Mum’s War

In the early summer of 1939 my Mum turned twenty. She was pretty, vivacious, joyous, and privileged. Her father’s prosperous business gave her and her siblings private schooling, the loveliest of fashions, and long summers in their beloved Wales. Life was good.

By her twenty-first birthday, my Mum was in uniform, living in barracks, in the reality of war. Her twenty-second birthday was barely celebrated because nights were passed in air-raid shelters and days were spent clearing rubble. Everyone focused on getting on with the business of defence and survival.

Her brother Jack was on active duty, while her brother Harry, whose medical condition “exempted” him from military service, worked at his office job by day and fought fires by night. All night and every night, for months and years on end.

On one such night, when my Mum was home on leave, a Nazi bomb struck the neighbouring house and killed everyone except the baby, whose pram had been sheltered in a stairwell.

Once, when Mum and some of her WAAF chums were on leave and enjoying a cup of tea in a local cafe, a daytime air raid blew out the front window and shattered glass all over. “Oh!” sniffed the owner indignantly, “those horrid Nazis!”

That was the temper of the times– although life was constantly at risk, food rationed, liberties curtailed, and everything in short supply, the populace refused to be ground down. They refused to believe they would not prevail and they refused to whine about their fate.

My grandfather’s business was bombed out of existence, and in any event, there was neither material nor market for his product. Yet he accepted his fate with dignity.

The war lasted nearly six brutal years, but in the end, the people triumphed. Even in the darkest days, their spirits were unbroken, and they found ways to prevail, to laugh, to love, and to put one foot ahead of the other. They stood together, and they carried one another.

And we have COVID.