Reflections from a Shared Project

During the COVID-19 restrictions back in 2020, a project emerged to help connect with my elderly neighbor. It involved each participant holding a card that reflected the age they felt inside. The stories shared were eye-opening, evoking new thoughts in me.

This group represents a generation that lived through profound events—war impacts, displacements, and long separations from family. Maybe these experiences have shaped their perspectives on life. For them, resilience and stoicism seem to take a backseat to a sense of community and connection.

When asked, “How are you today?” their responses are often layered with history.

Take Ruby, for example. She was just four when sent to stay with relatives in Somerset. In school, she recalls crying for her mother, comforted by a teacher who shared a cup of Bobril.

She was frightened by German bombers overhead, hating her gas mask. There was always the looming dread of invasion, and food was so scarce.

Ruby realizes that her attempts to stave off aging have limited her ability to volunteer at the hospice and be as active as she’d like, both mentally and physically.

Then there’s Norma, born in the eastern part of London to a British father and a Lithuanian mother. After the bombings, her family relocated to Middlesex. She vividly remembers how school desks lined the hallways, ready for a quick evacuation into shelters.

After the war, she secured a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, but now, with poor eyesight, she prefers to enjoy music through listening alone. She has been practicing Ashtanga yoga for close to four decades.

Annie’s story is another one of resilience; evacuated from Moseley at age seven to a Welsh boarding school, she never returned home but stayed with her rather quirky grandmother while training to be a nurse.

Now living in a Birmingham shelter home, she has introduced her fellow residents to pre-dinner vodka and tonic traditions.

Fran also has a tale of evacuation, sent from Swindon to her grandmother’s farm in Wales at the war’s onset. Her mother remained behind to care for a soldier returning from Dunkirk, while her father built a Spitfire in secret.

After teaching throughout her career, Fran eventually bought a picturesque farm in Cornwall, where she bred Dexter cows.

Patricia was evacuated from Hackney to her grandparents’ home in Barrow-in-Furness in 1939. She remembers reading at night by candlelight in a time before electricity.

Sunday outings to the beach are etched in her memory, complete with her grandmother’s homemade bread. They returned to find their London home untouched after the war.

Ilena’s beginnings were much darker. Born in Lviv, she was taken to a labor camp at just two years old, separating her from her father, who was sent to Siberia. While she and her mother survived, their family was tragically not so lucky. Irena recalls the bravery of her mother, who she views as the true heroine amidst it all.

In 1939, Christabel’s journey began with her five sisters and a nanny, sent to a Sussex farm where they faced harsh living without electricity, hand-pulling water from a well.

Christabel became a caretaker of British white cows that wandered freely around their home, all bearing names beginning with “P.”

In another neighborhood, Camille’s childhood was interrupted during a bombing, shattering glass near her baby brothers. Though they moved to the Midlands, her father stayed behind as an air raid guard. Now, preparing to visit a child in France, she reflects on her past as a widow.

Caroline remembers living under the flight path to London, hearing enemy bombers overhead while her mother drove an ambulance and her father served as an air raid guard.

One family of refugees stands out in her mind, caked in black dust as they arrived from Naples. Still, she reflects on her childhood with a sense of carefree joy.

Eve, trained as a midwife and district nurse, cycled to visit patients, carrying a well-prepared Gladstone bag. When her home was destroyed, she and her sister went to live with their aunt.

At the dairy farm near the city, she watched cows run off to graze. Beryl, evacuated from Catford early in the war, remembers sitting with other children, waiting to move to the countryside.

Beryl became known to local couples, with stories about her husband Stan, who worked in a paper mill. Even today, she can whip up dishes that evoke memories of their time together. She now has ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

Gill, who grew up near Oxford, recalls escaping bombings, with her mother ensuring their family didn’t go hungry by taking over the family’s green grocer.

She enjoyed cycling to her grandmother’s pub, a lively spot frequented by American troops who shared treats like chewing gum.

Lindsay’s story combines both loss and resilience. After losing her mother to illness at a young age, she moved in with her Nan in Worthing, where she later trained as a dancer. Working in an ammunition factory, she once dodged a bullet while walking home. After marrying Fred during the war, she later found love again with Maxwell.

Lastly, Michiko from Kobe, Japan, once met Brit Jeremy, a British officer in her youth. They had four children before he left for London. Now living in a modified railway carriage, she still recalls that life-changing time.