High Lights and low times that I remember.

Many events and battles took place, and I recall my Mother's friend being very sad and bitter that her only son had been killed at Dunkirk. Dunkirk was an awful situation where the Germans had trapped thousands and thousands of troops onto a beach with only the enemy in front of them and the ocean behind them. A daring plan was devised to rescue them, and use medium sized ships and hundreds of small motor boats in a giant floating procession to go to load as many troops as possible,(too many!) on each vessel. The Lord sent a miracle of totally smooth sea water, that enabled them to rescue thousands, and bring them back to the English coast, where they boarded trains to places where they could be re-supplied for further duty.

Whilst on the trains they stopped at many stations and local people gave them sandwiches and cigarettes and treats. My teenage future husband was part of this emergency help! So much for a low time in the war.

One of the high times in 1940-41, was the Battle of Britain, when young unskilled pilots took to the sky in Spitfire fighter planes, against the German Luftwaffe, and did on the job training in the fight of their lives. It was an exhausting time and hundreds of pilots were killed. My memory is that we would hear a noise and look up into the sky to see a (dog-fight) going on and wait to see which plane would spiral down in smoke and flames. Drastic times. If you would like to see more of the early war days relating to family life, it would be good to see certain movies like,

"Mrs Miniver" and "Since you went away".This period of the war was very crucial, and it caused Hitler to turn his attention to invading Russia, instead of England. Talking of Russia I made some wooly dolls to sell in aid of our Russian allies!