Unti D-Day Memoir by Ray Lambert & Jim Defelice

Author:Ray Lambert & Jim Defelice [Lambert, Ray & Defelice, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: War, history
ISBN: 9780062947598
Google: G7x_DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43309166
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Home Front

Back home, people hunkered down for another winter of war. Certain things that would have seemed odd two years before were now routine—blackout curtains or shades on windows on the coasts, cars without headlights at night. With imports severely limited and production shifting to items the army needed, rationing had been instituted to allow for fairer distribution and eliminate price gouging, or at least send it underground.

The government sent families ration books with stamps, which had to be used to buy items like meat, sugar, and cooking oils. There were strict rules governing the stamps; if someone died, his or her stamps had to be turned in and couldn’t be used by another member of the family.

There were also strict price controls on many items. People were urged to recycle tin cans and even fat for the war effort. Posters encouraged people on the “home front” to do their bit by planting victory gardens and canning vegetables and fruit to lessen the need back home.

And of course this was the time of Rosie the Riveter—women took on factory and other jobs to make up for labor shortages caused by increased production and the need for soldiers.

Movies were a big entertainment and diversion. A number were war movies, fictionalized versions of what we and our brother servicemen were going through, like Guadalcanal Diary, Destination Tokyo, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Laurel and Hardy, a famous comedy team of the era, managed to make air raids look like fun in Air Raid Wardens. There were family movies like Lassie Come Home and horror stories like Day of Wrath and Son of Dracula. Serial heroes soldiered up for the war in movies like Tarzan Triumphs.

Most of these films are remembered now only by historians or movie buffs, but they were part of a shared experience back home. People weren’t just supporting soldiers; they were thinking about and praying for their husbands, their sons, their brothers. The boy who delivered your newspaper, the doctor who had looked after your measles, were now getting shot at on the other side of the world. Without real news beyond what might be gleaned from a V letter six weeks old, people hungered for whatever assurance they could get, no matter how vague or unconnected to the actual war.

It must have worked that way for us overseas, too.

A lot of the popular Christmas songs playing on the radio and selling in the record stores that year celebrated the good old days and family. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was a huge hit for Bing Crosby. Norman Rockwell’s famous painting Freedom from Want, showing a family sitting down to a turkey dinner, was actually painted for a magazine cover earlier in the year, but it caught what everyone in the U.S. was wanting—their “boys” home safe and sound.

When would that be?

Soon, maybe. But first there would be more war. Christmas Eve fell on a Friday that year. That afternoon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on the radio.

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