The last couple of weeks have seen lots of references in our media to the seventieth anniversary this year of the Battle of Britain in World War II. The battle took place in August / September 1940.
Tonight the film of that name was on TV: everyone who was famous at the time was in it and excellent details can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_%28film%29-
Every Spitfire in the country was used in the film and Spain loaned its Stukas. Given that the film was made before CGI I am impressed.
Although the Second World War was before my time, I was told a great deal about it by my parents who lived in London at the time. They literally thought each night would be their last alive during the bombing raids. Their worst fears were from the doodlebugs. They said that when the engines stopped overhead you knew that the bomb was dropping, you just did not know exactly where. They slept on the floor in the kitchen under the table as being the strongest piece of furniture to protect them if the house came down. When I think of that kind of stress each night and then getting up in the morning, perhaps no water or electricity, getting ready for work, perhaps no transport, or roads wrecked by bombs, queuing for what little food there was, walking everywhere, working all day, struggling home at night, no road signs, no street lights, little heating, and this going on day after day, I am amazed. They never complained about it to me: they took me as a very little girl to see documentary films of the release of Belsen, telling me that this must never be forgotten and I was to remember what I saw all my life: they said any sacrifice had been worth it to stop the horror of the concentration camps. I shall never forget the nightmare of seeing those newsreels of the starving and dead inmates of those camps.
My earliest childhood was in London and even in the 1950s we passed wrecked buildings and bomb sites that had not been reclaimed because the country was too poor to rebuild fast.
This country faced the reality of invasion at the time and at one stage was two weeks from starvation. I get quite choked when I realise the hardship that generation went through and the sacrifices so many people made for our future. We know an old man in his late 80s who was the last man rescued from Dunkirk: he is a charming old gentleman, so brave, so polite, you would never know what a hero he had been in his youth or what sights he had seen. Reading about historical events is one thing, but being told about them from people who were there brings it home to one and it feels frighteningly real. When my mother died I found her letters to my father and her diaries of the time: trying to do something each day to make the day special as it might be their last. Interestingly, although she was not keen on music, the one thing they both needed was music: many famous musicians gave free lunchtime concerts in London to the workers to keep up morale, and my parents went to every one they could get to. In the evenings if the bombs came while a concert was in progress, the players kept on playing and the audience remained, somehow the music was too important and meant too much, for them to leave. (There is a moral for our present- day educators in there somewhere.)
However, without the contribution made from our friends and allies overseas, many of whom came over here to fly with the RAF, the Battle of Britain could not have been won. One of my friends from California was a very young Jewish man at the time who came over to this country when he was 17 years old desperate to join the RAF and fight for his fellows.
I hate the concept of war but I really do believe that Hitler had to be stopped and am in awe of the bravery of people who faced terrible deaths in the fight to stop him. At the same time I agonise over the deaths of ordinary people both in and out of the German Army and in Japan. I am eternally grateful that, so far, I have never had to face anything like this in my own lifetime.
I am a WWII buff and loved living in England with all that great preserved WWII History. I spent about 3 days wandering around RAF Duxford and was in heaven!
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Do you have air displays of antique aircraft in the US as we do at Duxford?
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I spent my childhood getting dragged around to civil war battlefields. I think that’s where my distaste for war began. And yes indeed, Hitler and his monstrous campaign needed to be stopped. But in general we go to war to often for much less noble reasons.
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I quite agree.
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One of my uncles landed at Normandy on D-day and fought at the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke of the war but when he was dying he relived those days and kept screaming that the Germans were going to get him. He was a very quiet, gentle person; I could never imagine him in the military.
My ex’s parents lived through the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. They never spoke of it either.
I began reading about WWII when I was a teenager; my younger son has the same interest. I read pretty much anything I can find on the Holocaust, even though it pains me to do so. The stories would be of my sons and myself, our friends, rabbis, neighbors. I can’t begin to comprehend. I know survivors and the children of survivors; I only look from the outside. We were the fortunate ones. My family has been in the U.S. since the 1600’s.
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What a long history your family has in the US, it sounds really interesting. Have you ever thought of blogging on this subject, with the proviso of sufficient anonymity of course.
Have you ever ‘wanted’, I use that word advisedly, to visit any of the sites in Europe where concentration, extermination camps were built? I feel somehow that making a kind of pilgrimage to visit at least one is necessary on my part. Part of ensuring that they are never forgotten.
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I don’t actually know much of the family history, other than that there are records of us being here in 1600. My grandmother knew a lot but when she died I don’t know what happened to all the information she collected.
I visited Dachau when I was 18 and I think that might well be it for me. My kids have not yet gone but we plan for the younger to do some traveling through Europe before starting college so likely he will visit one of the sites. The older has no great interest in Europe but perhaps at some later date he will make the journey as well.
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It is sad that the cycle of violence does not stop, it just moves from one location to another. I have memories of a war (ongoing) that I hope (against all hope) will at least subside for a few years.
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You have my sympathies: what has gone in the Lebanon has been dreadful but it seems to me, at this distance, that perhaps things have been better for quite a while now, apart from border troubles? Or is it only that our media have moved on? I am so aware of how relatively lucky we have been in the UK mainland apart from the IRA and more recent bombings.
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