A closer look at the life of a child growing up in Britain during World War 2...

Created by: Connor Evans, Troy Verwayen, B.W. Visser

At the start of the war, the government were terrified o f b o m b i n g . T h e government decided to evacuate all the children to the countryside be-cause they thought the Germans would not bomb places that were not d e n s e l y p o p u l a t e d . The parents of the chil-dren were very worried about letting their chil-dren be evacuated, but they agreed to go ahead w i t h i t . Most of the children were not well treated in the city. many of the children were very small for their age and they were very sick because they didn't have a lot of nutrition in t h i e r d i e t . The British government decided that they should send the children to the countryside because they were wor-ried when Hitler came into power that he would make the cities bombing targets.

When not in school, children always found something to do. The most common

things to do were playing with friends, writing letters, drawing, helping with chores. They didn't have TVs in those

days so they listened to the radio instead.

During the war, although television had been invented, very few people had one

and people relied much more on the cin-ema for entertainment. Cinema audi-

ences grew from 20 million to 32 million making 'going to the pictures' the most popular form of entertainment during the war.

Most cinemas showed children's films as well as films for adults. In between showing the films, people watched the news at the cinema to help them keep informed on how the war was going. Information films were also shown at the

cinema to show people how to behave and act during war.

The most popular lesson during the war was air

raid practise. The trenches were well

equipped and could take up to five hundred chil-

dren

They also learnt how to use gas masks and other things to assist them to cope through the war.

They did a lot of sewing and knitting.

Children had to do regular gas drills at school. They

found these drills hard to take seriously, especially when they discovered blowing through the rubber made 'rude' noises.

The war had an affect on the kind of rhymes children told and the games they played.

During the war, the children drank a lot of tea. There wasn't much food be-cause all the supply got sent up to the soldiers, so there wasn’t a lot of food

in the city. The children lived on a very small supply of food.

The children in the country got a better supply of food because they had freshly grown food and good supplies. So most of the children in the coun-

try were much more healthier than the ones in the city.

A lack of food made it very difficult for people at war and back in Britain to stick to a healthy diet. Even if they managed to find ingredients that were

healthy, there would always be the problem of meals being tasty and filling. Since the men in the family were away fighting, it was mostly the women at

home who took charge of their fam-ily's rations and tried to use the re-

stricted amounts of food as best they could.