The Blitz Experience

Bill writes: The Blitz is still a recent part of London's two millenium-long memory. Just Tuesday I had tea after class and was talking with my classmate Ann, who had to be moved to the countryside because of the Blitz during the war. As a little girl, she (like many London children) said goodbye to her parents and was moved from one city that was bombed to another, traveling by coach and crisscrossing the countryside to avoid the strafing runs of the Luftwaffe. In her case, she ended up on a farm, cared for by strangers, a childless couple who lived in the country, and who had no running water or indoor plumbing.

London has an interactive museum called Britain at War, and it has a lot of artefacts from the Blitz, such as this child's and adult's gas mask. The former was made to look "fun" and "colorful" so the kiddies wouldn't mind wearing it.