Wartime recollections Vlog 4 - Mum's Wartime Experiences

My 92 year old mother talks about her wartime experiences in Holland. Bombed houses, losing everything, eating tulip bulbs, hiding her brothers away, German defeat, emigration and nursing in postwar London, the smog and much more.

[@jennyrosenthal]

thank you for sharing this important historical record of this woman's testimony. God bless you and your family.

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

Thanks for watching. My mother is a Jenny too! No idea how you found this but it was a real surprise when my mother just 'opened up' and the stories just came flooding out. Unimaginable lives people had in those times!

[@omalleyelley12]

Thank you for posting!

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

Natasha - I am glad you enjoyed it - I really enjoyed listening to her stories too.

[@frogandspanner]

I have just happened upon this gem.
It was fascinating to compare with my father's experiences in Breda at the same time. He had been reluctant to talk about the times, but a large quantity zeer oude genever loosened him up. He had a reserved occupation, cattle TB and Brucellosis testing, and would take generous samples which, following testing, he would not pour down the drain! He told a wonderful story of getting his youngest brother out of transfer to Germany for labour, who then hid in the Biesbosch, which became his centre of operation in the resistance. Dad used his daytime job as cover for surveying troop and aircraft movements, reported back to SOE, and night operations were sabotaging train lines and aircraft at Gilze-Rijen.
It's a shame I only did an audio recording of his reminiscences.

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

Wonderful to hear your story. I just cannot comprehend what it must have been like for our parents - just totally out of our experience. They were such brave and committed people with nothing much left at all. They really respected all the UK was doing for them and how wonderful that the UK invited people over to live after the war. Makes my mother an immigrant I guess (and we won't get into that hot potato here!) but how valuable that was to a young woman who had lost so much in her home country. Thanks so much for sharing this and for finding this film of mine which I had no idea would turn into such a story!

[@frogandspanner]

@@AnthonyFrancisJones My mother was a Yorkshire lass, and after the war sent her abroad to visit our allies. First Norway, then the Netherlands where she lodged with dad's family, and the next thing you know he and his parents were on the Rotterdam-Hull crossing, on visitors' visas, for the wedding! Within two weeks dad, technically an illegal alien, was working - in the scientific civil service, so it must have been acceptable to the government of the day.
I remember him waking with nightmares, and it was only latterly that it became clear that the main one was following a mission to blow up the railway line. He and his colleague had stumbled on a nazi patrol, and ran at high speed, but his colleague stumbled, there was a shot, and he was never seen again. Such were the risks that dad and his family took daily.

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

Thanks for sharing that. Funny how we now live in a world where it is best practice to talk about what worries you whereas our parents' generation learnt to keep everything in and never talk about it. My word what they went through! Perhaps our and the younger generations would be a bit more careful if they knew what their relations had to go through just in daily life. I am so pleased you found the video interesting. I asked the BBC as they did that programme where relatives or friends just talked to each other (forgotten its name) but they weren't that interested... I found what my mother had to say facinating and I think I have some diaries somewhere. I must dig those out. Thanks again for taking the time to comment. Absolutely facinating and all part of the story of that period.