How did children perceive WW2?

I've attached a scan here of a drawing in my mum's autograph book from 1939/1940. She would have been about 12 years old and it set me wondering about how children perceived the war. Anyone got any images or reflections?
Cathy aka noreen

 

I've attached a scan here of a drawing in my mum's autograph book from 1939/1940. She would have been about 12 years old and it set me wondering about how children perceived the war. Anyone got any images or reflections?
Cathy aka noreen

Hello Noreen,

Very nice and touching, fascinating topic. Never seen a similar thread before.

Well, in 2010 I was writing my previous book, concerning a British Vickers Wellington Mk X bomber whose wreckage I found at 2800 meters on the Western Alps, in the Aosta Valley. Of course, at first it was just an anonymous wreck, never "claimed" before.
I discovered with big surprise, simply chatting at dinner, that my granny Luisa survived the worst part of the war in Milan. Today it is a big and wealthy metropolis, a giant and inhuman city, but during the last war it was a large cauldron for many air raids, for years. Thousands victims, enormous damages and fires, starvation, like too many other towns in the whole Europe from the Axis and the Allied side.

My grandmother was just 13 and it was her birthday when they received a call, on August, 13 1943. There were "some damages" to their house down there in Milan, since her, her little sisters and her father had escaped in Erba, a tiny town on the hills in Lombardy. Sadly, her mother had died by a serious illness and she was a kind of deputy-mother for the little ones.
Then at dinner, in my comfortable and warm house in that evening of 2010, she kindly told me the whole story, never heard before. The night of the raid was between 7 and 8 August, but the news of "some damages" reached them only the 13. Then she and her father travelled by train towards Milan, with great delays for obvious reasons.
I don't know if you ever visited Milan. Anyway they had to walk from the Stazione Centrale to their district, since the local transportation system was simply gone away. But the buildings seemed normal, until they reached their old neighborhood.
They lived in Via Volta, still existing, at number 5. At number 10 they had a small office and a small plant, providing faucets and valves for industrial factories and plants. Well, all the builings on both the sides of the road simply collapsed. The road itself was no more on Earth. They only found a high wall of debris and ruins, still burning from the 7/8 night!, with few people carrying away wastes and metal on bikes and push carts.
All lost, all gone away. They never found again their house or the store, but her father found a small and melted valve from their shop, fused together with a brick.
She closed the tale by saying, Well, it was the first time in my life I saw dad crying. He didn't cry when mom died and that day, holding my hand, he was crying.

After that she told me that she had to go to the "Borsa nera", the black and illegal market, all alone by train - they had money, but nothing to eat. She still remembers days all alone in stations and trains, blocked by strafing and bombings. Her train was at once stopped and searched by "German soldiers with black suits", maybe SS, and again by partisans, but all these men simply smiled seeing such a young lady all alone and she was never aggressed or menaced.

In the end, she told me this third thing. One day, she was all alone in Milan, having to pay a customer of her father - it was risky for single men to travel from the mountain to the plan, without many documents from the Germans, the fascists and the partisans, and each one of the two parties would have shot you if finding the permits of the other! - when the air raid alert started screaming.
She was in the middle of the town, 100 meters from the Duomo: now, thousands of foreign tourists may be seen in that square every day!, but that day the RAF was using the church as signal point to unload their bombs. She was not used to visit that part of the town and she didn't know the way to the nearest air shelter: she heard the first explosions and saw the smoke, the thunders just behind the Castle Sforzesco at first, then behind the Arengario, on the right side of the Duomo, over Palazzo Reale.
A senior girl called her under the entrance of a building in Via Dante, near the Loggia dei Mercanti: she was an auxiliary, my grandmother remembers a crest with a skull and a rose, so I think she was from the X Mas by Junio Valerio Borghese. They had some female auxiliaries, like the WAAF, and the most part of them were executioned without process after the war.
Today whatever Italian 13 years old girl would not trust an older and unknown person calling her!, but at those times, as you know, this poor country was completely regimented by the fascists. So my grandmother obeyed, they embraced under that hall and knocked heavily on the door, but it was vane.
Luisa remembers seeing some small, narrow lines falling from the "right side of the roof of the Duomo" and crashing down. These were the pinnacles, broken by the air blasts.

Two weeks ago, after admiring the wonderful exhibition of Pablo Picasso's paintings at Palazzo Reale, I took my three friends towards the Duomo. We reached the main entrance, always closed (apart during the main ceremonies, envolving popes or bishops). These giant doors still shows three or four deep holes, where shells from the near explosions hit them,

File:3207 - Milano - Duomo - Effetti bombe su portale principale - Foto Giovanni Dall'Orto, 22-Feb-2008.jpg - Wikipedia

(From wikipedia).

I still wonder if I'll ever know... Maybe these holes were made when a little girl was hiding somewhere in Via Dante, just 100 meters from the parvis of the Duomo. Well, it makes you think. And it was incredible to listen the quiet, normal way she told me about bombings and strafings, skulls and roses, mass executions and death - all things that, for her, were nothing more than normal.

Thanks again Noreen, I enjoyed your proposal and I will surely follow this topic. Very nice idea.

Kind regards from the snowy Biella,

Marco

 

Hallo,

My father wrote a letter to his brother. It tells how he saw his brother.

GILBERT
It is very strange writing this over you, my brother. Strange because I hardly had the time to learn to know you better. In the time that I came to know you I was realy too young to realize what was happening all around me. In that time you was already in the army but when you came home on leave you left very vivid memories with me.
Those memories were all quite short. You always let me empty your kitbag and you took care to put something in it for me right at the bottom of it. When the sirens sounded we would go to the back door and pretend to shoot them German planes down, and you would tell me some of the things you and your pals had done in training. Boy oh boy you made me feel as if I was as big as you.
Even after you had left us to go to Arnhem you tried to help me. Strange but you must have been watching over me because you contacted me in my dreams by “Onderlangs” in Arnhem, trying to reassure and guide me. I still feel that you are watching.
After a while I did not know what further steps I should take in my search for you and then all at once more family and friends joined me. I do feel that you know this already.
You might be listed as unknown but Gilbert you are definitely not forgotten.



My Dad was a little boy of 9 years old when he knew his brother.

Greetings

 

My nephew was aged just five when he lost his father.

He wrote about it here:

BBC - WW2 People's War - My only memory of my father

Ron

 

Interesting post! When the war started I would have been eight years old. For most of the war we lived in a village near Wrexham, North Wales. The drawing is interesting because I remember my brother and I mostly drew pictures of Spitfires shooting down Messerschmidt's. I would say that we could recognized just about any plane in the sky from their descriptions published in the newspapers. Also remember getting our hands on a couple of wooden rifles that were used by the Home Guard to drill with. I think their most lethal weapon was probably the pitchfork. Before the Normandy landing we had a long column of American troops file past our small village school, and they started throwing oranges over the fence. Needless to say, we devoured more than we should with the result that most of the school was away sick the following day after eating fruit we had not seen for a few years. The head master marked our absents down as “orangegites”. There was an aerodrome not far from where we lived and we saw it go from a night fighter base to a training base at different stages of the war. The night fighter period would have been when Liverpool was being bombed. We were about 25 to 30 miles from Liverpool and the night sky was glowing red over the city for many nights. The sound of the German aircraft was distinctly different, and we had no difficulty in recognizing what planes were overhead. We were made to stay in the house when there was any action going on ( usually under the kitchen table) but I remember one night seeing an enemy plane getting caught with the searchlights and glistening while it turned trying to get free. Not sure if it was shot down or not. We had quite a few bombs jettisoned by the bombers but I don't remember any damage. Later in the war the aerodrome was used for training purposes with Miles Master and Harvard trainers. I believe that the pilots were really pushed through their training because there seemed to be many crashes. More dangerous than the Germans.


Having said all that I think that our lives were normal, with school every day and the usual mischief that boy's get up to. The only enemy soldiers we saw were the Italian prisoners of war, and they were a friendly lot with no interest in fighting, or so it seemed to us kids. They would make rings from our coins and sell them along with their wicker baskets. It was a common sight to see an Italian POW riding his bike down the road with not a guard in sight ( I believe that many of them had girlfriends). Thinking back now I think that some of them really missed their families because they would show us pictures of their children.

 

Very interesting tales, as I supposed, a fascinating and touching topic.

 

There are a large number of personal accounts by the children of the wartime generation that can be read on the BBC "People's War" project. I was a volunteer story gatherer for this project and interviewed a number of people who grew up during the war.

This is a link to the index of the 'Childhood & Evacuation' section of the "People's War" collection:
BBC - WW2 People's War - Childhood and Evacuation Category

 

I've tried to get my auntie who is one of my two surviving relatives who was alive during WW2 to talk about her childhood but without success so it is very interesting to read these posts and follow the links.

 

I've tried to get my auntie who is one of my two surviving relatives who was alive during WW2 to talk about her childhood but without success so it is very interesting to read these posts and follow the links.

Hello again Noreen,

Today I told my granny about this post (I had to explain what ww2talk.com was, before) and she seemed quite surprised. The reaction was somewhat like, why should you be interested in such sad and bad stories?

 

Not all WW2 childhood stories were sad and bad, although obviously a great number were.

One of many I recall is the family asking my younger brother whether he knew what "peace" was? His answer: "The space between wars". An intelligent deduction - he recalled our parents talking of the Boer War, and then the First World War, so obviously war was the natural state of the world, but occasionally there was an interval, as at the theatre, and the name for the interval was "peace".

We also asked him whether he could remember bananas - "Yes, they're straight but slightly bent".

 

I had just left school when the war started so didn't qualify as a child. My younger brother was evacuated to a farm at the far end of Cornwall. The two farmer's daughters taught him what every boy should know about girls - lucky s*d.

 

Both my parents were in Holland during the war, Dad was younger, only remembers bits and pieces, does remember that there was a German airfield nearby, and watchinh fighters taking off, also says from about 44 on have to be very careful during the day about moving on the roads as fighters would be strafing everthing that moved. His family also hid Jews in thier barn, he and his brothers and sisters were aware that somewhere this family was hiding but where not told exact location, and thet were not to speak of these people to anyone. He also mentioned seeing contrails goig overhead during the day seeing flak bursts and hearing planes going over at night.

Mom was oplder lived in Groningen, rememebers the rounding up of the Jewish people. Her father was taken for slave labour(he was a tailor, was making and repairing German uniforms) He escaped and walked back Home and hid for about half a year. She also remembers the Canadians liberating thier city, they hid in the basement for 2 days while thew fighting went on.

 

My grandmother often used to share the story of how my mother reacted when my grandfather returned from serving overseas. My mother burst into tears and wouldn't stop crying because a stranger was kissing her mother.

I chuckled at the banana mention too because my grandad had cadged some bananas from somewhere as a gift for his daughter and that's what won her over to this strange man in the funny suit.

 

Having mentioned two of my younger brother's sayings, I recall one of my own. On going into the city centre and seeing all the devastation caused by bombs, I remarked, "How silly - now they've got to build it all up again".

 

It is worth mentioning here the fascinating tale of Peter Ghirinhelli which describes his life as a child in ww2, both in the UK and Italy.

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/book-reviews/28322-british-boy-fascist-italy.html

Ron

 

There was a bomber training base about 50 miles from where my mother lived during the war (USA). She remembers large formations of the aircraft flying over, making much noise. She was born in 1941 was afraid of them because she was old enough to know what bombers did, but too young to understand that they did not carry bombs while training. She was afraid they might bomb her home.

Her father left when he was drafted and she remembers him being gone and wanting him to come back home.

Funny, though, my grandfather said that even though his return home was one of the happiest days of his life, it was also one of the saddest. He said when he got home, his children didn't anything to do with him at first.

 

Growing up, my best friends father told us stories of his many visits to the local POW camp where German prisoners were employed at a brick yard. Long abandoned, the brick yard still stands today.
His uncle had a contract with the army to provide certain provisions and made twice a week deliveries, with horse and wagon, to the camp and my friends father, as a boy of 10-12, usually accompanied him. He spoke of the terrible confusion he felt. At the Saturday morning newsreels at the movies, he saw the evil Hun portrayed as the hated enemy on screen. Of course, he and his schoolmates held a typical boys attitude toward the despised Germans. Yet on his trips to the brickyard he was the centre of attention. Being the only child that the POW's ever came in contact with, he was showered with homemade toys, candy and kindness. Generally, he felt like a celebrity and he could never reconcile those gentle, ordinary men with the images he saw at the movies. In the end, he came to like the German men he became familiar with but never dared express those thoughts with friends or family.
He also spoke of being further confused later when returning veterans offered stories of a cruel and ruthless foe.

 

Towards the end of the war it became possible for families to invite local PoWs to a meal at home on Sundays or at Christmas. I am reminded of a little girl of ten being sent out to invite the first PoW she saw as they passed the house, and finding that language was no barrier to small acts of humanity.

Another family invited two PoWs for Christmas Day, and, although teetotal, laid in two bottles of beer to help their guests feel at home - only to find that the guests were also teetotal! Despite the family later emigrating to Australia, the children are still in touch with one of those PoWs.

 

Hello again Noreen,

Today I told my granny about this post (I had to explain what ww2talk.com was, before) and she seemed quite surprised. The reaction was somewhat like, why should you be interested in such sad and bad stories?

I think that's very understandable when I think about it. My childhood was in the 1950's and most of my better memories seem to be hazy generalisations and quite a lot of the specifics are of the less pleasant things. So many much worse experiences for the children of the 1940's.

I got my auntie talking a bit and one of her strongest memories was related to her father who was a train driver going to work at night and driving trains around the industrial areas of South Yorkshire and worrying about him whenever there were air raids. She didn't really get the idea of a forum either.

Cathy aka noreen

 

My Dad was born in 1936 and lived in Balham throughout the war. I have asked him about it and he always says that at his age it was all great fun and he liked going to see the barage balloon that was near by. He doesn't remember being scared. His earliest memory is of his Grandad telling him that "they've set the whole of London on fire!" and taking my Dad to look out of the window upstairs.

I think he found the whole thing quite exciting, about right for his age I suppose.

I did ask him the other day what his favourite Christmas present ever was, and he said it was in 1943 when he was given a handmade wooden tank, and a barrage balloon that you could pin to the ceiling and wind up and down.

I ought to ask him more about it all really, I never have in great detail but this post has got me thinking!