Thursday 10 November 2011

"How We Lived Then"

First - and unrelated to the rest of this post - please notice that I changed my url to http://attachresumehere.blogspot.com/  Just because I hadn't really expected anybody to read this and now that people do seem to be checking it I don't want potential employers to be able to google my name and come up to this.  My depression and self-pity is probably not inspiring anybody to hire me!


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Today my book review is a book called "How We Lived Then" by Norman Longmate.  This is not just topical for Remembrance Day, I have actually been making my way through this book for the last three weeks.  It is really long and I have been busy, but I am working my way through it.  It is full of fascinating memories of day to day life in mostly England during World War II.  It is beautifully told and heartbreakingly sad.  A really good book should tell more than a story, it should also change the way you see the world.  For me, this book is a reminder, especially near Remembrance Day of all the men and women who gave up so much during the war years.  Not just the one who joined up, but the ones who stayed to fight on the home front.  The ones who put the pieces back together of their lives and their bombed out houses, who took care of the children, and who waited for the end of the war, for their men to come home, for letters or news about loved ones. 

I know I whine and complain (pretty much hourly) about the recession, the lack of jobs and meaningful employment...  but, after I graduated highschool until now I have done pretty much whatever I wanted.  I have used this time to travel and see the world, to hang out with friends, work various jobs.  It has been time for me to be irresponsible and free in the world.  For the men and women who spent six years of their lives in the war they missed that time of being young.  My Grandpa was in the RCAF, he signed up as soon as he could and stayed overseas until the war was finished.  These years I have spent partying and playing he spent in a war that is incomprehensible to me. 

I would like to say thank you to all of the men and women who fought and gave up so much for us and still do.  Wear your poppy or change your facebook picture to a poppy.  Hug your grandparents if you still have them, listen to their stories (even the long boring ones you have heard a thousand times), get to know the people they once were and what they did for us.  Even if you don't agree with the war, I think we can all agree that a huge sacrifice was made and that above all, deserves to be remembered. 

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