Rememberances of WW2 by a then boy....

[Pappy]

I too remember mixing the yellow dye into my grandmas bowl of lard. Was suspose to resemble butter. Many folks were buying war bonds also. My uncle Don, wanted to join the Marines but was rated 4F because of a heart murmur. He did go to work in a Niagara Falls factory which he found out, after the war, that he was unknowingly working on the Manhatten Project.

 

[Shan]

I was born in London on the day war was was declared, about 15 minutes before the radio announcement.
My parents moved to Harrow when I was a few months old.
I can remember being handed over the garden fence when the siren sounded, to our neighbour who had an Anderson Shelter in her garden. Later we got our own indoor Morrison Shelter.

 

[Josiah]

I was born in London on the day war was was declared, about 15 minutes before the radio announcement.
My parents moved to Harrow when I was a few months old.
I can remember being handed over the garden fence when the siren sounded, to our neighbour who had an Anderson Shelter in her garden. Later we got our own indoor Morrison Shelter.

Tell us about what those shelters were like. Perhaps they're familiar to people in the UK but I've never heard of either of those names.

 

[Shan]

This is the Anderson, a hole was dug and lined with cement (steps down to get inside), top and sides were corrugated iron covered with earth.


The Morrison frame was iron girders, iron sheet on top and wire mesh around it.

 

[Josiah]

Thanks so much, Shan.

 

[Underock1]

This is the Anderson, a hole was dug and lined with cement (steps down to get inside), top and sides were corrugated iron covered with earth.
View attachment 16768

The Morrison frame was iron girders, iron sheet on top and wire mesh around it.
View attachment 16769

That's remarkable. I have watched documentaries on WWII since...well, WWII! I have neithe seen nor heard of either of those until now. I can't believe all of those in depth documentaries on the Blitz, never picked those up. What a way to live your life! Yeah, those were "the good old days". layful: Thank you Shan. That was enlightening.

 

[Shan]

I was very young but I do remember them. I don't know how effective either would have been if a bomb had dropped on them.

 

[Capt Lightning]

I was born after the war and like many people, my father and father in law never spoke much about it.
Occasionally little bits of info would emerge. FiL was a merchant seaman who sailed on the Atlantic convoys. He survived unscathed despite seeing other ships near his being torpedoed. On the day after D-day, he was on one of the supply ships sent to back up the invasion with ammo and supplies.

My father told me stories of delivering wrecked aircraft to an Italian internment camp where the internees would strip out the instruments. These would be re-furbished and re-calibrated for use in another aircraft. The thing he remembered most was that the Italians had little herb gardens round their huts where they grew garlic and herbs. He said that they lived better than he did.

 

[Underock1]

I was born after the war and like many people, my father and father in law never spoke much about it.
Occasionally little bits of info would emerge. FiL was a merchant seaman who sailed on the Atlantic convoys. He survived unscathed despite seeing other ships near his being torpedoed. On the day after D-day, he was on one of the supply ships sent to back up the invasion with ammo and supplies.

My father told me stories of delivering wrecked aircraft to an Italian internment camp where the internees would strip out the instruments. These would be re-furbished and re-calibrated for use in another aircraft. The thing he remembered most was that the Italians had little herb gardens round their huts where they grew garlic and herbs. He said that they lived better than he did.

WWII is just a distant memory, but you can find an Italian restaurant everywhere. Garlic will overcome bullets any time!

 

[Warrigal]

Its amazing how quickly something as major as a world war slips from the collective memory as the new generations come up.
How few know anything about WWI, which was an even greater horror. Maybe a good thing. Better to work towards a better world than argue over the errors of past generations.

WW I still lingers in the collective memory of Australians. On Saturday 25 April it will be the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli by Australian and New Zealand troops as part of the ill fated attempt to open up the Dardanelles to British shipping. We have remembered this day every year since as ANZAC Day. There are memorial services and marches of veterans. We hold services at overseas battlefields too. Including ANZAC Cove in Turkey, Villers Bretonneux in France and Kokoda in PNG. Each one is timed to end just as the sun is rising in that location.

These days young Australians make a pilgrimage to Gallipoli in ever increasing numbers and the Turks have always been very generous and hospitable to them. Hubby and I were there in 2000. Other battles/campaigns from this war are also quite well known - the Western Front in France and Belgium and in North Africa including the last cavalry charge at the wells of Beersheba and the drive to Damascus where the Australian Light Horse arrived before T E Lawrence and the Turks surrendered to a country dentist from Western Australia. History books will say that it was Lawrence of Arabia who accepted the surrender of the Ottoman Empire because that was what was supposed to happen but that is a political fiction. He came in in second place in a Rolls Royce with King Feisal, to whom he had made certain promises.

Of the troops we sent to WW I to support the British Empire, two out of ten were killed and another three were very seriously injured/damaged enough to need a pension for the rest of their lives which were often rather short. My grandfather came home with badly damaged lungs because of all the sand he inhaled in the desert. He contracted silicosis of the lungs.

Just about every Australian is familiar with this verse from a poem by Lawrence Binyon which is recited every day in the RSL clubs and at ANZAC Day services

The leader begins with

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Lest we forget
​

And everyone responds with

LEST WE FORGET.
​

And we haven't forgotten WW I though a hundred years have gone by.

 

[Bee]

Here you go Underock........Every night at 8.00pm (20:00 hours) a moving ceremony takes place under the Menin Gate in Ieper - Ypres (Belgium) The Last Post Ceremony has become part of the daily life in Ieper (Ypres) and the local people are proud of this simple but moving tribute to the courage and self-sacrifice of those who fell in defence of their town.



http://www.greatwar.co.uk/events/menin-gate-last-post-ceremony.htm

 

[Underock1]

Here you go Underock........Every night at 8.00pm (20:00 hours) a moving ceremony takes place under the Menin Gate in Ieper - Ypres (Belgium) The Last Post Ceremony has become part of the daily life in Ieper (Ypres) and the local people are proud of this simple but moving tribute to the courage and self-sacrifice of those who fell in defence of their town.

Thanks, Bee. I am familiar with that. I have watched it on You Tube. Very moving, particularly when you see the endless list of names. Each one a tragedy for some family. What a waste.

 

[Underock1]

WW I still lingers in the collective memory of Australians. On Saturday 25 April it will be the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli by Australian and New Zealand troops as part of the ill fated attempt to open up the Dardanelles to British shipping. We have remembered this day every year since as ANZAC Day. There are memorial services and marches of veterans. We hold services at overseas battlefields too. Including ANZAC Cove in Turkey, Villers Bretonneux in France and Kokoda in PNG. Each one is timed to end just as the sun is rising in that location.

These days young Australians make a pilgrimage to Gallipoli in ever increasing numbers and the Turks have always been very generous and hospitable to them. Hubby and I were there in 2000. Other battles/campaigns from this war are also quite well known - the Western Front in France and Belgium and in North Africa including the last cavalry charge at the wells of Beersheba and the drive to Damascus where the Australian Light Horse arrived before T E Lawrence and the Turks surrendered to a country dentist from Western Australia. History books will say that it was Lawrence of Arabia who accepted the surrender of the Ottoman Empire because that was what was supposed to happen but that is a political fiction. He came in in second place in a Rolls Royce with King Feisal, to whom he had made certain promises.

Of the troops we sent to WW I to support the British Empire, two out of ten were killed and another three were very seriously injured/damaged enough to need a pension for the rest of their lives which were often rather short. My grandfather came home with badly damaged lungs because of all the sand he inhaled in the desert. He contracted silicosis of the lungs.

Just about every Australian is familiar with this verse from a poem by Lawrence Binyon which is recited every day in the RSL clubs and at ANZAC Day services

The leader begins with

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Lest we forget
​

And everyone responds with

LEST WE FORGET.
​

And we haven't forgotten WW I though a hundred years have gone by.

Thank you Dame Warrigal. I am happy that my post gave you a vehicle to post that, and gives me the opportunity to re-post it here. I grew up in the distant shadow of the first world war. As a boy, my mother used to take me to the Memorial Day parades, where I watched the veterans in their polished helmets march down the Grand Concourse.
I have been interested ever since. I am very familiar with Australia's sacrifice. Ypres, Messines, the Somme, and probably the most inhuman battle of all time, Paschendalle. If my research is correct, Australia had the highest casualty rate percentage wise. Heroism should be recognized, but for me, a name on the Menin Gate is equivalent to any VC.