I didn't do it on purpose, but on this Memorial Day, I'm reading Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940-1945. I started reading this last year.
Diaries fascinate me. I love to read about the details of everyday life. I've been keeping a diary, off and on, mostly on, since 5th grade (many, many years ago). I've posted about that before.
I have several books I started to read at least a year ago and which I'm determined to finish this year. Feel free to query me occasionally about how I'm getting on with Gormenghast, Don Quixote, and Travels of William Bartram. They're all interesting but not gripping. Anyway, I picked up where I left off with Hodgson's diaries of World War II.
What people endured in the British Isles, Europe, and, I suppose, in other places during WWII is unfathomable to me. Waiting night after night for bombs to fall, wondering if it would be your house next and whether you'll survive. People dying when the bomb shelters collapsed or were flooded. People trapped under debris. Little food, disruption of utilites, fires. We've been spared that in the United States. Hodgson says she wonders if she'll be like the girl in Liverpool who sat writing in her diary as a bomb fell on her. Her diary was found but she never was.
Members of my family have fought in every American war including the French and Indian War. War is awful, war should be avoided, but, on this weekend of remembrance, I thank those who fought, some giving their lives, others wounded mentally and / or physically, hoping that their war would be the last war.
Few Eggs and No Oranges is one that I want to read. I was never told fairy tales as a child but my mother constantly talked about WW2 and her experiences in Glasgow. I think that's why I so enjoy books written about that time. All the men in my family were involved in WW2 but it wasn't something they wanted to do and I wish that there could be an end to it all. No hope of it though with politicians being as they are.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I could cope with the terrors and stresses of a war fought in my home town or city. I think that's why I'm fascinated by true life stories of how people did manage to survive.
DeleteI also cannot imagine what it was like in Great Britain and other European countries during World War II. My father was in the military during WWII, mostly in China and India if I remember correctly. His family must have worried about him but otherwise did not have the day to day issues of their homes being bombed as in Europe. The diary you are reading does sound very interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt's very long, almost 600 pages, so I'm taking it six months at a time. It's amazing how, for some people, life just went on. It must have been a coping mechanism to just ignore as much as possible the bombs falling down the street.
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