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This was even before my time but I remember my parents talking about rationing. They lived in southern England. The rationing included buying tires, gas, butter, sugar and that's IF you had the money!. Everything went into the war effort. Food was rationed to allow a minimum 2,000? calories a day. It's best if you lived in the country like on a farm where you could grow extra food. My dad tried to enlist but when they found out he was a farmer he was told go go home. You have to realize that this was a tiny island nation and if you couldn't grow it, mine it or make it, you had to import it by sea. The only consolation was that everyone around you was in the same boat and suffering too.

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2 hours ago, datzenmike said:

This was even before my time but I remember my parents talking about rationing. They lived in southern England. The rationing included buying tires, gas, butter, sugar and that's IF you had the money!. Everything went into the war effort. Food was rationed to allow a minimum 2,000? calories a day. It's best if you lived in the country like on a farm where you could grow extra food. My dad tried to enlist but when they found out he was a farmer he was told go go home. You have to realize that this was a tiny island nation and if you couldn't grow it, mine it or make it, you had to import it by sea. The only consolation was that everyone around you was in the same boat and suffering too.

and that rationing continued for many years after the war as Britain was flat broke. My Mom was also British and a nurse during the war.

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1 hour ago, grannyknot said:

and that rationing continued for many years after the war as Britain was flat broke. My Mom was also British and a nurse during the war.

 

No kidding?.... My mom was also a nurse and had so many stories about the blitz in London. My dad had known my mom from before the war and stayed on the farm and when the war ended she came back to their small town and they met again. They married in '47 and I came along a few years later. There were incentives to emigrate so my dad came to Canada and my mom, grandmother, brother and I followed six months later.

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2 hours ago, grannyknot said:

and that rationing continued for many years after the war as Britain was flat broke. My Mom was also British and a nurse during the war.

 

Post war Germans visiting Britain were amazed.  "I thought we lost the war!"

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22 hours ago, datzenmike said:

 

No kidding?.... My mom was also a nurse and had so many stories about the blitz in London. My dad had known my mom from before the war and stayed on the farm and when the war ended she came back to their small town and they met again. They married in '47 and I came along a few years later. There were incentives to emigrate so my dad came to Canada and my mom, grandmother, brother and I followed six months later.

My mom went through the blitz as well, was buried once for 3 days before they got to her. The old man was a Sask. prairie boy who was studying in Chicago when the US entered the war so he signed up there and went over as a GI, met my mom and took advantage of those incentives to come to Canada after the war.  They gave them an acre of land and shack in Fort St. James  BC, Dad was off in the bush for a week at a time surveying new roads that were going in, Mom, a nice British girl who knew nothing of what she was getting into. Fort St. James is pretty rough now, you can imagine what it was like just after the war, middle of nowhere.  She didn't know what bugs were before getting there, Black flies, Horse flies, Skeeters and bears roaming around, then winter came, -40F and 5ft. of snow, ... good times.

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2 hours ago, grannyknot said:

My mom went through the blitz as well, was buried once for 3 days before they got to her. The old man was a Sask. prairie boy who was studying in Chicago when the US entered the war so he signed up there and went over as a GI, met my mom and took advantage of those incentives to come to Canada after the war.  They gave them an acre of land and shack in Fort St. James  BC, Dad was off in the bush for a week at a time surveying new roads that were going in, Mom, a nice British girl who knew nothing of what she was getting into. Fort St. James is pretty rough now, you can imagine what it was like just after the war, middle of nowhere.  She didn't know what bugs were before getting there, Black flies, Horse flies, Skeeters and bears roaming around, then winter came, -40F and 5ft. of snow, ... good times.

 

Three days! My mom never really integrated into Canadian society that well. Her and dad worked on no less that four farms in 7 years and she hated it so much she applied for a janitorial job at a new high school for dad, and got it. We moved off the farm life and into town in southern Ontario eventually working at an old folks home through the '60s and into the '70s..

 

My mom described fire watch on the hospital roof and kicking incendiaries off into the street below to be dealt with. Blackouts, sneaking back in after curfew, (a big no no) being caught in the open during a bombing and staying in a shop doorway as the safest place, donating blood every few weeks although it's only allowed every few months, Saying "if you can hear a doodlebug you were safe, if the engine stopped run for cover". She liked the night shift because any overly strict doctors were more likely to be sleeping, as well as the patients. The best surgical tools came from Germany so all were more precious than gold. They had to be unscrewed and taken apart for the autoclave, if a screw was dropped and lost, being metric it couldn't be replaced. That German Jewish doctors who escaped the Nazis were very well trained.  

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