The Blitz

WWII was a time of enormous leaps in technology, especially for aircraft.  Planes could go farther and faster than ever before, and thus could target civilian towns that might have never seen war otherwise.  During the Blitz bombing of London 60,000 civilians died.  My grandmother and her family were some of the lucky few spared.  When asked about it, my grandmother will talk about how awful it was to have to run into the subways when the sirens would sound and how scary it was to be there in the smelly, dark London Underground as a young child.  She remembers having to black out the windows and that you couldn't go out after dark.  Every family was given a heavy steel kitchen table to hide under in case the house was bombed, in the hopes that the table would protect you as your house crumbled around you.  She remembers what the Buzz Bombs sounded like, and how they'd wait and hope that the buzzing wouldn't stop over them.  In many ways my grandmother is very British and when she discusses these things she talks about it as if it was just something that happened, that everyone just dealt with.  As if it were a minor inconvenience like traffic.  The picture here she always shares with a laugh.  It is of her parents posing in front of their house near the minor bomb damage it sustained--it was one of the few left standing on their street!