As we all but some are oldies (is someone older than fifty yet an oldy? Sorry MM.) I guess from what I know about the regular contributors that the range of the age of childhood is from the Thirties till if you reckon with MM (sorry again MM) to the Seventies, it would be perhaps interesting to hear the stories of the former children about events that remained in their memories.
As there don't seems to be that much respons to my rather, I agree, sophisticated subjects as Homo Sapiens and Merovingians, I hope I will have with this subject
a more lively debate and comments.
I will try to start tomorrow with one of my own childhood memories...or perhaps two ...

Kind regards, Paul.

My parents bought a house near the coast, just after the war. A house was perhaps a bit too euphemistic. There was no roof on it, perhaps due to a blast during the war. As we heard later, during the war it had been a German telephone exchange centre, and indeed everywhere were still black letters on the walls as "rauchen verboten" (forbidden to smoke). My father working in the fish auction had there a lot of "friends" and "friends of friends" so the house was reconstructed with here and there giving some money and I have to say there were very skillful people among them, as the one who placed the floor tiles. One of those old fashioned ones...and I was there and observed it...and he made such a floor that, when one poored water in the long hall with which all old houses were constructed in that time (rowhouses), the water left the hall at the frontdoor. Even in the kitchen the water fled all to the kitchen door...

When the house was ready, we moved from the inland to our new house with a big fish van from an uncle. And that I still remember; Sitting in the cabine, a long green engine cover before us (the whole van in green colour) and a long gear stick starting on the ground above the gearbox. I saw it again, when in the army as draft soldier? conscript? learning to drive with a Ford from the Korean war (still in use in the Sixties in the Belgian army in the driver's school)

Once settled at the coast, during school time, my sister and I, were in the inland with our grandmother. And we came only to the sea during the school vacation and the long weekends. And of course for us were that real holidays at the coast, although we didn't go, I don't know why, that many times to the beach, perhaps while our parents had too much work and no time for us and perhaps they didn't trust the children, especially me, although the oldest one of the two, strolling along the coast in that time.
That said, even when we were at home at the coast, when the parents weren't at home, we had to stay inside. They said no opening the door for nobody, just talk from behind the door.
So once came the post man, ring ring the bell, we from behind the door: we weren't allowed to open the door...the postman, a friend of the family, with his face before the opening of the letterbox, but there was no box inside the door, so we could see the man...he said, it was the montly bookseries packet and to big to put it through the opening...we: our parents had said that...perhaps he could give it to the neighbour, who was always at home and received these packets too, when we weren't at home...so the postman...and later our parents, who heard the whole story...not knowing what to say to us...reprimande or felicitations...

I hope that the stories of the other contributors aren't that "braaf" (innocious?) as mine...
But tomorrow I will talk about killing fish in the water with handgranates...

Kind regards, Paul.

On 16 April 1944 I was 11 years old and playing with friends outside our house in a small town called Sneek in the province of Friesland (Holland). Our house was just opposite the railway station and we were often playing at the station, as my father was the stationmaster.
Suddenly, an aeroplane came over very low. We could clearly see the markings, and someone shouted: 'Engels vliegtuig!' (English plane). Of course, we all looked up, and saw the plane turning around and flying back in the direction it had come from, still flying very low.
Immediately thereafter we could hear heavy gunfire, and we realised that it was the plane firing at something, very close by. Almost straight after hearing the gunfire, we heard an enormous explosion and saw large flames and smoke rising up behind the railway yard, about three or four kilometres away.
 
We all ran across the yard to have a better look, and my father shouted to me that the plane had crashed. German soldiers stationed at and near the station were already making plans to rush to their army trucks to check it out, but they had to go via the main road. A friend and I, anxious to look for souvenirs (especially perspex to make rings), did not hesitate for a minute - and off we went along the railway line, running like hares.
 
We knew that this was an enormous shortcut to where the plane had crashed, just outside a little village called Ijlst. We could now also see that there was a train stationery just outside the little station of Ijlst, blowing off a lot of steam. Flames and smoke were rising into the air, indicating the place where the plane had crashed.
When we arrived at the scene there were people running around, trying to get close to the plane, but the only policeman in Ijlst had also arrived and tried to keep everyone at bay. By now we could also see the German army arriving in their lorries, and we realised that they would slowly but certainly tell people to disperse.

Looking around, we saw that the trees in the area had their tops sheared off. Someone said that the plane had been shooting up the train's engine and, on turning back to have a second go, had flown into the trees. We now made our way back home, disappointed that we could not have any souvenirs, but I did ask one of the German soldiers I knew from the station if he could get me souvenir. Although he did not say yes, he winked and told me to go home.

The next day , on talking to the soldiers again, I heard what had happened.

 The plane had spotted the train and had warned the train crew by flying very low over the train. It then flew low over us in Sneek and turned back. By now the train crew had stopped the train (luckily a freight train) and had taken cover.
The plane shot up the locomotive, and then turned to have another go when the pilot flew into the trees, causing the plane to crash. Both crewmen were killed.


Now, the story that has always remained with me was told to me by the German soldier. He said that the two crewmen were Canadians, and the plane's compass was pointing in a North Western  direction, the way to Canada
The crew's names were R M Bull and J E Leach, and they are buried in the churchyard at Ijlst.
 And yes, I did get a piece of perspex.





Dirk

I was born a few years after the war so had no direct experience of it, so can't mention anything as dramatic as Paul's and Dirk's memories.  Being taken into hospital with no preparation* when I was 4 affected me.  I was kept in for what would be called "observation" nowadays but my mother thought it was just a visit to the outpatient's and didn't think I was going to be kept overnight (I don't think it was longer than 10 days but to a four year old it seemed a very long time).  I thought my parents had abandoned me and I think it made me be more "clingy" when I came out of hospital and more prone to turn on the tears.  I remember (maybe I mentioned this elsewhere?) being annoyed when they told me it was "night" (it was June so the days were long) when I could see daylight round the chink in the blinds that were pulled down over  the window.

* I'm not absolutely sure what was wrong with me - I don't know if they ever found out. Apparently I would go up the garden and then crawl back because I found walking difficult. I had (according to my parents) formerly been quite a lively and outgoing child and afterwards became much more introspective.  I couldn't sprint after that either (though that would be due to the condition not the hospital experience but I think the introspection was due to the hospital stay).  I am not quite so shy these days I hasten to add.

Dirk,

thank you for that great story. My first memories were only from 1947 on, but I was together with family bombed in 1944 by an American plane on 30 meters near, perhaps with a British pilot inside. Colateral damage they will say nowadays. In the time of the BBC as I read a book about the invasion of our town on 23 May 1940, that bombing was also mentioned. And as the traject of the plane was not right as described in the book, in comparison with what my parents had told me, I even interviewed via telephone another witness, who had seen the plane from behind the window and even ignoring the warnings of his mother, had staid looking and when the glass was blown out by the explosion he was lucky to have had only a piece of glass in his knee. But yes, "our" traject was the right one, the plane coming from over the railway station and flying parallel to our road, dropping three bombs. Of course I heard it tens of times "in geuren en kleuren"
( they translate on google as: in great colour and detail) from my parents with all the details, as I, the cause of some scent in the basement, where we all had sought cover. I, by all that explosions and turmoil, not the grown ups looking to each other, but only the little me...

Dirk, all that to say, that when one is young, one don't know the dangers. We had some neighbours in our house at the coast, with whom my father got befriended? (bevriend). My father had always such "special" friends...The oldest son, had friends, who were I suppose "brigands" (in our dialect: brigans) and with those, I, some six seven years old, was allowed to stroll around (quite something other than my sister and I had to do before, seeminlgy it was not know that that oldest son was a brigand. It was him, who told us that immediately after the war I guess already in 1945, they put hand granades left over by the Germans, into the water of the "watervliegplein" of the Germans, to let come the dead fish to the surface by the underwater pressure of the explosion. At least he told it that way to us. And with that brigand we explored the bunkers, we had at least a seven bunkers in the neighbourhood. I suppose even in 1949 all ammunition in and around the bunkers was not yet recovered. In that way, we were perhaps lucky , while the "brigand" had already the "experience" of ammunition...
het watervliegplein:

But now I read that the "spuikom" was already a notseeflughaven in WWI
https://www.luchtvaartgeschiedenis.be/content/oostende-spuikom-watervliegbasis
And we thought it from WWII
But yes the Germans come "immer wieder" and take their old lots again in service as the "duikbootbasis" and het "watervliegplein".
For some years I found photos of the installations, which were still there I guess up to the Seventies, as the four blocs in concrete for the metal tower on which the waterplanes were hung for maintenance
But see in the testimony about the British raid from 1942 (1941?) there are two Heinkels in the "Spuikom"
https://www.luchtvaartgeschiedenis.be/content/hurricane-z3826-te-bredene

Kind regards from Paul.

As I mentioned it in the "café" to LiR and Hatsheput:

"I wanted to start this evening something about brain surgery in the old Egypt and in reply to LiR's comment on the childhood thread something about a youth experience in a Catholic college in the Fifties. This afternoon I read in the paper in a café about the testimony of youngster, now in his Fifties about the 5 years long child abuse that he was undergoing in the Sixties. I see now that in the Sixties it was still not better than in our time."

As I gave perhaps the hint that I too had a traumatic experience in my childhood, I don't want to make misunderstandments among the readers.
Therefore I tell the history, although I wasn't prepared to.

I hope 13, 14 years is still childhood. And I think this story about the intransigence of a Catholic college inland Belgium I already mentionned in a "religion" thread. As I each day came from home at the coast to that inland college by train, because I had to attend that college, because otherwise they lost, as fish merchants the Friday fish to that college. 
While the "pensionairs" had to stay an extra night in the college to attend a mass for some holy day (don't remember, I think it was Allsaints), my mother had gone to the head of the school (a priest) to say that my school train "abonnement" didn't apply for Sundays, so that I couldn't attend that mass. But the head said no, he has to attend this mass...we will give him a night here among the "pensionairs" not to pay.
So I went to the mass and had one night not to pay at school, but the Sunday afternoon all pensionairs went home and I stood alone in that college except one priest that they called a "subregent"...
I was given by the subregent a room with bed, I guess for visitors.
In the evening he came to the room and asked me for a visit. I went to his room to be welcomed and received cherishes and after a time he spoke about health and sport as gymnastics and started to stay on his hands against the wall and asked me to do the same. I with the cherises in the throath wasn't so happy to do the same and by the way didn't found it a good idea and higly anormal for a priest on a Sunday evening. And as perhaps he saw that he would have difficulties if he went further, he suddenly decided that the visit and the performance was ended and I back to my room.

I have to say that I had at 13 not yet heard about homosexuality and all that. And yes I had a timide appearance and speaking, but nevertheless from mind and handling i was quite otherwise...fighting on the playgrounds against three elder ones, because they had laughed with my friend's "fatness"...the whole playground in turmoil and the "priests" had to intervene.

All that to say that I certainly didn't held a trauma about that strange experience. I immediately told it to the parents and it is perhaps therefore that I the next year went to a college at the coast, fish sale or not...

Note that I am certainly not against homosexuals...I have an homosexual couple in the family even with an adopted child and we had a suicide in the close inner circle because the man couldn't coop with his homosexuality...

No my problem is about forged sexuality from whatever "genre"...but if it is with mutual consent...as one  sees a lot of forged sexuality is in "relation" with one in a position of might and the other by circumstances in a position of submission...

Kind regards, Paul.

It was 15 April 1945. The Germans had been the occupying force in the Netherlands for four years, but since June 1944 we knew that Allied forces had landed in France and were fighting their way into Europe.
On 17 September 1944, a call had gone out from the Dutch government in exile in England, to the railwaymen/women not to report for work and remain hidden. At the same time, Allied airborne landings took place near Arnhem. People thought it would all be over in about a week.
Very little information was available, because from 1942 all radios had to be handed in to the German forces, and anyone caught listening to a foreign radio station was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Nevertheless, there were still people who had hidden their radios and were listening to the Dutch radio station Oranje, which broadcast via the BBC from England a few times every day. The 8am news broadcast was especially popular.
These people passed on any news, and so it travelled from mouth to mouth. Yes, of course something was added on, and something was deleted, but the main news did go around. In about seven days it became clear that something had gone wrong in Arnhem, and the war would not be over that soon.

The German forces became a bit stricter. My father (a stationmaster on the railways at Sneek) was advised to leave home and go into hiding, and with the assistance of the resistance movement he found a place with a farming family in the province.
Little did my mother and I realise that within a week we would also be told to leave the house and go into hiding. The resistance also found a place for us. We went to a farm near Bolsward, a very small town about 20km from where we lived. We stayed on that farm until 5 December 1944, when we went back to our own house again. The resistance movements had indicated that it was pretty safe for the wives and children of striking railwaymen to return home.
When we got home our house was totally empty, and all the windows had been blown out by bombardments. Unknown to us at that time, the resistance had moved all the furniture for safekeeping when we left, and over the next few days they arranged for it all to be brought back.
During the time that my father was in hiding, I only saw him once. From the time that my mother and I returned to the house in Sneek until 15 April 1945, things went its own way. You just had to be careful, but the German army soldiers did not bother us, and the German police force/Gestapo did not bother the railway families either.

And so we come to 15 April 1945. That Sunday morning was a very quiet day, there were not many people around, but then again every Sunday was usually a day on which a lot of people had a lie-in. What we had noticed over the previous two days was that a lot of German soldiers had left, and the schools, which over the last three months had been used by the Germans, were now all empty - doors were wide open, windows were open and the guards had gone, so we had an idea that things were about to change.

That Sunday morning we were outside in the street, playing and fooling around, and some of us started to stroll around, slowly making our way towards the town centre, about a ten minute walk away. Now and again we met someone walking around, the odd woman or elderly man. Going past the local grammar school we saw a few men going inside, and one of them, a teacher from our own school, turned around and told us to go home. We of course promised to do this, but as soon as he went inside the school, we carried on our way.
Slowly we made our way past the fire brigade's headquarters and through the narrow shopping street. We came out near the town's only cinema, which had been closed for the civil population for the previous six months. Again we wondered about the silence. Two younger men came past us and one of them told us to go home. We told them that we were on our way home and they carried on.
 It was actually a bit strange to see these young men, because the town's young men had left months ago to go into hiding, in case they would be deported to Germany for forced labour.

Suddenly, without any warning, a German armed carrier came up behind us. Inside were about ten German soldiers in camouflage and very heavily armed. We saw straight away that they were not the usual German soldiers we knew, but a different group. They stopped their car outside the old weigh house building, which we knew had always been used by the Germans to store things. While a few of them went inside, one of them walked over to us and told us that we should make tracks and run home as fast as we could and stay at home, because there was going to be a lot of shooting in the street.
At that time the few soldiers who had gone inside the building came out again, shouted to us and to the soldier with us, who now left us after again telling us to go home. A split second later we heard a small explosion coming from the building. Flames shot out of the roof and the whole building caught fire.
The Germans waved to us, again shouting at us to go home, and left via the street leading to the west and to the afsluitdijk (causeway) on the way to the west of Holland.
 We now made our way home. Running away from the fiercely burning Waag Gebouw, we came across a policeman named Brouwer, a family friend of ours. He told me to go home as soon as possible, and he mentioned to me that my father had just come home as well. It was quite a few days later that I learned that this policeman was in fact a leading member of the resistance forces (codenamed Bontje), an ex-marine who had fought the German army near Rotterdam on the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940.

We realised that things could get serious, and I now had a very good reason to go home. On the way we came across a lot of men wearing blue overalls with an armband around the right arm, imprinted with the letters NBS. Later in the day we found out that the three letters stood for 'Netherlands Interior Forces', the Dutch underground army. They all had firearms.
 One of these, strange to us, later became known to us as a Sten gun. Our schoolmaster was one of these people, and it now became clear to us why all these men went into the school earlier on.

On coming home - great relief - my dad was there waiting for me, also heavily armed and ready to go with some other members of the underground to the railway station and make it safe. During the afternoon various rumours went around, but at about 4pm we could hear a lot of noise of people shouting, and someone came running through the street shouting: 'The Canadians are here!'
Nothing could have kept me at home, so out of the house I ran, turned the corner and all I could see were hundreds of people shouting and clapping hands. I squeezed through them to the front and suddenly, there I saw them, a few military vehicles and men in strange uniforms, totally overwhelmed by the people around them. The first Canadians had arrived and after four years and 11 months we had been liberated from the German occupation.
The next few days was a time in my life which I will never forget. I grew up during the occupation, saw a lot of things and yet I still say that I had a happy boyhood.


Dirk

Dirk,

thank you so much for this colourful story and experience of the liberation in your town.

I, of course, as I was too young in 1944 at the liberation of our small city, my parents during the war in the house of my grandmother of mother's side.
But I have heard that many stories from my parents as if I was a witness too...

Some highlights:

The city moved two times in some days of occupier...first the Germans came in on their retreat from the North of France...then I guess the Canadians..then again the Germans with Tiger tanks on their way to Ghent and then again the Canadians now to stay...
My father was looking through the split underneath the gate of our "waggon garage?" (wagenpoort. een ruimte tussen twee poorten, waar de wagen voor visvervoer werd geplaatst. Wij hadden ook 'n paard voor die wagen, genaamd Pol ). He looked if it were German boots, that he knew, that passed or other ones. He knew the boots while we had two German soldiers billeted in the house during the war.
My mother, from hearsay, while she was to afraid to go on the street: when the Germans were passed the first time, one of  the "Witte Brigade" had shot a German dead at the corner of our street, some sixty meters from our house...but the Germans came back and with a Tiger tank...as they saw the dead soldier, they started to take people from the houses and as in 1940, nearly the same scenario "Zivilisten haben geschossen"; but a woman apotheker married to a German during the war, was able, on danger of her own life, to convince that it were the "voorhoede" of the Canadian soldiers, who had shot the German. And perhaps, while they were in haste they moved on...
My grandmother's fish shop was in between two cafés..after the liberation in one of them, the drunk soldiers fought to each other with the iron chains from the tanks, my mother said the Canadians against the English, but I later heard that it were the Canadians or English among them agains the Scottish...

Thanks again for your memories of childhood and kind regards from Paul.

I am too young to remember the war which was over before I was born, but I have some of my father's letters from Egypt and Italy where he was with his battalion, and he hated the war. Said afterwards that he would take to the hills rather than take part in another war. 

My memories of my childhood are of a farming, Presbyterian family. We were a family of 5, not made up of two parents and three children as most of those would be, but it consisted of my father, my sister, me, my grandmother (father's mother) and my great uncle (my mother's uncle, who seemed to come on their marriage to help on the farm). My grandmother gave up her retired life to look after two young girls under 5 at the time after our mother died following childbirth. 

We went to a tiny school of fewer than twenty pupils. It had great freedom - just one teacher and no teacher aides or secretaries. He went home for lunch and we were left alone for an hour to look after ourselves. I don't remember any problems though there was a day when I had a physical fight with my classmate, which resulted in great bruises for both of us. My family probably didn't notice them and even if they had would just have thought it was my own fault. Which it was. 

We helped a lot on the farm - my worst job was putting up breaks in winter. (Breaks are temporary fences to change where the animals can go for food.) The best was lambing - we loved lambing the sheep and I liked to dissect dead lambs; I fancied myself as a forensic scientist, not that I knew the name and I could only recognise pulpy kidney, which you could tell without doing an autopsy anyway. 

The other main job was shearing and we would help with feeding the shearers (in those days they had breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and sometimes dinner and all these meals had to come dead on time), wool-handling, and sweeping. There was also tailing, where we would put up temporary fences to hold the lambs, then chop or burn off their tails, brand them and earmark them. (That is making a hole in their ears that is distinctive to a firm.)

Our farm was sheep and cropping and I remember a wonderful night where I, aged about 12, was allowed to stay up till 5am getting the wheat into bales or whatever we used.

My childhood memories are from the late 1950s - early 1960s. We lived in what was called then a 'one up, one down' terrace house (later classified as a slum and demolished in the clearance programme). No bathroom, no hot water, a shared toilet with the family next door and having a bath in front of the fire on a Sunday night before school the next day. Anything else was a 'strip wash' with water boiled on the gas stove.

We had no car and supermarkets weren't any where near us, so fruit/veg/biscuits/cold meats/ cheese shopping was done at the local market and I can recall my mother laden with bags, and me with my little straw basket, walking home. Our arms hurt.

We had a small TV that you had to put sixpences in. This was because it was rented (TVs being expensive, I suppose). I remember one night looking forward to watching The Adventures of Marco Polo, buying some sweeties at the corner shop, and settling down to watch. The TV suddenly went blank, and Ma had no sixpences in her purse, so I never did get to see that film.

Caro and Hats,

 interesting childhood stories from both of you.

I now have what may be called a silly  question but if ,AND I SAY IF, we were suddenly plunged back to that period of time, after having been used to all the technological advantages over the last let's say 80 years, would we be able to cope?

No modern communications, medical treatment, shopping, transport , food and many other facilities as a result of present day inventions.

Yes . it is a silly question but what do members think?


Dirk 

Remember that in our childhood years we did not know what we know now.

I think we would adjust and cope, eventually. Life would not be as comfortable and convenient as it is now, but it wouldn't be impossible. 

We used to go camping a lot, and it's remarkable how you can adapt to a simple life - one ring gas burner, no light when the sun goes down, basic washing facilities, no TV or other electric gadgets, hanging washing on a string rather than using a tumble dryer. 

As for medical things, people had folk remedies which were effective in many instances (obviously not for diabetes, cancer, asthma etc.). My great-grandad was a 'quack doctor' and went round the fairs and markets of Yorkshire with his herbal potions and balms. He had repeat customers, so something obviously worked.

Hats,

  I was actually referring to the fact that due to some event the whole world was suddenly plunged back to let's say 1946.

Could the younger generation cope with an event like that.
 
They have been used to all the present and modern facilities available to them since the 1950's and suddenly that has all become useless/obsolete

and they have to do with what was available in the 1940's.

Even myself wonder if I could cope and I was a youngster then but I do wonder if the present younger situation could cope.


Dirk

Reading that 'Worzel Gummidge' will be back on TV jolted memory of hearing this great character on BBC 'Children's Hour' and how much pleasure the plays and stories  from it  gave- as well as enriching our imagination. TV has denied children that delight.

Worzel,  a scarecrow with a mangelwurzel for a head  and given to pithy opinion and audacity was greatly appreciated by me and my friends.

Dirk Marinus wrote:

I was actually referring to the fact that due to some event the whole world was suddenly plunged back to let's say 1946.

Could the younger generation cope with an event like that. They have been used to all the present and modern facilities available to them since the 1950's and suddenly that has all become useless/obsolete and they have to do with what was available in the 1940's.

Even myself wonder if I could cope and I was a youngster then but I do wonder if the present younger situation could cope.

I'm with Hatty ... Dirk, I think you are under-estimating how adaptable humans are, even the so-called 'snowflakes' amongst us. Frankly I doubt many people would have much of a problem, at least in practical terms, coping with the world of 1950 or indeed of 1900 ... if that was all that was available.

I currently have had no fixed-line telephone for over three months now; mobile phones do not work here; and twice over this same period the internet (via satellite) has also gone down, each time for about a week at a time. I reckon I've lost about 15% of my business revenue over this peak period, but I'm still functioning albeit with some difficulty. The trouble is that these days electronic communications are expected everywhere and so one is simply assumed to have internet and phone connection. Paper bank statements no longer exist; my income tax return has to be made online; all my taxes can only be paid online; and many online bank transfers also require a confirmatory code to be sent to ones mobile phone (despite there being no mobile phone coverage here, and now no fixed line either because Orange say it is too expensive to upgrade the line). Written paper cheques are still accepted in France but their days are probably numbered (they don't seem to exist in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany etc), but also with no telephone line and no internet I cannot process credit card payments, so it's cash only I'm afraid ... but then the banks are closing many of the smaller branches and their ATMs

In the past, while there wasn't the internet, no mobile phone network, nor even telephone connection through subscriber-trunk-dialling, nevertheless society was perfectly well organised around other technologies and systems. (Subscriber trunk dialing, STD, was only gradually introduced throughout the UK from the mid 1960s. It finally meant you no longer had to go through your local telephone exchange to be physically connected, by a telephonist, wire-to-wire/plug-to-plug, to just call a telephone in another town or city, ie outside of ones local telephone network, or heavens above, in another country!)

I was born in 1960 and we only got our first telephone installed in about 1966 and even then it was a 'party line' meaning that the line was shared with the two houses on either side. But there were public telephone boxes on nearly every street corner in towns. We also had two postal deliveries every day (except Sunday) and for an urgent message you could always send a telegram from a Post Office (and there were, besides the town's central Post Office, numerous sub-Post Offices in small shops throughout the town). If you needed information - an address or telephone number, train or bus times, shop opening times etc, - you just telephoned and you immediately got through to speak to someone, who simply looked up the information and told you, just like that!

Similarly until about 1970 we only had a very, very small refrigerator and no deep-freeze; but milk was delivered daily, a bread van passed twice a week, and we had a regular order with the local grocer's shop which was delivered every Saturday morning. Saturday morning was also the day the laundry picked-up and delivered (sheets, shirts, Dad's white coats for his work etc.), while coal for heating (and in summer that was still necessary for the domestic hot water 'boiler') was delivered about once a month. And of course until I started school my mother was full-time at home with my sister and then me, and so she had the time to do daily food shopping.

Going back even further to the nineteenth century when telephones did not even exist, it was perfectly feasible, at least in major towns and cities, to write a letter in the morning, put it into the local post box, and get a reply back by the afternoon delivery ... sometimes even, if one was quick, it was possible to write a reply to the response to one's initial query (posted that day), and still get it sent off for delivery that evening, or at least by first post the next morning. So again I say that if one was transported back in time, I don't think it would be the lack of modern technology that would cause problems as perfectly functioning alternatives of the time were in existence and embedded in the way society then operated.

However one aspect of the past that I would find difficult to get used to would probably be the prevailing social conventions and strictures. Social mobility, while not impossible, was very limited, and society's accepted views and prejudices were very different from now. I think I would struggle with pervasive religious orthodoxy, widespread racial and sexual intolerance, the restrictions of rank and class, and a society in which one couldn't aspire to any position of rank or authority - whether in business, education, the church, the armed forces, the civil service or politics - unless one was already wealthy, male, had been to a public school, and then followed pater to his old university, preferably either Oxford or Cambridge, to read 'Classics'. So if I were suddenly transported back 50, 100, 200 years, while I'd probably, of necessity, just keep my head down, I might very easily end up publically ostrasized and vilified for having ideas 'above my station', if not actually on a charge for disturbing public morals, heresy or blasphemy.

MM, great reply I have to say. And I was thinking a bit along the same lines, certainly about the Forties as for me and even for Dirk there is not that much changed about everyday life and as you say, perhaps for you even not. There is still post, telephone, cars, planes as in the Fourties and I guess as Hatsheput and you that the youngsters would adapt quickly. And it would perhaps not a bad thing that news would be slower to appear in the media and one would have more time to think about it.
But would the world of 1946 be able to coop with the amount of nowadays population?
I suppose the population of for instance Belgium, would be quickly reduced both to the  level of 1946 a 8,400,000 instead of the 11 million now and a life expectancy of perhaps higher than the 60 years of 1946, but certainly not the 80 years of now.
I for instance would have been already dead as the donor kidney didn't exist, nor the kidney dialysis (or in a primitive stade only for some individuals),
no cardiac  surgery to call but some examples.
Perhaps we would learn to accept again that our average life expectancy would become again some 60 years as in developping countries? Less elder people and perhaps still less children too as we are still used to that in the family planning? At the end an implosion of the population? Or would, as now, the inventions and the technology evolute again quicker than the human population?

Kind regards, Paul.

MM and Paul,

 Yes I agree with both of your replies but I still think that it will be quite a problem if suddenly out of the blue something happened and everything was turned back to the 1940;s 1950's.


We have all experienced and still see the utter chaos when there is just a computer failure.
Airports closing, banks and financial agencies stop financial dealings. Supermarkets tills etc don't function and customers are told that there is no shopping.Utilities like water, gas, electricity are unable to operate.nd there would be thousands of businesses unable to perform.
And that all because failure of only just one (1) modern appliance.


What would it be like if there was a failure at the same time of all the modern appliances ( remember I mentioned you are suddenly brought back to times past) like telephones  mobile or landline, news media like TV and  radio.

And I don't know what it is like in other countries but here in the UK during wintertime snow fall causes schools to close because teachers cannot get to school and parents cannot drive their children to attend school.  Trains , busses are not running.


In the 1940 and 1950 we as children went  to school , yes we had to walk through snow sometimes knee height BUT to school we went. 


But now a days ????

Dirk Marinus wrote:

Yes I agree with both of your replies but I still think that it will be quite a problem if suddenly out of the blue something happened and everything was turned back to the 1940;s 1950's.
We have all experienced and still see the utter chaos when there is just a computer failure.
Airports closing, banks and financial agencies stop financial dealings. Supermarkets tills etc don't function and customers are told that there is no shopping.Utilities like water, gas, electricity are unable to operate.nd there would be thousands of businesses unable to perform.
And that all because failure of only just one (1) modern appliance.
What would it be like if there was a failure at the same time of all the modern appliances ( remember I mentioned you are suddenly brought back to times past) like telephones  mobile or landline, news media like TV and  radio.
And I don't know what it is like in other countries but here in the UK during wintertime snow fall causes schools to close because teachers cannot get to school and parents cannot drive their children to attend school.  Trains , busses are not running.
In the 1940 and 1950 we as children went  to school , yes we had to walk through snow sometimes knee height BUT to school we went. 

 
Yes, Dirk, as you described it in your original message and this new one again, it would be a catastrophy even in such a degree that a big part of the world population could perish. I am not afraid, as Hatsheput and MM also said, that the nowadays younsters wouldn't be able to coop with the circumstances and of course the oldies as we, but as I alluded already to the sudden change to the 1946 circumstances, the urgent point would be to try to come again as soon as possible to the same health support as now. The doctors would be present with their knowledge and support, but they would lack the nowadays material, instruments and drugs to exercise their job. Food supply would be locally difficult by the lack of nowadays distribution and transport...perhaps day and night trains with steam locomotives burned with waste bio mass or coal?...the coal pits open again, because the oil terminals function less with the old methods of the Fourties?

No lack of effort from the youngsters and engagement, but even with strict sanitary rules, when one would have an illness, the chance of survival would be much less than nowadays. Even vaccins against epidemies, would perhaps not be able to produce with the old methods?

"Trains, busses not running" Perhaps they would have enough workless people to do the job to clean up the rails for the trains and the roads for busses?
I didn't live during the WWII as adult in Belgium, but I have heard enough stories, how people survived without cars and supplies from abroad...there was only one golden rule for survival and all was subordinated to that: food. And as you transport a nowadays entire population to the Fourties, I suppose there wouldn't be a lack of organisation?

Kind regards, Paul.