. . . . WORLD WAR III?
It's difficult not to be emotional in these trying times, yet it's not easy to be upbeat when we hear so many sad stories on the news.
So I thought I would simply try to be objective, and pass on some interesting stories, to try to take our minds off what is happening.
On the other hand, maybe I can do both.
To begin, I was struck by how often commentators and news sites and others tried to compare the Covid-19 disaster to World War II. I mentioned it to one of my sons, Fred, who said, "Mom, that's the perfect topic for your next blog!" And I think he was right. so, as Shakespeare said, "Let me count the ways."
I was born in 1933. I lived through the Depression. I was 8 when the war started. How was it different from today and how was it similar?
WWII Rationing: Because so many products had to go to the troops, we were rationed. We received monthly coupon books for many products, limiting us to a certain amount. If you ran out before the end of the month? Tough noogies! (We didn't say that then, of course. That's a much later bit of slang.)
What was rationed? Coffee, sugar, butter, meat, gasoline for our cars. Maybe more, but I can't remember. I don't recall being too bothered by this. My mother must have been very practical. I don't remember being deprived of anything. I do remember, however, that, because of the butter shortages, margarine was invented then. (Oleomargarine, it was called.) Colorless---a washed-out pale yellow---and tasteless. We tried to avoid it by saving our butter ration for what was important.
I remember about the gasoline rationing because my uncle, Goody Rosen, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, was a National League All-Star in 1945. But the All-Star game was cancelled that year because people couldn't easily travel with the gas rationing. (The game was played in 1963 as an Old-Timers game in Baltimore.)
Today's Rationing: We don't really have "rationing". In the war years, the shortages had a purpose and we had time to get used to them and adapt. Today, the crisis came up so quickly that panic set in and people became selfish hoarders. (Maybe if we had rationing, things would work out better!) But the sense of community that galvanized us during the war may soon kick in, and our shelves will not be so bare. I'm not referring here to the shortages of hospital supplies---that's a different matter entirely.
But the almost psychotic run on toilet paper is baffling. In the old days, we were quite content to find substitutes, especially during the Depression, when everyone was poor! My grandparents' bathroom floor was covered in newspapers. When you were done, you simply tore a piece of the paper on the floor and used that! (The only setback was that, if you were reading a story while you were sitting, you could suddenly find that the end of the story had been torn off to be used for TP!) So why the desperate need to hoard rolls and rolls of the stuff?
In our present situation, because we can't go out to shop easily, we are learning to be more careful with what we have. For example, I'm now using old printed documents a second time by turning them upside down and putting them into my printer. In the same vein,"making do with what we had" was a habit we had already learned during the Depression, when no one had enough money for everything they needed or wanted.
During the war, of course, we were free to shop. No fear of going out and getting sick. And we could usually find what we were looking for at the store, as long as we had the ration points. So it was maybe better then. (Though I remember that, for several years, it was impossible to get bubble gum because of the shortage of sugar!)
And in some ways it was certainly better. In the matter of our personal freedom, for example. Businesses and factories stayed open. (Rosie the Riveter became a heroine, filling in at the factory for the GI's who were at war.) Except for the blackouts, which mandated that we douse all lights, we could go out, live our lives, shop, visit with friends and family.
Today's isolation and mandated distance is stressful, not being able to visit, be with, share special events with friends and family.
On the other hand, modern technology has kept us connected today in ways that would have astounded WWII people.. Television, the Internet, Facebook, Facetime, Zoom, etc. etc.
In those days, we had radio and the telephone, though not everybody could afford it then. That's it. Yes, we could go out, shop, visit, etc. but our world was narrowly limited. Because of the gas rationing, we were pretty much confined to our local community for companionship.
But of course all that refers mostly to here in the US. as we compare our WWII experiences to today. But I wonder how aging Europeans, suffering under the virus, would compare their lives now to their lives at the time of the war.
Londoners who endured the blitz, Parisians who were occupied by the Nazis, Germans who were bombed into defeat, Hiroshima citizens who saw their city destroyed by an A-bomb. How would they compare today's Covid-19 troubles to the devastation of their past? With a little less sense of doom, I suspect, having lived through difficult times.
What couldn't we get, that people can get today? Silk, for one thing. It was largely made in Japan, our wartime enemy. It's why women took to drawing a seam down the center back of their bare legs to simulate the seam of silk stockings. (That's how stockings were made in those days. No pantyhose, of course, but a stocking sewn up the back with a visible seam.)
No rayon or polyester was available or invented in those days. And, more important, parachutes were made of silk. So whatever was available had to go to the war effort. My father was in the textile business. He made silk screens. But he had seen the possibility of war coming, and had bought excess parachute silk a year or so before. So while other silk screen makers had to recycle their screens, he was able to use fresh silk.
What else couldn't we get? Too much clothing, because fabric went for our troops'uniforms. I think that's why dresses got shorter and shorter as the war years went on---to use up less fabric. In England, they even had laws about using too much fabric on clothing. No ruffles, extra skirt fabric, extra trims, etc. Printed dresses became popular, filling a shorter skirt with interest. My father became very successful during those years, since he made the screens for those printed fabrics.
And an interesting sidebar---during the war in England, servicemen were getting married very quickly. And alas. Not many wedding dresses were available because of the fabric shortages. A woman who worked, I believe, officially for the UK government, started an organization that collected used bridal gowns and loaned them out to brides for their weddings. Who was she? Barbara Cartland, world-famous Romance Writer and step-grandmother to Princess Di. (Look her up. She's a hoot. Since I'm a romance writer, I met her a few times.)
What else was rationed, by necessity not government fiat, that compares to today? Doctors. In our case, it was all the good doctors who were drafted into the Army. What was left for us civilians were the old, the near-retired and the semi-competent. My mother had a bent middle finger for much of her life because our only local doctor, an alcoholic, burned off a wart on her finger and severed her tendon.)
The Scare Factor: Perhaps today it's more scary because it's so random. Yes, we had to keep a bucket of sand in the attic of our house in case of incendiary bombs, and we had regular blackouts that darkened our town against possible enemy attacks, but the war was so far away that it affected us but didn't really come close.For my brother and me, blackouts were fun. We would leave the movie theater and have to walk home in the dark. At home, the drapes were drawn and we read our books and papers by the light of the fireplace. My future husband's father was a Fire Warden, who put on a special hat and walked around his neighborhood knocking on doors if he saw any light coming from a house.
The only scare factor for us kids was the uncertainty of our own parents. My father was in his 30's with 3 kids, past the draft age. But if the war had gone on another year, he would have been drafted as the troops began to need more and more reinforcements.
For my relatives, however, the scare factor was a little stronger. Several of my uncles, who were all in Canada, were in the Canadian Army.
One of my uncles was somewhere in Europe in 1944. He wrote his wife often. (Letters of course being heavily censored by large black spaces, so that you knew someone had already read them.) But she had not heard from him in weeks. She was a nervous wreck. Her sister insisted on taking her to the movies to help her relax. In those days, every movie program included the News of the Week. And there on the screen was a segment announcing the recently concluded Battle of the Bulge.
And who was in the filmed footage? Her husband!
After the last show, she and her sister went to the manager.and told her story. He ran the clip again and, when she determined that the picture was truly her husband, the manager removed the film and clipped out one frame for her to take home to have made into a photo. She still didn't know at the time if he had survived the Battle (he did---unscathed) but at least she knew where he was.
And a story I particularly treasure from those years. One of my other uncles was in England, where my grandmother had come from. He looked up our distant relatives in Cheshire. At that point, my personal recollection is still strong in my mind. I vividly remember helping my mother wrap care packages for those relatives.
Instant coffee, which was fairly new, and teabags, which had just been invented. (Probably made of rayon fabric packets, since there would not have been any other material that would have existed in those days.)
The Cheshire relatives were clearly delighted with our package. They wrote back this: "How clever of you Yanks to have figured out how to pre-measure tea!" They had opened a teabag, measured its contents, seen that it was exactly one teaspoon, and proceeded to open every single teabag that they needed and dump the loose tea into the teapot, as they had always done! (My mother, of course, wrote back to explain how this new invention was to be used.)
My ex-husband used to tell the story of his uncle, who was in the Army, who rode in the bombers as a photographer, taking pictures of the bombing sites as the action took place. And my ex, as a young boy, kept a scrapbook of those pictures, plus maps and photos of the progress of our troops through the battles that took place.
(Fascinating sidebar---when husband and I were in Germany after the war---see previous blog entries for stories---our German landlady kept the same kind of scrapbook that involved her son in the service, complete with maps, letters and assorted stuff. (Including a picture of Hitler in the front. She was not pro-Hitler, I don't think, but she felt that, to maintain historical accuracy, the picture had to stay.)
Do I have a Life Lesson after all this?
Yes, perhaps I do. This is it. The world has ALWAYS been filled with tragic, unexpectedly difficult times and situations. One of our problems today is that we have had so many years of relative calm and good times that we can't deal easily with this current difficulty. But perhaps we should stop to realize that our unhappiness and panic comes from a surfeit of good times, and that we have grown too soft and complacent. We should also accept the fact that for most people through the ages life has been far more difficult than this. We should toughen up and adapt and face the difficulties with wisdom and reason.
We will make it through. We're stronger than we think.
