How the fuck did they get through the war??

[ssd]

If it was 6 years...

This hasn't been a year yet and were all losing the will.....

I think the only benefits people in 1939 had were no 24/7 telly and no social media

But 6 years....OMG

"we're losing the will" against s disease that has no clear way of killing it. We can't touch our loved ones, spend time with our families and we can all share those feelings 24/7 through social media.

They likely also felt like they couldn't carry on some days, but they had a solid enemy and people fighting it, people focused on community and bring together. I'm sure they moaned plenty over a cuppa or hiding in air-raid shelters and picking up the remnants of their lives from the ruins of their homes

Funnily enough I was thinking about this earlier.
I think it was because people had the human contact & there were still things to do/go to.
Plus Hitler & the threat of invasion is a far more concrete thing as in you can hear/see/touch it (newspapers/film/radio broadcasts/people's experiences)
Covid well you can see it's effects on people if they do get symptoms, but you have so many asymptomatic cases. Plus Covid is a bit like a ghost as sometimes you can see it but other times it's invisible.

I don't know if I've explained myself very well but WW2 affected everyone more or less the same (rations/bombings/family members & friends in the armed services/everyone knew someone who had died due to the war) but human contact kept everyone (well most people) going or managed to keep their sanity.

If you read up about human/animal socialisation/contact studies they show how vital to life contact/socialisation is.
Remember the children in the Romanian orphanages after Ceaușescu was toppled. How due to lack of touch & interaction the children just rocked in their cots with blank looks on their faces.

You know what’s interesting about people who go on about how people got through ‘the war’ (presumably WW2) is that it’s never admiration for people who are currently living in refugee camps or through war. It’s always some regurgitate propaganda about Britain.

Namechange I struggled with that book, couldn’t get into it.

One poster says she may be lacking in empathy. I wonder, if I had posted last night saying I couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore, what that poster would think.

I realise a father is not the same as a husband but I’m starting to think the period of caring for dad while he was dying might not have been as bad as this...I’m not sure. At least caring for a dying person had a point to it. This is just battling tyranny and I’m not going to win.

Quite.
It’s all perspective. WW2 also had one of the hardest winters on record. Vegetables had to be dug up with pneumatic drills! Can you imagine the extra cost involved with even simple homegrown veg in a shit year. How would people cope these days without their diverse supermarkets, specialist stockists, Just Eat/Dilveroo etc.

Perhaps it’s also because we don’t really have “ the enemy” as such. In that Covid is the bad guy but the reality is no one under 20 will know we’ve had it, under 40 and we feel no worse than ill and that most won’t have anyone that has directly died from it. Unlike the war which was a tangible risk and quantifiable danger.
I guess HIV or CJV was the nearest we got before and that was also contained to “groups” of people.

‘It's a great book actually and I found it reassuring in some ways to relate to the situations and gain some perspective.‘

Thanks, I will look it up, it sounds great.
The book that I found most useful was Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (free on kindle). There was so much I recognised about how it felt and how people behave.

Tracy “ Remember the children in the Romanian orphanages after Ceaușescu was toppled. How due to lack of touch & interaction the children just rocked in their cots with blank looks on their faces.”

I think a few of us will be like that. I was like that at the start but I’m better now.

@Beccasb

You know what’s interesting about people who go on about how people got through ‘the war’ (presumably WW2) is that it’s never admiration for people who are currently living in refugee camps or through war. It’s always some regurgitate propaganda about Britain.

Oh yes

Good point

Who was together? The men on the front? The children who were sent to live with fuck knows who in the countryside?
You can’t compare, but come on, the war was worse.

Though like pp's have pointed out, living through a war is a shit time for everyone.
My late DGreat Gran was in floods of tears when WW2 was declared as she knew the horrors that were coming after having lived through WW1 & losing brothers in the trenches of France & Belgium.

I wouldn't want to live through a war either.

I was thinking about this the other day .

That I miss my 19 year old son if I don't see him from one week to the next . The idea of him going away to war with no communication , not knowing if he was dead or alive . I don't know how people coped with this (I suppose to a certain extent it can be similar in the services today )

Or could you imagine if your 7 year old was evacuated to the countryside somewhere and you weren't able to phone them , or even write perhaps ?

Must have been awful . At least today we can keep in touch via Facebook , WhatsApp , zoom etc

Lots of people were traumatised by wartime. I know of three in my family in my grandparents' generation and those are just the ones I know of.

The pubs were open? You could meet other people?

I do wonder about all those people in Occupied Countries - adjusting to a new normal, waiting for hope.

I don't know what unemployment etc was like in the war years. Everyone had things to do plus other jobs so they could make a contribution.

An awful lot of people didn’t stay the course with evacuation, they went and got their kids.

I’ve thought this a lot OP. We do live in a very spoilt generation. Young’ens back then would fake there age just so they could sign up and fight for their country. Not a chance in hell you’d get that now, they’d run the other way. Yes of course they complained, just as they do now, but they got on with it, they didn’t bend the rules and put lives at risk just to go out on a bender

@Beccasb

You know what’s interesting about people who go on about how people got through ‘the war’ (presumably WW2) is that it’s never admiration for people who are currently living in refugee camps or through war. It’s always some regurgitate propaganda about Britain.

But refugees are escaping their countries wars not staying and fighting them. Not saying they are right or wrong but the two camps “ stay and defend” or “escape” are two separate circumstances.

Actually the only people I see moaning about it are online. Everyone I know IRL has just got on with things.

@AcornAutumn sorry to hear that & glad you are feeling better.
Don't think you are weak because even the most mentally cast-iron of us have had an occasional wobble.

‘
During the war people moaned mostly about the food, which as well as being in short supply was generally very nasty, the lack of petrol (heavily rationed), the general uncertainty and difficulty of planning, and their inability to enjoy holidays on the continent.’

That’s interesting, Irene. I can imagine how you might have felt if your loved ones were off fighting and your home bombed and some irritating rich person was banging on about how terrible it was not being able to go to the Rivera again this year.

People in WW2 had no choice, we were thrust into a war and had to win it. It took 6?years and cost millions of lives ( worldwide).
They got on with it because, what else could they do?
Not everyone was together, most men under 35 were drafted into the armed forces and lots of children were evacuated. So families were split up, not all obviously.
Most working class people lived on the same housing estates and didn’t own much. It was a much more modest time to live in.
Now the rich and poor divide is bigger, there is more financial pressures on people and life is more complicated.
Of course no one knew when the war would end, but there was a clear objective- to defeat an enemy.
We’re now fighting an invisible disease that can mutate itself and will possibly be around in a form forever.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

An awful lot of people didn’t stay the course with evacuation, they went and got their kids.

My granny was evacuated with my Dad, as he was a baby, but returned to the East End after 6 weeks because the country was "so boring" - an opinion that she never revised

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

An awful lot of people didn’t stay the course with evacuation, they went and got their kids.

And then they were painted as sentimental thick idiots and quitters.

Dps nana says this feels worse than the war, as she could still go out and see people

‘I’ve thought this a lot OP. We do live in a very spoilt generation. Young’ens back then would fake there age just so they could sign up and fight for their country. Not a chance in hell you’d get that now, they’d run the other way. Yes of course they complained, just as they do now, but they got on with it, they didn’t bend the rules and put lives at risk just to go out on a bender‘

You must have missed the newly graduated medical students back in March when doctors were dying and there was no ppe talking about being scared but glad they had the chance to help.
There is absolutely nothing to suggest young people now are more selfish or less brave.

@shamalidacdak

Actually the only people I see moaning about it are online. Everyone I know IRL has just got on with things.

I’d bet money they share their feelings online, probably anonymously!