(11-13-2014, 07:56 AM)Knight of Albion Wrote: I've only just learned of this myself....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24478532
I didn't know the number was so high. 750.000 all in one week.
My mother told me her mother and father kept the family cat. And my father's parents had a spaniel. They kept him too. So I gathered, from stories about this which I was told as a child, that euthanising them wasn't compulsory. I always found it hard to understand as a child. I thought, "I wonder why anyone did it if they weren't going to be shot or something for not doing it!"
I grew up on some pretty grim wartime stories..... Nowadays children wouldn't be allowed to hear those stories.
Yes people did cope very well with the bombing, the V1s, and the devastation and deprivation which affected every British family in one way or another. They did feel the effects though. My aunt told me about a girl who was her best friend at school. One day she went to school, and her friend wasn't there. Their home had been flattened by a bomb the night before, and the whole family gone instantly.
My grandfather obtained some land, and had chickens, and grew vegetables. He also had a goat for milk. I don't know how this worked exactly, but the family had good food during the war. The cat ate a lot of bread and milk, my mother told me. No doubt it caught mice too.
