Children in the Second World War: Memories from the Home Front
By Amanda Herbert-Davies
Pen and Sword, 208 pages, £12.99
The children who were alive at the time of the Second World War will be the last generation to have first-hand knowledge of what it was like to live through the conflict. Their memories are the subject of Amanda Herbert-Davies’ new book. From the excitement of unsupervised play during blackouts and the joy of collecting shrapnel through to the sheer terror of bombing raids and the loss of loved ones, everyone’s wartime experience was different. For very young children, the war represented normality because it was all they had ever known.
The author has been closely involved with the Second World War Experience Centre for the past five years and has drawn extensively on the archives to write this book. More than 200 personal accounts of people from a wide variety of backgrounds across Britain have been used to create a rounded picture of the Second World War on the Home Front from a child’s perspective. It’s a fascinating, highly readable book that will appeal to anyone with relatives who were children during the war.
The topics covered include air raid shelters and evacuation; rationing; enemy bombing; entertainment; and schools, including the disruption to education. There is an interesting chapter on teenagers helping in the war effort. Children as young as 14 could volunteer for the extremely dangerous jobs of ARP messengers during night-time air raids; of fire fighters protecting commercial buildings; of nurses for the British Red Cross; and of deliverers of the dreaded War Office telegrams bearing bad news. Whatever their age, the often traumatic experiences the children lived through during their formative years could not be easily forgotten and they shaped their adult lives.
Michelle Higgs is an author specialising in social history and family history