A Little Kid Remembers WW2

Short Non-Fiction by David Andersen + Interview

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I was less than two years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. And I was less than 6 on Victory in Europe Day.  As a child, I accepted those times as normal, for I knew nothing else.

My mother sang me to sleep with the then popular song Blue Birds Over The White Cliffs of Dover as if it were a lullaby. I thought it was a song about birds. Many years later, I realized that it was about warbirds.

I enjoyed blackouts.  My dad driving down the street at night with the lights out was great fun.  My mother tossing a pot onto a pile on a street corner at an aluminum rally was a routine event, also fun.  Seeing Mustangs and B-25s descending into Holman Field, where my cousin installed their radios, was thrilling, though only the older kids knew them by name.

But I got into trouble when I carefully tore up my parent’s ration tickets.  It was my first experience with perforated paper, so I was intrigued by how the paper tore so neatly.  It was a disaster because my parents could no longer buy basic materials—certain foods, gasoline, just about anything metal.  And so I appeared before the Ration Board with my pile of “pretty tickets.”  My parents explained to the three solemn men seated behind a wooden table what I had done.