My first memories of the impact of the war as a pre school child growing up in Canterbury were of a bomb site. The city had been badly damaged in a Baedeker raid. By the time I was born the shopping centre area by the Eastgate had been completely rebuilt. It was only one day when my mother walked me past a large piece of wasteland beyond the city walls that I asked about it. Why full of weeds, and why were there remains of low brick walls? My mother was reluctant to answer, told me it was a bomb site and wanted to change the topic. Understanding nothing I asked more and got out of her that some people were so nasty they blew buildings up , dropping bombs out of aircraft. As I tried again a worse truth was half peeking out. These people were so nasty they blew them up with people still inside them. I could not fathom why anyone would want to do that. A fear gripped me. Could it happen now?
As I went to primary school grown ups would share a bit more with me about the war that had dominated their young adult lives for five long years. They were still talking to each other about it as they sought to digest what had happened to them. I was shown the ration books they had to rely on, told of the shortages and the limited meals.
My grandparents and father grew food in their gardens as if still part of Dig for victory. They would say careless talk costs lives. Waste not, want not was a favourite phrase, encouraging thrift and careful use of limited resources. My grandmother still had her black out sheets that were used to stop the light at the wartime window. My father told of his evacuee experiences being sent to Stafford from Ramsgate and how he enlisted in the navy as soon as he could. My mother showed me photos of herself as a young woman in Wren’s uniform.
When I did my junior school local history project I heard how the great cathedral had been saved from the fire bombs and saw the work still going on to restore all the precious medieval glass.
( for more childhood memories see What do boys want?)
May 8, 2025
I am a few years older than Sir John but I remeber bomb sites in south eat London when I was little. Gradually they were recovered for flats in the mid 50s opposite where we lived or a petrol station near my primary school
I can just about remember being taken in my push chair to the United Dairies grocery store and my mother handing over ration coupons
May 8, 2025
I remember ration coupons
2 oz sweets each. Small piece of meat etc.
I don’t think the current generation would fare so well especially as the government continues to import the enemy i vast numbers.
There will be no Operation Barbarrosa as the invaders are here already.
May 8, 2025
Just a reminder that today the ecoloons windmills are producing 2.3gw and we are Importing 21% of our electricity.
There’s no need to invaders us, just destroy the undersea cables.
May 8, 2025
But 3% of that 21% is being passed on to Ireland, so on a net basis we are very close to the EU target of 15% of our consumption being imported from our neighbours – unlike naughty Spain, where net imports are only 2%.
https://euobserver.com/Green%20Economy/ar5ce4c8e1
“Spain imports just 1.9 percent of its electricity from neighbouring countries, far below the EU’s 15 percent target”
Somebody should ask Ed Miliband whether the government intends to follow EU law on this into the future.
May 8, 2025
or part of the EU reset plan ….its not like the tories, labour or libdem are shouting about the issue
May 8, 2025
…and if france has an “grid inertia” issue, our lights go out !!!
May 8, 2025
Yes, we used to play on the bomb sites too. There was always something to find that might be fun or that you could trade with another lad. I can still remember Ration Cards, especially when going into Sainbury’s with my Nan or Mum. I was absolutely fascinated by the overhead cash system. The counter lady would put Mum/Nan’s money into a small box, hang it on an overhead wire and pull a sprung lever. A bell ‘dinged’ and the box shot over to a central cash desk behind an iron grill. The cashier would put the change back in the box and (Ding!) it came whishing back to the counter lady. Of course, there was the ‘broken biscuit’ tin too….a big bag biscuit bits for tuppence! A real treat! 🙂
May 8, 2025
We found an incendiary bomb in a field as kids
We knew what it was but thought it was a dummy
Only when one of the parents found out about it and the bomb disposal team were called. Several more were found nearby.
May 8, 2025
I worked on the biscuit counter in Woolworths as a Saturday job in the late 1960s. They offered broken biscuits.
Woolies sold fruit and veg too. People used to come in before closing time looking for cut price offers.
May 8, 2025
The post-war world was full of bizarre and wonderful war surplus. Every little boy had his dad’s tin hat and gasmask to play soldiers with. My friend Richard had a paratrooper’s folding bicycle – immensely heavy, I recall, and prone to fold up suddenly and painfully if the wingnuts weren’t tight.
Every town had an army surplus store which sold itchy khaki trousers, vast navy greatcoats, , parachutes, tank periscopes, parabolic searchlight mirrors, machine gun tripods and similar items essential to small boys.
I was particularly proud of a Special Operations Executive map of Bordeaux, printed on a fine silk handkerchief, wrapped round a little file and made to serve as a top secret pocket stiffener. The file, I understood, was for cutting through prison bars, but why pockets needed stiffening I never thought to ask.
May 8, 2025
‘ Growing up under the long shadow of world war’
Never mentioned in the media, but it is probably worse for the kids in Gaza than it was in the Blitz. There is nowhere safe to be evacuated to. The target area is smaller and the bombing relentless.
Food and supplies are more effectively cut off than the U boats could manage.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/ship-carrying-activists-aid-gaza-attacked-by-drones-ngo-says-2025-05-02/
May 8, 2025
Good morning.
Thank you for sharing these memories, Sir John.
The ‘Silent Generation’.
May 8, 2025
Sir John,
I grew up in East London which suffered badly during the war due to the docks.
What fascinated me about the bomb sites or debris as we called them, was how the end of a row of houses could be shored up with a couple of large timbers and you could see the wallpaper that used to be inside the home which had been destroyed. I could see where their front room had been, the bedrooms and often the diagonal wallpaper which represented the staircase. Sometimes, the privy was still standing.
It wasn’t unusual for there to be a crater within the site where Gerry’s bomb had landed. The sites seemed so peaceful and quiet and gave little clue of the violence that had been unleashed there previously.
Unexploded bombs were often found within the debris and I remember a particular incident when a bomb was discovered in the sump of a gasometer at the Beckton Gas Works. That caused chaos locally for several days.
May 8, 2025
Cliff.. Wokingham – Beckton and the Isle of Dogs was the location for the film ‘Full Metal Jacket’, pretending to be Vietnamese Cities during their war, chosen because it looked like the bomb-site it was. Now it is used as modern Gotham City for other movies
For the Vietnam countryside the Kent landscape of Cliffe and the Isle of Grain was chosen.
May 8, 2025
Ian. B.
Thanks for sharing that, I didn’t know.
May 8, 2025
the thing that strikes me most about my time as a child is the sheer volume of people who had missing limbs, and significant visible wounds, from their time in the war. I would often sit on park benches chatting to such people, strangers, who would give their time freely, and really cheer up the silly little kid that I was. looking back they must have been through some real horrors. one of my teachers was very strange, I found out when I was much older he had been a Japanese prisoner of war, his strangeness made sense, and I regretting not being nicer to him. its not the bomb sites so much, and there were still many, its the people you interacted with that gave me so many profound memories.
May 8, 2025
my mothers father had been killed in the war, her mother had struggled to bring up children on her own, the stresses from all that were still visible in them. that must have been so common place. amazing really that they pulled it off.
May 8, 2025
especially so before and even after 1918…thousands dreading the ‘telegram boy’ arriving in the street. Whose house was he going to ?
Then how to make ends meet, a long time until the War Widows Pension which might include payment for child(ren).
May 8, 2025
And 80 years on we have Gaza, Ukraine, Syria etc etc😰. Why do we not learn how evil tribalism is?
May 8, 2025
Because we now appease ….only a decade ago we where bending over backwards for russian & middle-east investment …we welcomed their culture into our country ….we ignored their behaviour
The wars continue because our politicans are weak and corrupt
May 8, 2025
RL,
Agreed.
May 8, 2025
What have Netanyahu and Putin got in common? Apart from both having war crimes arrest warrants issued by the ICC, they both know that when their wars are over, they lose power.
Trump appears to have now recognised that Ukraine and Zelenskyy did not start the war with Russia. And in a monumental (for him) U-turn, his latest utterances suggest exasperation with Putin’s maximalist demands to end the war, expressed most recently last week in Brazil by his foul-mouthed lackey Lavrov
Putin wants Ukraine back in the Russian orbit, occupied by the Russian Army. For him this means appeasement of his territorial demands, Ukraine demilitarisation, an end to Western military support, keeping the thousands of Ukraine children that have been deported east and withdrawal of NATO from the Baltic states, Poland and Romania.
The Labour government appears to have recognised that war with Russia is now inevitable and indeed, many in the defence community are of the view that WW3 has already started. Consultants have been brought in to advise on the latest SDSR. The Army in particular is weak and currently has no 155mm artillery. We need more ships and trained RAF pilots
Farage is a pro-Putin admirer. If he should ever achieve power in this country, we too will end up as a Russian vassal state.
May 8, 2025
A bizarre current affairs analysis/rant SG
Especially your last paragraph.
May 8, 2025
I recall my surprise at seeing bomb sites when visiting Bristol in the 1970’s. They were apparently on land owned by the Church and it was not ready to either develop or sell.
As for war, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and school playground discussion pondering if we would be alive still in 1964, a date that seemed tolerably remote.
May 8, 2025
Many of the teachers at my secondary school had fought in the war, my science teacher had been a Squadron Leader and another had fought with Montgomery through North Africa. You didn’t mess around with those characters I can tell you !
May 8, 2025
At universities ‘freshers fair’ our military officer training units were told not to wear their uniforms nor show any flags …as it might offend
May 8, 2025
What can be said about the completely undemocratic process of “electing” a new pope? Firstly, many of the cardinals – mostly, but not exclusively white men in fancy dress – were appointed by Pope Francis, who was a good chap. By a curious coincedence, Pope Francis passed away the day after a visit by the American VP JD Vance….
Secondly, it is a certainly that an unmarried man with no experience of the joys of being married to a good woman will be elected. The cardinals will be aware that any of their number who may be tainted (or even involved) in the numerous child abuse scandals that have afflicted the Roman Catholic Church will be un-electable.
Catholics of my acquaintance fall into two groups – traditionalists and modernisers. The differences between the two groups are arcane, but there is no hope whatsoever that women will play a greater role in the hierarchy and equally, no chance that priests will be allowed to marry and hence encourage hope for a rapprochement with the Eastern Orthodox groupings.
This conclave, held in complete secrecy, may take a long time to reach a decision.
May 8, 2025
This conclave, held in complete secrecy, may take a long time to reach a decision.‘
Well that insight aged well…..
May 8, 2025
Thank you. A delightful reminiscence. My very first memory, at two years and nine months old, is of VE Day 1945, and my father nailing the union flag from the front bedroom window. I also recall the street party my mother took me to a day or so later, where I was too shy to eat anything. This was in Liverpool, and my playground in later years was the bombsite three doors up from our terrace house, where two adjacent houses had been destroyed by German bombing. It was one of five similar sites in a straight line across the Anfield suburb where a German bomber had missed the docks and offloaded a stick of bombs across the suburbs, then high-tailed it for home. Anfield streets were littered with air raid shelters and months later I drove my mother mad by insisting she followed the Wimpy crane that was demolishing them with a wrecking ball. It made such short work of each shelter that their utility as bomb shelters was very dubious. To this day, when I see a wrecking ball, it is still a WIMPY.
May 8, 2025
I would not wish this on them but the current generation need a genuine bogeyman to be fearful of. I am too young to remember the war but we grew up with the spectre of nuclear destruction and the cold war.
The latest generations have not had this and it shows. There is a steel about those of my age and older that we need and which we will miss when it is gone.
The Covid scaremongering was time off at home and not the same, especially as the young were the least likely to have a bad outcome.
May 8, 2025
Narrow S There’s been a lot of manufactured scaremongering, ‘the climate emergency,’ Covid and the lockdowns, fear of offending someone or having the ‘wrong’ view… People have been taught to be fearful, of life!
May 8, 2025
@NS; The younger generations are reflections of their elders, if they do wrong, or refuse to accept instructions given by those in authority, whose really at fault. Your last paragraph rant about CV19 is very telling, the wartime child did as they were told, as did the wartime adult, if you were told to stay home, stay home you did, unless you had a very good reason not to; not believing there was a war on cut no slack! The attitude you display in that paragraph is what causes the problems you complain about, not their solution.
May 8, 2025
@Jerry – they did as they were told as the consequences were real if they did not.
There are no consequences today.
May 8, 2025
@NS; “There are no consequences today.”
Indeed, because parents/guardians today fail to back those in Authority, and that includes being seen to be role models.
In our day if a child got a clip around the ear from the local Bobby, or bent over the headmasters desk, so long as the punishment fitted the misdemeanor almost all parents were supportive of the person acting in loco parentis (what is more the child likely got another clip around the ear at home for bring the family into disrepute!), not these days…
May 9, 2025
Luxury Jerry
May 8, 2025
My first meaningful exposure to WW2 was when we had to write a project about it at the end of a Summer Term after the summer exams had ended. In my young mind I remember being astonished at how much of Europe the Nazis had occupied, the technical ability of their fighters and bombers and how scary they sounded, the size of the crowds at the Nuremberg rallies and how mad and dangerous Hitler was. I thought it was impossible for us to beat them and the feeling was visceral. Then I first learned about our vast Empire and I was astonished by it. Of course I also learned the US joined us to defeat the maniac. I think it was then my patriotism was born.
May 8, 2025
I to have memories of growing up in Kent also, my Grand Fathers Anderson shelter for one. More bizarrely as kids, I remember dredging the local flooded quarry, we called it a lake, and pulling up a bomb (or is it bomb-let, the small under wing version) then walking it down to the Police Station and putting it on the counter. Strangely the officer behind the desk was not unduly alarmed – just imagine the same reaction today?
The old quarry was adjacent to what would have been an old Vickers munitions factory during the war and therefore a target
May 8, 2025
As a small child I lived in Dover. The end of the terrace where we lived was a bomb site where I used to play. I found there a canister from which a powder with an acrid smell was leaking. In order to determine more of its properties, I embarked on my first chemistry experiment and poured on it some diluted orange juice from a government supplied bottle of concentrated orange juice. The acrid power started to heat and smoke alarmingly which I immediately reported to my mother; she summoned my father who was employed by Dover Marine Station to give medical examinations to disembarking passengers to ensure no one carried infectious diseases into the general population. An enormous man in a black uniform arrived and the canister was conveyed in my father’s car, not including myself to my extreme disappointment, and chucked into the harbour, resulting in a huge explosion.
May 8, 2025
… and on this day let us remember those unsung heroes, the wonderfully courageous chaps so many of whom lost their lives attemting to beat the clock within ticking UXBs.
May 8, 2025
To seek war as some politicians seem to do is both immoral and wrong – so often in the past it has been exploited to distract from dire situations at home.
British people suffered terribly because of the insane rush to war by the Germans in 2 world wars, and all for what – certainly they wiped out the British empire, put us in a great deal of debt and made us poor, so nothing good came out of them.
Sometimes there are very persuasive reasons for going to war, but all too often our diplomacy fails us. The Ukraine should never have happened, but nobody listened to the complaints about what was happening to those people in east Ukraine. Russia filled that vacuum by invasion to save their kinsmen from abuse and slaughter that was well known about throughout the west.
Now we have a PM that wants to invest in that war, as a distraction perhaps, but more likely because his moral attitude to war finds him lacking. Even if we could do an Ebenezer Scrooge on him, and take him back in time to when those ruined homes were being bombed, I somehow doubt he would ever reconsider his views.
May 8, 2025
@Bryan Harris; Cough! I don’t recall you having such thoughts about the Ukraine situation during the premiership of the immediate previous three UK PMs, were they also using it as a domestic distraction perhaps? Appeasement is what they called your attitude in the late 1930s, some used it to secure our own defenses, others wanted to make deals with tyrants…
May 8, 2025
I wasn’t aware that you could read thoughts. Please stop making up inane ideas you ‘thought’ I might have had.
None of the previous PMs were warmongers to the extent that Starmer is, so that’s why you attack me because you have nothing to justify Starmer’s actions!
May 8, 2025
@Bryan Harris; I was replying to what you have said publicly, today and in the past.
You are also wrong in any case, all three of the PMs I cited supported the Ukraine war effort; non so blind as those who choose not to see I guess.
May 8, 2025
and how many of these PMs were in office at the time the war started / continued
May 9, 2025
@Bryan Harris; All three, read what I said, “the immediate previous three UK PMs” (to Starmer), the current war started in 2022. If we take the start point as the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula your arguments falls even flatter, make it the last five PMs prior to Starmer!
May 8, 2025
Leaving aside seeing blitz damage etc. my first realization of what war meant was understanding my fathers massive war wound (exit damage and resultant scar, the entry scar was hardly visible), along with the field hospital scars that saved his life.
Then came meeting one of my fathers old school friends (and of my fathers first regiment), the chap seemed a very strange person to me and my siblings until we were told by our parents his -abridged- war story, of being a POW at the hands of the Japanese [1]; then there was a local man who lived with his devoted sister, in their old family home, apparently he had helped to liberated a German concentration camp, went from being the pre-war life and soul of any party to someone who could barely smile and acted very strangely whenever he saw children playing in the street, these days he would be treated for PTSD.
[1] I can relate to what @ian gill said about his school teacher
May 8, 2025
The threat of war hangs over us again. Conflicts around the world ongoing. Will humans never learn….
Meanwhile the major threat of death and destruction for thr UK, comes from within. The invading hordes quietly planning their takeover.
May 8, 2025
We’re forgeting these events, as they’re no longer taught in school, promoted by our politicans nor woke enough for the media …..some charity shops don’t carry ‘war’ books or the ‘bible’ as they might offen
“Lest we forget”
May 8, 2025
This is all so familiar.
May 8, 2025
Like many people growing up in Post WW2:-
Unsightly bomb sites, waste grounds and buildings missing etc.
A time of deprivation, poverty and simple living.
Small meals, rations, Coppers (small pennies) x 12 made a Shilling x 2 = Two Bob, Florin, Half Crown, 10 Bob note folding money. Never saw any larger than life One Pound noted which looked hand made and enormous to poor children.
Bananas first arrived in shops in the 1950s.
Everything seemed painted dark brown.
Colours were dreary.
Milk was in large metal churns, undiluted or Sterilized from the Coop. Mcfisheries, tripe shops with blue and white tiles.
Butchers proudly sharpening their knives flexing their muscles.
We grew up poor but never felt poor.
Baby boomers had no money but grew up surviving on great British humour where telling jokes was a daily competition of who had the best ones.
(This explains why Ken Dodd bless him came to be an institution.)
It was a character building experience and their were many fine folks who built Britain slowly back to normal.
May 8, 2025
@Ukret123; “We grew up poor but never felt poor.”
Of course you didn’t, with far less advertising and far fewer other reference point, it wasn’t so much not feeling poor, you simply didn’t know you were poor!
“Baby boomers had no money but grew up surviving on great British humour where telling jokes was a daily competition of who had the best ones.”
The first of the baby boomers might not have had money as children but in general they certainly did when they left school at 15+, hence to rapid rise of Rock and roll and youth culture in the mid to late ’50s.
May 8, 2025
To Jerry “in general they certainly did ( have money) when they left school at 15+” . No you are incorrect 1950 Britain was dirt poor.
Rock n roll was Elvis USA who were rich in the 1950s.
1967 I worked on trams before going to a real university (Liverpool) but to save anything had to work double shifts, smoking cigs to cope with it all.
It took me all summer scraping to save only £50 (old money in 1967) which allowed me to buy a 13 year old car!
Hard work and to save money many of us had to work abroad to escape the poverty trap e.g. We s t Africa in my case.
May 9, 2025
@Ukret123; In 1950 the baby boomer generation was at best a mere five years old! Reading your comment(s) I get the feeling you are mixing up your decades, either accidentally or for effect.
Never heard of Cliff Richards, Joe Brown, Lonnie Donegan et al. Yes Rock ‘n’ Roll started in the USA but there was also a distinct and very British version, Skiffle, from the mid to late ’50s, funded by the purchasing power of the first baby boomers to enter full time employment. Surely the datum point to this discussion is how those school leavers who went to work in factories etc. felt their living standards were, all students are poor, and you chose to buy a half decent car (or were done-over), how many students in 1967 were buying far older cars.
May 9, 2025
Jerry
You assume too much and generalise about those hard times sadly. Good to see you corrected yourself about Rock n roll USA and Shuffle. Only when the Beatles arrived did Britain start to break out of the bleak situation over here.
I managed to get the old car because I worked my little socks off so please don’t belittle my sheer determination to succeed which became my modus operandi for life, especially Self employment.
Tip Work hard and someone one day will recognise it.
May 10, 2025
@Ukret123; So it was Harold Wilson, in the 1960s, who told the nation they “had never had it so good”, gaining the nickname “Supermac”, no doubt for his attire, not economic prowess – certainly not by 1967, more like telling the nation we had never had to bad (the year of “the pound in your pocket”…)!
Rock ‘n’ Roll was a parallel subculture along with Skiffle, and the rest. Surely this argument is not about the whys and wherefores of music (or any) cultures but the disposable incomes that supported them, one or all.
By the time The Beatles had their first hit single, in ’63, the likes of Cliff Richard, Joe Brown and Lonnie Donegan had moved well up the greasy pole, their fortunes secured. By early ’63 Cliff Richard had already made his 5th film, one has to wonder how come, if the UK economic post-war miracle only started in ’63.
Reply More lies. Harold Macmillan said Never had it so good and was SuperMac. Wilson brought us the devaluation crisis.
May 10, 2025
@JR reply; My sarcasm missed once again… I never seriously claimed Wilson made those comments attributed to Macmillan – quite the opposite. I was suggesting Wilson, during his term(s) as PM, could *never* have made such a speech and be taken seriously, he would have had to tell us that we had never had it so BAD, given the clearly over-heating economy and eventual devaluation crisis (when, indeed, he was forced to admit the economy was in peril, on his watch); yet @UKret123 thinks the economy was in fine fettle, but wonders why he was having to work double shifts to save a bob-or-two come 1967, and 13 year old second hand car so expensive.
SuperMac, Super-Mac and Supermac are all accepted, interchangeable, spellings of the same, according to political historians.
May 8, 2025
During the war we all had identity cards and ration books. I still have both of mine. There are still some coupons left in my ration book for sugar .
May 8, 2025
That was when there was a real need for food to be fairly shared out….
The globalists want to ration what we eat because they are reducing what is available – There are no valid honest reasons for upcoming food shortages.
May 8, 2025
I can remember, about 1967, aged nine, seeing a chap walking along the road near my home. As he walked past me, he was smoking a cigarette, but the smoke was coming out of his cheek! Odd, I thought. Turns out it was because he got hurt in the war and had a false cheek! I’ll never forget that!
May 8, 2025
War, all war is abhorrent and wasteful
Yet the lessons have never been learnt, strong countries don’t attack strong countries – they talk.
Weak countries get removed or absorbed when they fallout with stronger nations.
The UK has never, that is never, in more than a few hundred years been as weak, had capability removed by its own rulers as it is today. The UK is now beholden for its survival and future from the ever-changing political landscape and whims in other lands. The Government as ensured our children’s future, the nations future can never be with the country and its people.
Has any government this century stood up and done its first duty to ‘keep us safe and secure’? Have any of those government ensured the nation resilience and self-reliance? The answer is none of them, they have done the opposite of what their duty required, they have removed resilience, they have blocked self-reliance. The gone further by banning the UK an its people from having a future.
At this moment in time, we or maybe just a small few remember the phrase ‘least we forget’ and know what it means. While all the time the government of the day remains at war with the country and the people – removing its future on personal, very personal ego trips.
May 8, 2025
In Brighton many of the Victorian houses are built in streets running north/south. As a result, when German bombers were heading back to France they offloaded any spare bombs on housing instead of in the sea and now there are rows of newer houses where whole rows were destroyed. As with other bombed towns, the sites were rebuilt soon after the war in what was thought to be a better modern style, which turned out to be a low point in architectural design.
Anyway, Adolph did me a favour as I bought a bombed house site for £1000 and I built my first house on it. I found the fin of the bomb when digging the foundations.
May 8, 2025
XXX criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…as at 16:30hrs, the government hasn’t published any data for yesterday 7th May
May 8, 2025
Its taken 15 hours for our government to update its website with the following account – zero (0)
May 8, 2025
Please, can you’re analysis both Indian FTA Vs USA FTA, and the prospects for Growth; May be not just GDP (GDP Per Capita), but GDP per sectors involved, and their effect on UK wide Competitiveness? Any obvious questions hidden or left open.
Kemi is dismissing them out right, that will get her no where! Both, of these agreements should be seen as a starting point, in my opinion! I think she feels undermined, because she dismissed them while she was in office! And, neither did I agree with her over the Steel industry, and her then response to the threatened closer!
Reply India assessed as plus 0.1% GDP by next decade. US net negative as tariffs on our exports still higher than
last year.
May 9, 2025
Very interesting. Your generation needs to write all this down for posterity. It seems like such a different era. And such a vital time in our history. What are your earliest memories of London? Can you remember how it was affected by the war back then?
Reply Obvious war damage when I first went to London. I remember thinking how stupid trolley buses were with problems getting their arms to pick up power and limiting their pathways, unlike the buses we used at home. We had a delay when they had to reconnect an arm .London was very dirty with all the coal being burned.
May 9, 2025
Reply to reply
I can relate to that as I worked on trams as I mentioned above. Trolley buses were still going until mid 1960s in most large cities too lacking resources to replace them after the war.
May 10, 2025
Next, we’ll be told that conscription will be necessary?
My answer will be ‘Not a chance’, I believe the British People will not accept it!
What the silly Public School Boys are really arguing for is an Elitist structure, with them on top! That’s how they see themselves! Arrogate nonsense! Or, to put it more accurately, ‘silly old men, fight silly old wars’!
The problem starts when we ask them some simple questions; with how, with who, why, when we would fight? We’ll have Politicians like Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, with influence from the House of Lords, seeing themselves as Winston Churchill, so hence the quote ‘Silly old men’! Churchill was a great Politician, but a crap Military Strategist; Gallipoli, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc,… I accept that he never had the time to do anything but respond, during WW2, but looking as a whole, over his career, there is no evidence he was anything but a Politician! They seem to believe their own propaganda on the contribution GB has made during WW2, and after. Meaning, there are some obvious things GB, and it’s People, achieved (endured), through out WW2, but it’s pointless putting them through something like that again, just because we won’t challenge the Establishments thinking!
Using Conscripted People, these days, is based on lazy thinking, or very large Ego’s!
We still have time to growth a Professional Army, with modern technology, we just have to accept that using old technology (MBT’s), or fighting a war using old ideas, is not an answer. We still don’t have a Missile Defense system, or no Strategic Review that has be thought out and published? Even, the standard issue weapon (it’s ballistics of the 5.56mm round) is so out of date, you have to wonder why or who is benefiting from it’s use! Front line troop certainly don’t, which is why the USA Army has already moved to a 6.8mm Fury round, as a standard issue LM7 and LM250!
So, why are there members of the Conservative Party and/or House of Lords trying to argue for Conscription, even if it is in the Background?
You’re opinion would be an interesting contribution, when you have time!
BR
RDM
May 11, 2025
” Dig for Victory” I have that book on my shelf.
Have tried that. No good You would have your spuds and greens nicked.
Better personal stockpile, ie what you like to eat.