Life During Wartime
I lived in London through the height of the IRA bombing campaigns in the 70s and 80s so I've had my bags searched, had to evacuate stores and tube stations under police orders, and I even knew someone who was killed by a bomb the IRA planted outside Harrod's so I have a vague idea what it's like to be stressed about more than being late for work or what to have for tea in the evening. It's a cliche but you really do just go on with living your life and not worry about it.
But I still can't imagine what it was like in London during The Blitz, how do you go on living your life in those circumstances? My mother was only five when the Germans started bombing the city and she lost friends and nearly got killed herself when the windows of their house blew in from the force of a bomb landing up the street. I don't know if they still do this but after the war they kept the air raid sirens in London for use in flood warnings and every now and then they would test them which would give my mum the willies when that eerie whine filled the air. I can only imagine the sights that were going through her mind when she heard that noise.
But my generation got sick of our parents and grandparents always banging on about The War, we had it drilled into us from an early age that they had it tough and how we lucky kids ("Presents? We only used to get an orange for Christmas!") should be eternally grateful for everything we got. Then there'd be some WWII anniversary to commemorate and they'd trot out "the forces sweetheart" Vera bloody Lynn to sing her Blitz hits "We'll Meet Again" and "White Cliffs of Dover" for the millionth time and everyone would happily remember the last time England actually mattered. But I'm old enough now to look back on 1940 and think, my God, how close the country came to actually losing and what a miraculous effort it was to stop that happening. It gives me the willies just thinking about it. I'm also old enough to realize that Vera Lynn woman actually had rather a lovely voice, strong and clear as an English church bell, and now it's hard for me to hear this without getting a little lump in my throat — written at a time when the possibility that we might lose everything we cherished was very real.
Download: White Cliffs of Dover - Vera Lynn (mp3)
10 Comments:
Wonderful sentiments, Lee. I have a story related to VL. In 1991, I took part in the Our Price inter-store trivia quiz. One important match hinged on us getting a maximum of three points for a question, and it was mine. 'Who was turned down for an audition with Henry Hall's dance band, but went on to sell millions of records?' My team mates looked blank: I couldn't rely on them to help me out for two points, so I thought quickly, 'HH? 30s...who sold millions of reocrds in the next decade and was British...' 'Vera Lynn' I answered with grim desperation. It was correct and we went on to clinch the final. My picture appeared in the WH Smith staff magazine, and we drank more lager that day than ever before.
And I still believe I owe it all to Vera.
Hi Lee
Love the blog, and LOVE the bizarrely eclectic nature of the songs you put up.
Nice one!
- Grahame
That was a very moving post. Amazing photo and song as well. My family background is from the USSR and I grew up hearing the same thing about WWII all the time. Everything you wrote was very well said, thanks for this.
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And she gave her name to rhyming slang for gin.
Great work old lad. Couldn't agree more.
For once, I'm struggling to find anything concise or anecdotal to say. ('Hurrah', came the cry).
However, it's pricked me enough to contact the British Legion and volunteer to sell Poppies on the street over the next fortnight or so.
Funny, although I'm only 38, I feel that WWII is rather deeply etched into my psyche.
Dad grew up in West Bridgeford during the war and spent many nights in the dugout bomb shelter in his backyard as bombers flew overhead. Indeed, that wee earth & tin structure was still there when I last visited Grandma's house several years back.
Mum spent the war in Poland -she was ten when it broke out- and still tells horrifically vivid stories of life under Nazi occupation.
Indeed, it is all-too-easy to roll one's eyes and sigh as the funny-smelling wrinklies wax emotional about The Blitz. But instead we should listen - soon there will be no-one left to tell the stories firsthand...
"There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see."
You might already know this but I didn't :
I only learnt the other day that although bluebirds symbolise happiness in many cultures, when they fly past they also are seen as the harbingers of spring (and therefore all death from the winter that came before now brings rebirth).
Meanwhile, a native American tribe (the Cochiti) has a myth that says the firstborn of the sun was called Bluebird. When the sun went away and left the earth covered in darkness, Bluebird was nursed in this darkness - and then by holding Bluebird aloft to the sun, a new day also began.
Hence the reference to 'bluebirds flying over' the cliffs that face mainland europe - but only after the defeat of the Nazi army and thus the new day.
Errr... probably.
Mind you, it was also the name of a car made by Nissan a few years later so it might also have been a futuristic reference to this of course...
Lovely post. My dad was 18 in 1943 and was serving in the Med for the next few years - I can't imagine being ready to do that now in my late 30s, never mind as more or less a kid. It's astonishing, the resources people found within themselves. It's a lot less British, but I think another 'key text' that deserves revisiting as something, as you say, written at a time when the possibiity that we might lose everything we cherished was very real, is Casablanca - listen to 'As Time Goes By' and remember that it dates from a Europe dominated by the Nazis and everything starting to look lost, and Casablanca takes on even more power.
That thing about only having an orange at Christmas is word for word what my mum used to say to me. My uncle Jim, still going not so strong at 94, was the only survivor of a Luftwaffe bomb that hit the Kirkstall forge in Leeds in 1941 ... when he regained consciousness his foreman said he could have the rest of the day off.
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