To be gobsmacked that people got through WW2

[utterlybutterly8]

What we're going through now is so, so tough, but it's nothing compared to the hardship and suffering that people endured during WW2. How the hell did people from that generation cope for six whole years and come out the other side? I'm struggling to cope already and like I say, what we're facing now is a drop in the ocean compared to what they went through. I'm genuinely in awe of our parents/grandparents generation after this.

Think we all need to grow a back bone. My dear late mother was a child in Hamburg, in the war with a mother who was half Jewish. Over a 3 night period over 70, 000 civilians were killed by allied bombing. If anyone wants a bit of perspective “
The Bee Keeper of Aleppo” will give you that.

@fikel how did your grandmother squeak by? If you don’t mind me asking.

JingsMahBucket
She was safe but only because she was married to a non Jew. If the war had continued she no doubt would have been taken as well as my Mum. She was forced to give up her job as an English teacher and ironically the Nazi HQ was opposite to where they lived. I have so many stories to tell but so many that didn’t get told by my late Mama

My mother would always say you don’t know what hunger will ever mean

People just got on with it the same way they will now. The only difference is ability to access media and anyone around the world. We’ve become hysterical because of the information we can get.
Back then info was mainly reduced to their circle ie towns, villages and even in cities and occasional radio/personal stories.

What they put up with does make us seem ridiculously soft.

My nana got tb. Grandad away on the front line, mum, 2 sisters and brother had to be found homes. My aunts went to relatives, my mum was sent to strangers in the country (at 2 years old). My uncle ended up in a banardo kids home 100 miles from home. He was 4.

I found the letter from a banardos nurse to my nana telling her he was dead. Very kind and sympathetic but to get that in the mail while your in a fever hospital with no one around you. I truly can't even imagine what that was like.

No wonder my nana was a hard hearted alcoholic by the time I knew her.

I've been rewatching Blitz Street and am humbled by survivors' stories.

My Great Aunt died aged 19 in the Blitz.

• we do think we are immortal
• we are greedy and spoilt
• we are used to everything being fixed.

My Nan's era (back to back squalor) experienced death - infant mortality - hunger, extreme poverty.
My Nan would go into the Anderson shelter with her 1year old. Her uncle was held POW aged just 18 and he died of Spanish Flu.

We are so lucky to have Skype, broadband and instant comms.

My Dad's brothers were evacuated. I can't even imagine how that would feel.

Both my parents were evacuated in WW2, and never wanted to discuss it. Both my grandfathers were prisoners of war (one Japan, one Burma) and would never talk about it, even to their wives.

Being stuck at home, with some food, telly, heating on, even a bottle of wine in the cupboard, is not a bad place to be.

Death was fairly routine in the 20s and 30s - lots of children didn't make it through to adulthood and it wasn't especially unusual for women not to survive childbirth.

My mother was evacuated during the war. she and a few of her older siblings were all separated and sent to the country to live with complete strangers (it seemed to be done by school class being billeted in the same village with their teacher). She rarely saw her family for 4 or 5 years and sometimes ended up living in places where the family didn't want evacuees and simply left them in the care of the cook and gardener. That sort of experience either gives you a level of mental robustness or it destroys you.

Another thing that strikes me about my mother all these years later, and a lot of her generation, is her complete trust in "authority figures". She finds it very hard to comprehend that her GP might prescribe her unsuitable drugs or that the incumbent Prime Minister might have a hidden agenda.

Her children are far more sceptical/cynical and I think our children are even more so.

That said I do hope the Prime Minister makes it clear that we MUST now do what we are being asked to do to stop thousands of us dying.

We are very spoiled now, we get everything so quickly, and we have so much choice.
However I do think that the social aspect of the war was a huge support to everyone, and that isolation is incredibly tough for most people.

Mad I agree. My Nan believed everything authority figures said. As does my mother (73) which is why until Boris enforces shop closures, she won't listen.

I have been thinking of digging for victory and getting some chickens.

I always remember my mother telling me "looking back, I don't know how we survived the bombing".

The night my grandfather died they had to go to the air raid shelter and leave his dead body in the house.

I think so many people have little resilience these days. We have so many entitled people, we have a consumer society and are used to instant answers, instant fixes.

We have more and expect more and I think many people are falling at the first hurdle. I am stunned by the amount of people who are carrying on as normal or struggling to cope with changes.

Can we just take a minute to get a grip and realise that the previous generation wasn’t better. It wasn’t stronger and more resilient etc. It’s just different.
They coped amazingly well during the war as we will cope during this (however I personally don’t think the two are remotely comparable.)

@ThePluckOfTheCoward me too. The digging part, not the chickens. I probably don't have room for that...