What is often forgotten is that even for those wholly unscathed, to enter the army etc at age 18 in 1939 and not come out until 1945 or 1946 meant the loss of 6-7 years of the best years of your life. My father joined up - he had been in the TA since 1938 - on 1 September 1939, age 26, and did not come out until 1946, age 33. He missed the first 2 years of my eldest sister's life (he was there at the conception though). That's a big chunk in anyone's life.On the home front food was really short, my mother recalled being very, very hungry when pregnant. The winters on 1939-40 and 1944-45 were also very severe. She got wounded in the blitz, whereas my father said - I am not quite sure I believed him - that he never heard a shot fired in anger throughout (he was in Egypt and Palestine mostly from late 1942 onwards).
Dan Filson ● 6167d