There was more misery when the family was bombed during the Blitz. “Our house had a direct hit and it took four and a half hours to dig us out,” he recalled. “My mother was crying. I remember the skies were red with fire and my mother said to my father, ‘We’ve lost everything.’ He said, ‘No, I’ve just done a head count. We’ve got everything we’ll ever need’.”
And a real slap in the face to today’s snowflakes.
Compare and contrast with todays generation and the attitude towards the Covid pandemic.
Snowflakes indeed.
Reminds me of a comment supposedly heard during the Blitz.
“These ‘ere air raids! But well, it takes your mind off the bloody war”.
The day war broke out… We surrendered. Mum hung a white sheet out of the bedroom window and Dad wrote to Hitler asking him not to bomb us.
© F Howerd
“The day war broke out… We surrendered. Mum hung a white sheet out of the bedroom window and Dad wrote to Hitler asking him not to bomb us. © F Howerd”
Unlike Spike Milligan’s Dad who wrote to the War Office with all manner of schemes to beat Hitler by Christmas……………
This Hitler chappie sounds like a pretty sketchy character if you ask me
His tale of his early years is so good it makes me wonder how much of it is true. Even if that bit isn’t true, by golly he could turn a phrase.
Milligan’s war time autobiography is a fantastic read and extremely funny
There’s just been a rather good series on the Beeb called Berlin 1945, the title is self-explanatory. Very harrowing, but watching it puts today’s ‘problems’ (read: minor irritants) into perspective. We haven’t got around to boiling rats for soup, yet.
@Chris Miller,
So you haven’t been to many restaurants in Wuhan recently, then. Pangolin is off today. Or many restaurants elsewhere in China for that matter. Or even Chinese restaurants anywhere …
(Even if you don’t swap ‘bats’ for ‘rats’ or ‘cats’).
Lots of bonus points if you can pronounce the Chinese for ‘rat soup’.
Oddly, I have been to Wuhan, and eaten there; but I don’t recall it as particularly memorable, unlike Chongqing or Guangzhou.