To wonder why the Brits are so obsessed with WW2?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

My Mum is 87. She was 12 when the war ended and went through it in London. She remembers being terrified and hungry and getting grief because her grandmother was German. Other elderly relatives don’t have lovely memories either, apart from relief when it was all over. So why do we glorify it all, at every opportunity? Why do we always look back instead of forward?

Sometimes - as others have said, experiences during the war were very varied. My gf actually fought in the war so obviously I wouldn't compare lockdown with his experience, but I don't know much about my grandmothers. I don't remember them every complaining about it and I'm not aware that they lost any family members. I also know they didn't live anywhere near anywhere where bombs were dropped. My other gf didn't have to go to war.

The person who said at least they had each other during the war was NOT ME but someone who lived through the war.

Many people now are complaining about lockdown and having no freedom ,watching endless Box sets, and not being allowed to go shopping or see family .Then there were rations ,and the real worry of being bombed in night raids by the /enemy forces Don't forget direction of labour. If you weren't in the armed forces you were told what job you had and where you would live. My mother, a shy working class country girl, was uprooted from her family and sent to live in a hostel in a town and work in a lab. Good opportunity for her, but it can't have been fun at the time. My father was billeted on a local family, who made no secret of the fact he was unwelcome.

I was reading my grandfather's diary yesterday. He was not in the armed forces as he was an essential worker. On actual V.E. Day he abd my grandmother went to the cinema, went to a church service, and ended up at the pub where they all had a bonfire to celebrate no more blackout. The next day there was a parade and he'd mentioned my grandmother making bunting a day earlier. There's such a sense of relief, satisfaction and celebration in his diary entries, but it's definitely not in a 'we won the war' way. On the 6th he's written 'Peace is rumoured, thank God'. I guess that's what I was commemorating yesterday.

I read online about an elderly man who remembers the war saying 'at least we had each other'. We're having to go through this on our own - at least those of us who are single.

That is ONE man's comment! If you really think going through this on your own (which I am too, and not finding it at all difficult) can be compared to living through a war of several years' duration - well I'm almost speechless. You do realise that most of the men were not at home for most of the time? It can't have been much fun for women who lost their husbands and were left to bring up families. It's just not comparable.

It can't have been much fun for women who lost their husbands and were left to bring up families

I just can't imagine what it must have been like for them. Many children evacuated. Husbands off in combat. It is unimaginable. I guess that there was little choice for many people - I could not imagine the choices they had to make.

I guess this is something about now. Parents in war zones and in place with poor human rights records are still having to make impossible choices for their children and live unimaginable lives.

But we live in a world where 'real politik' meets the world people would like to live in.

chomalungma

Yes the resilience is very admirable.

But how is that different from today's society where husbands just leave and do not pay anything towards their children? -

there are £ benefits but the whole of the NHS was set up to support such families?

So yes it must have been horrific to have your husband die in the war and you had to raise a family yourself.

But today's UK culture / society / legal structure invites similar situations of family life without acknowledging it.

The men couldn't help dying in the war. Maybe some ran off anyway and started a new life. It gave them an excuse

Now its more acceptable not to be around but personally I think it's selfish and irresponsible

They don't have to marry someone they get pregnant in our culture now

The war had a huge, huge impact so celebrating the peace and the sacrifice that others made is right.

Round here the landscape is littered with remnants of WW2. It is literally all around us if you know what you're looking at. There's pill boxes, anti tank defences on the beaches, old airfields, a memorial to servicemen whose plane crashed in nearby fields. He was American, his family visited every year (until this one). There's a tree DH can point out in the village he was born in that a plane couldn't quite clear. It clipped, flipped and crashed, killing all on board. Another memorial. The damage to the tree is still visible.

My in laws grew up during this time. One had an evacuee come to stay who became like a sister (they were in contact to death). There are 2 or 3 war babies with American father's (who didn't stick around) in the family and MILs father fought in WW1 but was just too old to fight again. They watched a German plane crash behind the church. He was a horrible man by all accounts, and found a boot with a foot in it. He slung it on his shed roof and terrified his children with it for years afterwards.
MIL, understandably, didn't have a good word to say about her father.

FIL used to say there's been no real news since the war ended. He's long dead now. I joked with DH when Covid kicked off that I wonder if FIL would have counted it as news yet.

War casts a long shadow.