Learnt something shocking today - Anyone know much about WW2?

Evening all.

Visited a local museum today. I've been before but today was the first time I noticed a particular exhibit. Maybe it was only added recently.

Anyway, it was a poster. It was advertising a fund raising day, with the goal being to raise £500,000 to pay for 12 bombers. There was a slogan on it something like more pounds raised means more tons dropped, presumably referring to bombs being dropped on our enemies.

I know that things were tough, and I know we had to borrow from the yanks to get us through it, but the thing that shocked me is I didn't realise things were so tight financially for dear old Blighty that the government had to ask the people to buy the hardware, and I mean as in from pocket money as opposed to tax revenue.

Its interesting, but its a bit scary to realise just how close our little island must have been to total loss.

 

Clueless, my mother was born in the Old Kent Road area of south east London. The area at that time was covered in rows and rows of terraced housing, no gardens, just a back yard and a small area of concrete to the front. In this area, all the houses were fronted by a wall with a metal railing on top. All the railings were stripped and taken away as they were needed to produce all manner of things for the war.

Because of the blitz my grandmother moved the family out to Essex permanently and my mother continued to travel by steam train back to London, where she worked for the Underground Railway. After finishing her day job she would then go on to work a couple of hours in a munitions factory in the evening. She then faced a long journey home by train often with hold-ups, such as a bomb on the line. It was a hard life for everyone.

 

Clueless if you look around your town front gardens you will see little metal stubs around the gardens
This is where they removed the iron fences, to make munitions
People had to donate their Aluminuim pans to provide air frames

Rationing was severe, as the UK is an island most things had to be imported from abroad, Thus the ATLANTIC CONVOY's
No sugar, no petrol, no sweets, and ration books two eggs per week per person IF available, mostly powdered egg from the USA
2 ounces of meat per person per week
NO clothing
Too much to go into on here you would need to google rationing

Twas good for gardening though as every garden was turned into a vegetable garden
allotments were fought over
Even in the 50's We still had pig swill buckets collected every week to feed the pigs

Jack McH

 

Oh I could run with this

Remember in the 50's when you bought a bolt and two washers to repair a hole in a cooking pan base ? our pans were worn out with holes in the bottom and one could not afford to ditch and replace, it was the bolt job :-)

Now we ditch perfectly good pans because we fancy copper bottomed, or the latest griddle style :-) or colour



Oh and an old valve basic radio all four stations :-)

Jack McH

 

They didn't have enough mettle to make cars, so like my old Land Rover (mine is 1958) the body's were made from Brimbright instead on aluminium, that's why they dont rust

 

This was Chiswick, London

 

I could listen to peoples experiences all day long on this subject....So interesting

 

Elaborate wedding dresses were made out of old lace curtains, and the wedding cakes were cardboard boxes covered in a white paste, so they still had three or even four tiers

Ladies stained their legs brown with substitute coffee, and painted a black line down the back of the leg to represent silk stockings

All stocking had a giggling line

Jack McH

 

Ladies tended to buy one decent black dress (on coupons) for evenings out and dressed them up with brooches, flowers etc.

 

If only!

I remember (tales told by jjordie and others) that my father, desperate to provide for his family of four (I hadn't come along yet!) decided to keep rabbits. One day he decided to he kill one for dinner. The tragedy was, he had no idea how to kill an animal and it took him ages to dispatch the poor creature. With that and the knowledge that this was the fluffy bunny my sisters had all fussed over and petted, no-one would eat the stew! Apparently dad was furious and got rid of the rest!

 

Thanks all for the most interesting posts. These sorts of things really interest me. I'll be reading it all again when I get home.

Speaking if sirens, we have them on site where I work. I'm pretty sure they are left over from the war and are now used on scheduled emergency drills, where people pretend that one of the chemical plants has popped and everyone runs around site with protective gear on doing whatever they do to avert disaster, but of course the chemical works, and the steel works just over the road, along with the ship building just a couple of miles to the north east of here all made this little bit of the world a good target. All along the dunes here you can still see some of the now half sunk concrete bomb shelters, and just along the gare road there are still great mounds of rock, which once accommodated big guns apparently to defend the works.

One of the things that bugs me a bit is when some of the folks my age or younger seem to have less respect for the old ladies, or anyone else that didn't fight on the front lines, than the men that did. Obviously I wasn't there, but I was taught that it was literally all hands on deck, and those that couldn't fight at the 'front' did other things instead like trying to keep enough of Britain in tact to be worth defending, keeping coal coming out the ground to run the foundries to make the steel to make the ships and weapons, keeping the kids fed etc etc. I can't even imagine what it must have been like, but I think I can guess that pretty much everyone fought in one way or another, and I guess everyone worked harder than most nowadays could ever imagine.

One thing that does make me feel a bit sad though is knowing how the whole nation pulled together to beat the odds all those years ago, I wonder if the need arose again if the same would happen, or if everyone would wait for someone else to sort it all out for them.