It was very gray, very dreary. Everything was still rationed when I first saw the United States in 1951. I went over to visit my sister who was a war bride.
I didn't hear anybody talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody else had done it, I probably wouldn't have touched the subject.
There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.
Nor do we begin to have a clear appreciation of what the increase in consumption of alcoholic beverages in wartime means in increased risk, and in loss of efficiency to the fighting and working forces of the country.
I was born in 1954. My parents were brought up in the war years, and life was hard.
I mean, I'm a war baby, and we had rationing, and we didn't have sugar and sweets, which is very good for you in actual fact. Because when we had a piece of fruit, we'd gulp it down. It was just great.
Wartime always brings expansions of state power, together with erosions of moral and constitutional standards.
The war years count double. Things and people not actively in use age twice as fast.
