King George and Queen Mary were at home in Buckingham Palace when it was bombed. Afterward, while visiting others bombed out of their homes, the Queen said, "I'm glad we've been bombed. Now I feel I can look the East End in the face."
During off-duty hours, Barbara and many of her flier friends became part-time helpers in the Women's Voluntary Service, performing tasks which relieved air raid wardens and fire-fighters for more urgent duties. Most of the time, Barbara's duties with the WAFS were to help wounded women, children, or the elderly whose homes were bombed. She aided them in getting medical assistance, food, water, and temporary lodging.
It became heart-wrenching for Barbara to watch London mothers tearfully wave good-bye to their children as tens of thousands of young boys and girls were evacuated from the city to the country-side.
Barbara was constantly amazed at how busy everyone in London was, every daylight hour. Women of working age and health were in service everywhere, relieving men for active duty by filling their vital jobs in factories and farming. Older women manned nurseries to care for the children of mothers working in the war effort. Those women whose homes still stood organized The Housewives' Service, offering their undamaged homes as first-aid posts or canteens for those in need.
The youth of London also was not idle. Boy Scouts scurried about the city on foot or bicycle as messengers or hospital and government office orderlies. One troop checked fire buckets to make sure they were filled with water or sand, or tested water pumps in hospitals to make certain they were working. During night bombing raids, teenage boys and girls assisted the Home Guard or helped mothers with their younger children in the tubes or led community singing there, to raise morale during raids.
The blitz on London continued until October. Then, largely because the citizens refused to let the destruction of their homes, workplaces, hallowed landmarks, churches and cathedrals cause them to lose the will to survive, the attacks were then shifted back to coastal installations. Gradually, Germany gave up hope of invading England.
But despite one of the world's great capitals having been almost bombed to submission, the worst was yet to come.
Just the day before German bombers virtually destroyed Coventry in central England on November 14, Barbara ferried a Spitfire built in a factory there to a Channel coast airfield.
If she had been in the industrial city during the raid, one of the most terrible and intense of the year, she might have been among the over 200 people killed and hundreds more who were seriously injured.