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“Like almost every boy in my class [during World War II], I did such things as collected and rolled tin foil into supposedly usable balls and when in the country, had a small “victory garden” where I raised a few radishes. My mother rolled bandages down at the Red Cross. My uncles were either in war-related businesses (the silk business which was involved in parachute making) or volunteering their time at the Office of Price Administration. Uniforms were everywhere, the trains were packed with soldiers, the stations tense with heartrending farewells. Everyone you knew was somehow connected with the war: Your cousins were fighting in North Africa, Sicily, the Pacific; your friends’ older brothers and parents were far away and mailing the thin blue email letters back home. Almost everyone followed the day’s battleground events, charted the progress or retreats on the map, knew the casualty figures, cheered and booed the political leaders in the newsreels. Total war.
Read the whole thing at Open University.
