Status Updates From London War Notes, 1939-1945

1941 marches on! things honestly pretty bad in the UK.

Entering 1941. 1940 was bleak and we still have nearly a year before the US joins the war. It’s crazy bc I keep thinking of Britain as just a little island but I suppose in 1940 the empire was still going.

damn 1940 was a bleak year for the british huh? dunkirk, surrender of belgium, the fall of france, and then the blitz begins in september! it must've felt like the world was ending. all the while you know the US won't join the war until almost 1942

a slow bedside table read

“At the seaside towns, it seems, the local housewives couldn’t buy a kitchen spoon or a cake tin. The entire supply has been bought up by resourceful visiting children to make sand castles with, since buckets and spades were almost unprocurable” (356).

Interesting that the British already feel, in Sept 1943, that the tide is beginning to turn after the fall of Italy.

"In spite of official warnings that holiday transport wouldn't be augmented, trains were packed to the last inch with good-tempered crowds which, if reason had arisen to...lie down on the floor should enemy action develop overhead, would have had to subside in layers like a three-decker sandwich" (336-337).