A Family At War: Getting Some Service In During The World Wars

A Family at War considers the wartime experiences of families brought together by the marriage of two baby boomers. Both families had men in the forces and women on the Home Front. Experiences of the eleven people featured include notable events such as the Great War’s first shots at Mons in 1914, the sinking of Jervis Bay by a German battleship, the blitz on Coventry in November 1940 and that on Manchester in December. One served in the Bletchley Park codebreaking centre; another saw the Japanese surrender in 1945. There is less dramatic material, too, on trench warfare, service in Egypt, West Africa and India, on training, promotion and attitudes to the army. The evidence used to compile the book draws on official sources and also private papers, including hundreds of letters which provide insight into the lives and feelings of young couples forced apart by war