and Eastern fronts and period music is playing (“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag”). Walking through the “Recent conflicts” area I was struck at how many wars there have been since 1946 – it says that has only been one year when a British serviceman did not die in a conflict. A sobering thought.

Trench experience and Outbreak

I enjoyed the trench experience. You walk through a life sized model of the trenches and see how those poor soldiers lived – tiny, cramped living spaces in which to eat, sleep or receive medical attention. The lanterns and battleground noises give some insight into what conditions must have been like. Then I crossed the corridor to go through the Outbreak exhibit with recordings of speeches from Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the King (made famous in the film The King’s Speech). To add to the clipped upper class English accents, the National Anthem is playing. The material on how to prepare for war, what to do if you are caught out during a raid and advising you to be careful of what you say makes you wonder what would happen if we were to have war on our shores today.

Blitzkrieg experience

The World War 2 area has films and models and was a good preparation for the Blitzkrieg experience which occurs every ten minutes. You have to sit in a tiny dark room – an air raid shelter – and listen to the voices of Londoners. There’s bangs and crashes and the attendant leads you out into an area of London that has suffered a direct hit – there are collapsed buildings, rescue efforts and further explosions. The audio shows what it must have felt like to emerge from the safety of the air raid shelter to find your home demolished and all your possessions lost.

Secret Wars and Spies

On the upper level, I don’t think kids would be patient enough to read the material in the “Survival at sea” area which is all about the merchant navy but I was stunned to see how many commercial vessels we lost in various conflicts. The Secret War section is a must for anyone interested in James Bond or spies – there’s a briefing area and all sorts of interesting stuff used by those working for MI5 and MI6 and the special forces. There are also films showing famous SAS rescues.

The Holocaust

With a separate floor to itself I must mention this exhibition although those under 15 are not allowed entry. It takes you through the history of Anti-Semitism and all the awful events in the run up to the 1936 Olympic games and Hitler’s rise to power. I can’t tell you how moved and upset I was– it set out the facts and figures and provided models, papers, artefacts and films showing the horror of the destruction of 6m Jews (of which 1.5 were children) and the awful conditions during their time in ghettos, whilst fleeing (90,000 went to the USA, 75,000 to South America and 50,000 to the UK as well as thousands to other countries across the world) and in the concentration camps.

The museum itself is well equipped for family visits – the modern lifts make it buggy friendly and the loos even have children sized cubicles. On a weekday the place was full of school groups and there were a fair few tourists of all nationalities. Whilst there are some elements that would not be suitable for kids, I remember that mine when they were younger really enjoyed looking at all the full scale models and losing themselves in their make belief world of battles and wars. I, for one, was glad that whilst wars are not an entirely appetising topic the museum provides a valuable resource for those interested in our history and acknowledges, without sentiment, the huge role that the armed services have played in protecting our rights and the vulnerable and standing up to dangerous regimes over the years.

For further information: http://www.iwm.org.uk/