Another View

My paternal grandmother Ray, was born and raised in Hythe, England and had a different childhood than most living now because of her experience of living through World War II. As a young adolescent at the age of 11, she was comfortably living in Hythe with her mother and her 2 uncles, her father had passed away years before. Around the time when she was 12 in 1940, England became a place of fear. Hythe was a city in Kent that was South East and bordered London, the capital city. In 1940, one of her uncles had decided to join the RAF (Royal Air Force) in order for him to have a chance to fight the Nazi's. As life began to get tough during World War II the home front was directly affected, rationing began to set into place as well as her mom's "steady" job of being an accountant was beginning to stray off of the normal pattern. As her mom looked for another job, Ray remembers constant drills and air raids throughout the city. One time, Ray's mother wasn't home and neither were her two uncles, so in order to stay safe she actually hid in a kitchen cabinet. When the Nazi's bombed Buckingham Palace, was when England started to change. The King and Queen remained in Buckingham Palace to show their citizens that England would be okay, as they sent their two daughters Elizabeth and Margaret to Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle was far out in the countryside, and the movement began where all children from the city had been forced by their parents to board trains all full of children. These trains were all leading to the countryside in order for the children of the cities to stay out in the countryside with relatives until times got better. As my grandma Ray recalls these events, she stressed one thing throughout her story and that was that she always knew England would be okay, everyone did. No one ever doubted that their leader and Prime Minister Winston Churchill wouldn't be able to lead them to safety.