What We Learned From the War
As the 80th anniversary of VE Day approaches, what lessons can we take from those who survived it?
I was born 25 years and a few months after VE Day. That’s barely longer than 2000 to now, and I well recall inflatable bubble chairs, Playstation 3 and Heaven is a Halfpipe as if it was yesterday. I’d still happily listen to Miss Dynamite or Eminem rapping Stan with Dido on the radio — much as fifty-somethings in 1970 would sway merrily to Run Rabbit, or They Can’t Black Out The Moon. Give it a listen, it’s quite the banger.
All of which to say, during my childhood, the War lived in recent memory. My grandparents still recalled queues for the fish van, crunching to work over broken glass from the Manchester blitz of 1940, families receiving terrible telegrams they’d never forget and of course, bloody rationing. No wonder that generation were all slim - they were living on cheese scrapings and one spam fritter each with a home-grown tomato salad on the side.
Now, we’re almost at the stage where only those who were children during the war are left. The soldiers are pretty much gone, the brilliant women of Bletchley Park have died off, there may be the odd 100 year old who remembers digging for victory or joining the WVS, but there’s not many. All the hard, miserable lessons of wartime they learned have largely gone with them. So perhaps it’s time to think about what those lessons were. Not because those times were better - nostalgia is largely a mendacious crock. People were frightened, sick, unhappy, lonely, grieving and hungry during the war. The good times — a knees-up round the piano! Dancing at the Palais on leave! Letters from the front to sweethearts! — were only so memorably good because they contrasted so violently with all the bad. But what was remembered from the War by those who lived through it was often very useful — and we’re in danger of forgetting.
1 Dictators Gonna Dictate
Once Adolf did the deed in his bunker 80 years ago today (April 30th 2025), few could imagine that such a vicious, inhumane dictator could ever flourish again. But, as they say on social media, here we are. Of course, there have been many others since - Stalin, Mugabe, Kim Il-Sung, Pinochet, Peron, Saddam Hussein — and yet the West has seen nothing like Hitler, until very recently. Authoritarianism, suppression of dissent, cult of personality, control of information, deportations on Trumped-up charges… well.
Nothing, it seems, will stop the inglorious rise of an inadequate man whose talents were not enough to propel him to well-earned success. We must never assume we know too much ever to let it happen again - because it is happening again.
2 You don’t need as much food as you think
In 1945, nobody was whanging on about UPFs, mainly because there weren’t any. America already had mini-supermarkets, which were set to replace the old Mom and Pop groceries, and which began to open in the UK in the ‘50s, but until 1952, food shopping was restricted. Sugar, butter, cheese, margarine, cooking fat, bacon, meat, and tea were all still rationed, as were soap, clothing, petrol, and paper. Sugar rationing didn’t end till 1953, when there was a run on sweet-shops like the bank run in Mary Poppins.
Very few people were overweight, because they’d spent the best part of a decade eating bits of unnamed fish and stunted back-garden lettuce, and working 16 hour days. There weren’t many cars, and petrol was rationed, so everyone walked and cycled. But not many were malnourished, because the government worked out everyone’s calorie allowance and gave them - just about - what they needed. Very few of that generation ever put on too much weight. It wasn’t until the ‘70s and ‘80s, when US-style food advertising, manufacturing and convenience came to Britain - deep pan pizzas! McDonalds! Pringles! - that snacking became A Thing. It hasn’t been great for us, has it?
3 Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder
Wartime brides and grooms learned that lesson fast. In my Wartime Edie York novels, Annie falls for Pete because he looks good in uniform. and within weeks, they’re engaged because he’s off to fight. It seems romantic to promise a possibly doomed young man that you’ll wait for him… until he comes back and you realise that out of uniform, he’s perfectly ordinary and you’ve nothing in common. War was a time of heightened emotions and limited options, leading to an awful lot of unexpected pregnancies and unhappy marriages. Men would often return from the front with what we’d now call PTSD and back then called ‘nerves.’ Young women found themselves trapped, with damaged, disabled, mentally unwell men, who couldn’t express what they’d seen or done. Now we might moan about Tinder and Bumble and Grindr. But at least we can check if we actually like someone before we marry them.
4 Enjoy the good times with friends
All those images of bunting and pianos and girls in home-made frocks jitterbugging with handsome GIs…it wasn’t always like that. But sometimes it was, and War did serve as a constant reminder to make hay while the sun shone. Nowadays, we expect constant entertainment wirelessly delivered into our living rooms, we text friends because we can’t be bothered to actually arrange meeting, we listen to music alone through our own earbuds, so nobody can join in, or we inflict it on fellow passengers who didn’t choose it. Increasingly, once our clubbing years are over, fun is less a community experience and more a case of cracking open a bottle of Pinot and scrolling Netflix. There’s nothing wrong with that - but in the absence of alternatives beyond listening to the wireless in the front parlour, people in the war did generally make the most of time off. It wouldn’t hurt us to make a bit more effort to see mates occasionally, even if All Bar One doesn’t have an upright piano and an accordion to hand.
6 Domestic crafts are useful
Not the Instagram-fancy, trad-wife crafts, that are no use to anyone. But during the War, all the useful men were either at the front or running farms and factories, so those left behind had to learn to make, bake and generally fix things that broke, usually because no replacements were available.
Carpentry, for instance. Most suburban people had a shed. They knew what a lathe was, and could knock up a rabbit hutch at a moment’s notice. They could put up a shelf without thinking twice. Others knew how to knit scarves (unfortunately, Edie York does not, but she’s good at other things). They could in fact knit jumpers, baby bonnets, blankets and if necessary, probably an entire air raid shelter; a whole new twist on yarn-bombing.
People knew how to cook (well, women did, at least). They could create an edible Victoria sponge from leftover margarine, or a pie from a bag of carrots on the turn - not because these things were particularly lovely, but because they had no choice.
And of course, they knew about gardening. In our anxious, internet-driven, AI-threatened age, it’s good to feel that you retain some human skills. It wouldn’t kill us to re-learn the great domestic competencies of the past.
We’ve forgotten how to be resourceful — but in a time when dictators are rising, waste is taking over landfill, everyone’s strapped for cash and we eat too much… maybe those Wartimers can teach us a thing or two.
If you’d like to read more about life during the war, my Edie York series of crime novels is set in Manchester in 1940/1941.
Thank you for reading Decommissioned. Please do let me know if there’s something you’d like me to write about.