Answer a Question with a Question...

Yes...(to Holly's question)
And did everyone around you, or the one person,
appear to be in total shock, when you stopped doing some of it?
 

Did you do a job that you felt had value,
so you wanted to do it, for that reason in addition to (not solely for) the earnings?
 
Yes, very much. And though difficult, it was considered very valuable to do:
Was it considered a source of pride, there too?
 
Yes, but many women found it difficult to return to being housewives when the war was over. Did your parents tell you about their time during those years?
 
Yes and other people did too, but the schools here, did not teach about what it was like for the personal lives of people; did your schools do any better job with informing students and young people about those aspects of that time?
 
Since our parents were part of that generation, meaning it was the recent past, schools didn't delve deeply into social history and popular culture surrounding WWII. They probably figured - mostly correctly - that we were learning about it elsewhere.

Did your family members talk about their lives before, during, and after WWII?
 
Not much because my mum was a child only 11 years old when the war ended in '45... but other than that my family (grandparents) were very stitched up the back about talking about anything from the past, what about yours ?
 
Yes, they did. My parents were born the early 1920s and talked at length about growing up in a city during the Depression. Dad's family struggled as his immigrant father went from job to job trying to support a wife and family. Mom was more fortunate because her father always had a steady paycheck.

My father was in England, France, Belgium and Germany during WWII and my mom worked a waitressing job that she quite enjoyed.

Dad couldn't get a job prior to WWII because of the anti-Italian sentiment in the US during that time. When he came home from Europe he went to college on the GI Bill while my mother continued working. He was able to land a good job, my mother had to quit work because her widowed mother became very ill, they had a passel of kids, and that was the end of my mother's working years.

I think some of your family's reluctance to talk about that era was connected to England's direct threats and suffering from bombings, don't you?
 
My mom and dad talked about "the good old days" all the time. Do you think you missed out on a lot because your parents didn't share stories?
 
It shows how much the war impacted on people's lives, sometimes in a good way. In the forces, people were taught skills which helped them to find work afterwards.
My father was in the Middle East during the war, but never talked about his experiences. My mother joined the WAAFS and was posted to a bombing station.
Did you know that our queen worked as a mechanic during the war?
 
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