To not understand the whole "war time spirit" thing

[lockitdown]

I am trying my best to word this the correct way but will probably fail as I have never been good at expressing this.

AIBU in thinking the UK's "obsession"? with deferring to "wartime spirit" is somewhat odd considering the majority of the country most likely have never experienced it? People who were born the year WW2 ended, for example, will be 75 this year. Many of us don't even have parents who experienced wartime or this "wartime spirit" that we are all supposed to be falling in to as a nation.

I am NOT suggesting that we shouldn't honour the people involved in these wars, nor am I suggesting that the wartime spirit at the time wasn't amazing......just that its a rather strange point of reference for a population who may have never experienced it.

@Davros I'm 55 and my parents were both very small children when the war ended so they have no memory of it.

Don't know about wartime spirit but I am willing to bet the shop keepers didn't have to put up with the shit load of abuse todays supermarket workers are having to put up with. Rationing would be so much harder than any food shortages or hard to get delivery slots that poeple have experienced during this time. I absolutely dread to think how people would react to it.

@LondonJax thank you for sharing that. My mother will not talk about it at all so I know little of her experiences. The only thing she has told me was turning up at school and yet another friend wasn't there because they had been bombed overnight. That and both sets of her grandparents coming to live with them as one set were bombed out and the others were elderly and ill so they had 12 people in a 3 bedroomed house. They had a bedroom for the girls, a bedroom for the boys and one for the adults.

What about your dgps OP

We all like history so it has always been discussed in both families.

I spent a lot of time with my dgps as a child

lockitdown didn't they grow up with people who lived through it, remembered it and talked about it? I was born in 1960 but it was still a very big thing in recent history then with some very long effects

@scaryreading long dead. In fact, I only knew one and she died in 2009. The others died way back in the 70's.

witchend has it right for my money

@Davros No, not at all. And I was only born 5 years after you. They were under 5!

The war was crap and left our families with generational mental health problems and poverty. The jingoistic ones are the ones who did well out of it.

What I'm saying is, even if they were under 5, didn't anyone older in their family live through it, talk about it, didn't they see any after effects?

HPandTheNeverEndingBedtime Yes, definitely agree

Like this?

Wartime spirit is a myth. People just got on with things the best they could, as people always do. There were some nasty/criminal people, same as always. The best that can be said is that people who have known genuine hardship are likely to be happier when times are good.

I thought about this the other day.

I saw a thread where some said something like: you'd follow the rules if there were bombs falling. You'd all go to the shelter. You wouldn't say, if I'm going to die, I'll die. So stay at home now.

And my thought was about the many people in the war who just couldn't cope anymore. Who thought, 'I need to sleep in my own bed and if I die, I die' stories of dads who sent the family to the shelter, but wouldn't go themselves.
How cinemas and theatres soon stopped insisting people went to the shelter when the sirens went off. They just paused, did a public announcement of 'the sirens has gone off, our shelters are this way if you wish to use them' then continued the show.

I think the blitz spirit is the only recent historical analogy we have. WW2 was a very very unique time in our history, and the way the home front worked then is the only blueprint we have for a time such as this.

However, don't get rose-coloured glasses about that time. There were bootleggers, and black-marketeers and war-profiteers, and spivs, and thieves, and muggers and DV and grasses etc.
Many many normal people would have a bit of minor illegal activity to make things bearable.
People were starving, (and smoking endlessly to keep hunger at bay).
And there was endless government propaganda.

But people had to rely on their neighbours and local communities in ways which we haven't done for years until now.

@Davros not that was ever mentioned. My MIL was a child, now 85. and mentions that she was evacuated to the country as I said above but certainly doesn't paint a picture of wartime spirit. Just a few memories of being away in Cheshire for a while with a family she didn't like.

betty I re-watched 'Blitz Street' a couple of weeks ago (it's on You Tube) and one of the saddest testimonials included an interviewee who talked of the school register the day after an air raid. Calling out a child's name, only for the teacher to be told "They're not here miss, they were killed last night."

Awful.

I think for me it is hard to listen to people say "we got through the Blitz and we'll get through this" as it minimises the losses of life during the Blitz. Quite a lot of people didn't "get through" it and saying that sounds to me like the person saying it doesn't really understand the breadth of loss during the war or now.

would be willing to bet during WW2 there was just as much murder, robbery, violence and anti-social behaviour as before and after.
Yes actually!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33566789

middleager Yes, that was my Mum's experience. More than once, I have no idea how she coped. Her father was in a reserved occupation, I know he got abuse in the street for not being away fighting yet he was working making military equipment.

OP where have you been? You don't need to have experienced it to know about it.
WW2 and WW1 is on the national curriculum. .

I think my point is that you cannot ask people to harken back and adopt this mythical "wartime spirit" when the population are 1) are highly likely to have never experienced it and 2) from a completely different culture developmentally.

@x2boys
The last WWI veteran died 2 years ago at 118 (I think), he was the oldest man in the UK at the time and he was interviewed on TV. There are certainly no other veterans from that war.

My DM and MIL (80 and 79) were both children during WWII, my MIL lived through the blitz and is still startled by fireworks sometimes. My DM lived in the country on a farm, which was bombed early in the war by mistake.

So the talk about wartime will mean something to them and others of that age. And since they're at risk and shielding right not the 'wartime spirit' is probably the right way to put it to them.

I think I'd like to concentrate on the 80% (?) of people who are displaying the wartime blitz spirit and despair of the other 20%.
The phrase "wartime blitz spirit" isn't meant to evoke a direct comparison, it just means people pulling together and trying to help each other. I have seen a LOT of that where I live.

I agree OP- I find the comparison to the war incredibly jarring. Yes, this situation is shit and it’s like nothing we’ve ever lived through before but it’s a hell of a lot easier than living through continuous bombing and sending loved ones off to battlefields.

I agree. But there are also a lot of snowflakes out there. Going boo hoo we can't go on holiday. We can't see our friends or family.

And my response is pull on your big girl pants and get on with it. Yes it's shit but it's what we've got to do. Previous generations lived through a WAR. Don't be so bloody pathetic.

@sluj yes my grandfather in his 90's also finds this harder than WW2. He was an older child then and too young to fight, but most of his family fought and luckily returned albeit with injuries.

He's feeling very lonely, he doesn't understand the technology to connect online. He's missing human contact, hugs and kisses, weekly chats over a cuppa. He said this is an invisible killer and in the war he had his family and more freedom (probably lucky that he lived in the country and not the city and accepted evacuees rather than was one)

@Bluebell1995, the, I was quite surprised at my GM's comments. I didn't think anything was as bad as the war must have been. It just shows the power of daily contact, particularly for older people.