Oral histories: What was it like during the war, mum?

bicycles ... yes we had some rusty , old bicycles - the good ones had been
" requisitioned " .

but we did not have any innertubes ... what to do ?

try and find a piece of motheaten gardenhose or similar , fill a piece of hose with sand , plug up the ends , mount on rim , put an old tire on top ... and off you went - usually wobbling and unstable .

My thanks to everyone who contributed their stories to this thread. Some really interesting reading!

My family has mostly stories from 'the home effort'. My mother's side, the Irish, were in the actual war (one imprisoned as POW near the end of the war- he ended up as full-bird Colonel many years later, another, known the rest of his life as "Soldier Boy John" to differentiate him from the numerous other Johns - we have more Patricks and Johns and Martins than any other name- he taught Math and Science after the war) NEITHER one ever spoke about what they had gone through. As my sainted mother put it, 'The Irish always shut up when it would be interesting and go on for days about nothing."

==
One more from the home front:
Every family was issued a ration book, you could have only so much sugar, flour, meat, butter and so on, but there were always rumors about a black market in such things and how there were people taking advantage by hoarding rationed goods. My mother told of how she would, twice a day, put the baby in the stroller take the two girls (3yrs and 2yrs) by the hand and walk up to the center of town to see what might have been delivered to the local A&P grocery. No eggs at 8AM, plenty at 3PM. She, as many others used to say, that you had to get to the goods before the hoarders got there.

One day, my father was helping a neighbor fix something and he went down into their basement. There, stacked against the walls, were piles of sugar bags and sacks of flour. Hundreds of pounds.
"Wow," he said to the neighbor.
"Yeah" he replied, "Well, you've got to get the goods before the hoarders get them."
Dad said the man really hadn't a clue that he was probably the biggest hoarder for miles around.

Joe(the way it was)Nation

Interesting. That seemed to have been such a common reaction, these stoic ex-soldiers keeping their war experiences to themselves. I'd always assumed in the past it was because they believed their stories were too awful to tell. I'm wondering if that was the actual reason?

Everything was rationed in Sweden too, but one were allowed to "buy" a quarter of a pig, which then was fed with your household leftovers - if I remember correctly. My family also got hold of a pig, but this one was for some reason fed with only fish leftovers. The result was it tasted just awful. There my great aunt stood with a quarter of an uneadable meat. She took it to the place where they smoked salmon and got back smoked pig meat tasting almost like smoked salmon.
Once long after the war when you could get everything in masses in the store she said to me: "The only thing I miss about the war is I hardly need any fantasy anymore to put a good meal on the table I can get everything any time now"

Though it's not exactly a story from the actual war time, but I find it interesting as well.

Grandparents (father's side) home was bombed in 1944, nearly the complete family died in the so-called air shelter in the house (a rather strong built cellar).
Among the dead was father's younger sister with her new born child. This aunt had married an Austrian, student of mathematics and working under von Braun in Peenemünde as a soldier in those days.
Father's youngest sister, who studied in Münster was there during the bombe attack on her parents house, loved, adored and admired her BIL ... like young girls sometimes, everybody though.
However, as soon as the Americans arrived here, she left (secretly) not only university but her homne country and went to Vienna to meet my uncle.

That was: without any ID-card she left the place where she had to stay, left the English Zone, passed the American Zone (with a detour, due to some reason) through the Soviet Zone, passed all the various Allied Zones in Austria and managed (Vienna was a Four-Sector city like Berlin) to meet my uncle after a couple of weeks searching for him.
After a long and happy marriage, my uncle died last year, surviving my aunt only a couple of months.

My cousin was named after uncle's first wife (aunt's older sister). We know nothing at all how this tour has been managed - but think that even the wildest speculation could be true.
What we do know, however, is that is has been quite difficult for aunt to get her "identity back" (mainly, because Austrian and German civil servants plus the American and English military administration in different occupied territories were involved: none trusted the other.

[quote="Joe Nation]
==
One more from the home front:
Every family was issued a ration book, you could have only so much sugar, flour, meat, butter and so on, but there were always rumors about a black market in such things and how there were people taking advantage by hoarding rationed goods. My mother told of how she would, twice a day, put the baby in the stroller take the two girls (3yrs and 2yrs) by the hand and walk up to the center of town to see what might have been delivered to the local A&P grocery. No eggs at 8AM, plenty at 3PM. She, as many others used to say, that you had to get to the goods before the hoarders got there.

One day, my father was helping a neighbor fix something and he went down into their basement. There, stacked against the walls, were piles of sugar bags and sacks of flour. Hundreds of pounds.
"Wow," he said to the neighbor.
"Yeah" he replied, "Well, you've got to get the goods before the hoarders get them."
Dad said the man really hadn't a clue that he was probably the biggest hoarder for miles around.

Joe(the way it was)Nation
[/quote]

My grandparents had a bunch of kids and therefore multiple ration books. They never used all their coupons, though, because the kids couldn't possibly eat all they were entitled to buy, and as you say, stuff was sometimes hard to find. The family did become known in the neighbourhood, though, as a soft touch when somebody needed coupons for extra butter or eggs etc if they had a birthday in the family and needed to bake a cake.

My father's oldest brother was too young for WWII but joined the Canadian Army anyway. The first time he tried to join up he was recognized and booted home. He went to my grandparents and told them if they didn't sign for him to join he'd run away -- far enough that he wouldn't be recognized at the enlistment office. He made it to Holland for the liberation. He didn't talk about his experiences there except for twice. Once when I commented on his drawing ability he told me he'd drawn cartoons for the Army paper. Saab's fish-flavoured pig reminded me of another story. In Holland he and a couple of other soldiers were billeted with a local woman and she cooked their meals. One night they came back to a wonderful smell and a hot stew. Meat was hard to come by and they were lavish in their praise. She gave a big sigh of relief and said, "Oh, I'm so glad you liked it. I didn't know if you would like eel." They all thanked her again and then slipped outside and threw up. He said it was silly because the meal was delicious but they just couldn't stomach the idea of eel.

Harking back to the US forces personnell on r and r in Oz, the Battle of Brisbane makes interesting reading:
http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/ozatwar/bob.htm

My first memory of my father was enormous black army boots coming towards me. I ran screaming to hide under the kitchen table. I would have been about a year old when he came home.

I've never heard of the battle of Brisbane, before now.
Goodness, me, I had no idea that US/Oz rivalry had become quite so vicious!

Thanks for posting this, ragnel.
I see you're new to A2K, so welcome!
I'm guessing you're Australian, yes?
I'm also guessing that you're from Brisbane. Though I might be wrong about that.
Anyway, if you are from Oz, we have quite a few Australian threads here, so here's hoping we hear more from you!

I remember reading an article some years back about problems between US/Australian servicemen in Western Australia. An incident took place in a coastal town where US submarines were based. It was a small place, with few "available" girls. A public fight took place when a man found his wife in the arms of a US sailor. This led to bad blood between the Aussies and the Yanks. At some time after this there was a rape or murder of a young woman, (perhaps it was both - I am going purely be memory) and, of course, the American servicemen were blamed and a lynch mob went after them. Unfortunately, I cannot recall what ensued. I have Googled, but can't find anything. (The only sub bases that rate a mention were at Fremantle, Albany and Exmouth and I feel it would have stuck in my memory if it was one of these more well known places.)

Perhaps there is someone else out there who knows about this incident.

Thank you for your welcome, msolga. Yes, I am Aussie; No, I am from Sydney and perhaps I will join in the Aussie threads. I have been scanning A2k for quite a while but don't want to get involved in political or religious barnies. Life's too short.

I mostly just ignore that rubbish.

I seem to recall there was a murder investigation in Melbourne and an American services person was found guilty.
I'm relying completely on memory here so forgive me if i am incorrect.
Off to google that. I'll see what i can find

here ya go
3 May-4 November 1942 - Eddie Leonski, an American soldier, murdered three women in Melbourne, Victoria, in the Brownout murders.

The brown-out strangler
Edward Leonski was an American serial killer who was active in Australia during World War II - literally on the other side of the world and in a time of immense social upheaval - but he found that the long arm of the law was indeed long enough to catch up with him.

More
http://www.skcentral.com/articles.php?article_id=683

One of my uncles was a "choco" at Kokoda. (He always called it the Kokoda Trail - not Track - so I have always done the same - I figured he had the right to call it what he liked!)

http://www.battleforaustralia.org.au/2903/Overview/Kokoda_Trail_1/

Quote from the above:
"In July 1942 the Papuan Infantry Battalion was joined by recent conscripts who arrived with little military training and whose average age was eighteen and a half. It was these forces that had to be called upon to mount the offensive. At first these young and ill-trained soldiers earned the pejorative nick-name of 'chocos' or 'chocolate soldiers'. This term came from George Bernard Shaw's play Arms and the Man, about a man who would not fight. It was first used during World War I about soldiers who had arrived in Egypt after Gallipoli. After their 'baptism of fire' at Kokoda and Milne Bay, however, the 'chocos' proved that they could fight bravely and well."

He had just turned eighteen, his training consisted of learning to march in formation and how to present arms, using broom handles. He was not given a gun until being shipped off to PNG. After Kokoda he was assigned to an anti-aircraft unit where he, Norm, met my father and another uncle (my mother's brother, Bluey) who was their sergeant. They served together until my father was wounded and while recuperating in hospital, developed a fungal infection in his legs. No longer fit for tropical duty he was shipped back to Oz and was sent to the Japanese POW Camp at Hay where he served as a guard until war's end.

When they finally got back to Oz, Bluey brought Norm home to meet the family, including his youngest sister. Eventually she and Norm married.

We always thought it was a hugh coincidence that they should all serve in the same unit (and that they should all survive the war). It made it very easy for my cousins and I to locate them in the Anzac Day march through Sydney, when we would all go, en masse, to cheer for them.

God, it makes my heart sink, when I read things like this.

If it was not for sheer good fortune, comradeship & heaps of resilience ....

Norm, Bluey, chocko's... Only in Australia

Once there was always a short news film before the film.
A German lady I know told me she had gone to the movies during the war and in the news they showed the German soldiers marching into Copenhagen with the Danes standing on each side of the street waving Danish flags. She could hardly believe it. All of a sudden she saw herself standing there waving a flag together with her sister.
She had been visiting her sister in Copenhagen before the war and both of them had gone into Copenhagen to celebrate the Danish King Christian X on his birthday.
The Germans took out the king and put in the soldiers instead.
This picture shows him riding thru Copenhagen during the war.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Christian_X.jpg

Japanese surrendered in such small numbers it's hard to imagine a need for a camp as big as the one in Hay.
Wasn't this the camp where the Dunera boys were guarded?

Yes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay,_New_South_Wales
Excerpt from above:

"Internees and POWs
During World War II Hay was used as a prisoner-of-war and internment centre, due in no small measure to its isolated location. Three high-security camps were constructed there in 1940. The first arrivals were over two thousand refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria, many of them Jewish; they had been interned in Britain when fears of invasion were at their peak and transported to Australia aboard the HMT Dunera. They arrived at Hay on 7 September 1940 by four trains from Sydney. They were interned in Camps 7 and 8 (located near the Hay showground) under the guard of the 16th Garrison Battalion of the Australian Army. In November 1940 the other compound at Hay, Camp 6 (near the Hay Hospital), was occupied by Italian civilian internees. Camps 7 and 8 were vacated in May 1941 when the Dunera internees left Hay; some were sent to Orange (NSW), others to Tatura in Victoria, and others to join the Pioneer Corps of the Australian Army. Upon their departure Italian prisoners-of-war were placed in Camps 7 and 8. In December 1941 Japanese internees (some from Broome and islands north of Australia) were conveyed to Hay and placed in Camp 6. In April 1942 the River Farm began operating on the eastern edge of the township, enabling market-gardening and other farm activities to be carried out by the Italian internees and POWs. In February 1941, in the wake of the Cowra POW break-out, a large number of Japanese POWs were transferred to Hay and placed in the three high-security compounds. On 1 March 1946 the Japanese POWs departed from Hay in five trains, transferred to Tatura. During 1946 the Italians who remained at Hay were progressively released or transferred to other camps, and the Hay camps were dismantled and building materials and fittings sold off by June the following year.[12]

The first group of internees at Hay became known as the ‘Dunera Boys’. The internment at Hay of this assemblage of refugees from Nazi oppression in Europe was an important milestone in Australia’s cultural history. Just fewer than half of those interned at Hay eventually chose to remain in Australia. The influence of this group of men on subsequent cultural, scientific and business developments in Australia is difficult to over-state; they became an integral and celebrated part of the nation’s cultural and intellectual life.[13] The 'Dunera Boys' are still fondly remembered in Hay; every year the town holds a 'Dunera Day' in which many surviving internees return to the site of their former imprisonment."

And -
http://users.tpg.com.au/hayhist/Haywire.htm


Regarding Japanese pows:

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/cowra/index.asp
excerpt:
Excerpt from above:

By August 1944, there were 2,223 Japanese prisoners of war in Australia, including 544 merchant seamen. There were also 14,720 Italian prisoners and 1,585 Germans. At this time, 1,104 Japanese prisoners were in No. 12 Prisoner of War Compound near Cowra, in the central west of New South Wales.