From: Tom Holloway (tom.holloway@u3a.org.uk)
Date: Fri Jun 18 1999 - 04:30:31 PDT
. Hello to..... > This is Georgina, Kaylie, Jenny and Nichola and were from Weald of Kent > Grammar School for Girls in England. We are all 14 in Yr.9 and we are doing > a project on the 2nd World war in History and we would like to compare your Firstly - please write to this address and not my Warwick University mailbox (which I rarely use now). Secondly - I suspect my answers (which are as accurate as I can make them) will be very disappointing. Later I shall explain why. > 1.How was your family life affected? My father was absent a lot - because he was in a 'reserved occupation' he didn't have to join up but spent a lot of his time on Home Guard training and fire-watching on the roofs. My Mother was sent to work in a factory (which she hated). > 2.What was it like being in a big city? Great fun. Much nicer than now. We had more freedom then. I didn't have to be taken everywhere by grown-ups, and I could roller-skate and play football in the streets until dark. > 3.What was it like being part of the war? Can't help you with this. MUCH too vague a question. (What is it like being part of the Weald of Kent?) > 4.What was it like having rations? A bit boring when you wanted more jam on your bread and marge, but it was a very healthy diet on the whole. Please remember that the purpose of rationing was to ensure that everyone (EVERYONE) got a fair and healthy share of food. Modern nutritionists will tell you that we ought to be aiming for a similar diet now. If you would like some recipes from those times click on http://visitweb.com/recipes > 5.In what way was England affected by the war? Ermmmmm (I can't believe you're asking this question - are you girls pulling my leg or something?) > 6.Were you evacuated to the countryside? Briefly yes - during the phony war, when nothing happened, but I didn't like it and my parents brought me back to London just before the blitz started. > 7.If so what exactly did you do there? I don't know what you want to know. I went to school. I slept. I ate. I listened to the news on the wireless. I yawned. I had my hair cut. Shined my shoes. Slept again. I lived. > 8.Are there any pacific memories about the war you would like to share with > us? Pacific? I think you must mean "specific". Yes, I suppose so. Scrambling for the roof-tops as soon as the 'all-clear' sounded so I could add to my collection of shrapnel. Swapping the entire rear fin of an incendiary bomb for ten american comics and realising I'd been diddled (I had already read most of them). Seeing American soldiers for the first time, in their amazing uniforms - made of such smooth cloth like posh ladies wore (trousers that fitted them so tightly) and chewing all the time. Some of them were black (I had never seen black people before). Being clipped round the ear by a coal-man because I had run under the cart-horse's belly and made it nervous (all coal was delivered by horse and cart - milk too - but not bread which was light enough that the baker's cart was pulled by the delivery man himself). > Thankyou for taking the time out to read this e-mail and we hope to hear A pleasure - but try to make your questions more specific. Maybe read some stories at http://visitweb.com/memories and write and ask for details, instead of just general questions. Remember that for me and other children of those times, the war was NORMAL. It was what was happening and we took it all as it comes, just as you find your life completely normal. =================== Tom Holloway tom.holloway@u3a.org.uk Tel: (+44) (0) 1926-771772 Fax: (+44) (0) 1926-771707