Ben Wicks, beloved cartoonist and journalist, grew up in England. He was from one of the poorer districts of London but did much of his growing up in rural England. Wick and thousands of children like him were evacuated from the city just before England formally entered World War II.
No time to wave goodbye is an assemblage of commentary and letters from former evacuees, collected by Wicks from Britain, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and Canada. Some of the correspondents had never told their stories before - not to parents, spouses, descendants, or counsellors. Some were grateful for the evacuation and the way it shaped them as people. Others think it should never have happened. All agreed they would never send their children away.
This was a very difficult time for children, parents, and foster parents and, as a result, the book could have been an emotionally harrowing one to read. Wicks manages to avoid that by filling the text with brief excerpts from many letters. The stories and still poignant and the struggles clear but it's not nearly as overwhelming as an uninterrupted narrative would be. For that I am thankful.
I wanted to know more about the evacuations. I knew there would be both good and bad experiences, but I didn't want to carry the weight of a 70-year-old trauma with me for days afterwards. After all, there was nothing I could do to change it now. This book was exactly the format I was looking for - personal and direct but limited to brief glimpses of the long ordeal.
I'm glad these stories haven't been lost. They don't all have happy endings but some of them do and that's encouraging. It's hard to believe some of what passed as "normal" behaviour then. Unfortunately, I know people haven't changed much since then. That makes me wonder how I would behave under similar pressures. I'm not sure I want to know just yet.
I would recommend this to history buffs, social students, and brave child welfare advocates.
No time to wave goodbye by Ben Wicks. Published in 1988 by Stoddart. ISBN: 0-7737-2215.
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The occupied garden
I first stumbled across Kristen den Hartog's fiction as a short story in Canadian Living magazine. I was skimming the magazine while waiting in a doctor's office and was intrigued to see a name I recognized - the den Hartog girls were in school with me and my siblings many years ago.
A few years after reading the short story, I saw one of Kristen's novels at the library and had to see what it was like. I first read her work because I once knew the author. Now I read her work because I enjoy her writing. I'm pleased to see that she's been getting noticed in literary circles.
The occupied garden is a departure from her usual fiction because it's not fiction and it's not written by her alone. The garden is co-written by Kristen's sister, Tracy, and is a beautiful account of their grandparents' and father's lives in Holland around the time of the German occupation.
One of the things I enjoyed most about this book is the parallel drawn between the events and circumstances of the den Hartog household and the events and circumstances of the Dutch royal family at the same time. Getting married and having children at the same time heightens a feeling of connectedness between the two families despite the fact that their lives should be considered a world apart. I also appreciated the view of ordinary people surviving extraordinary times. We're not looking at master spies or war heroes here, but ordinary people at a time when daily life required daily acts of heroism and despair didn't always stay around the corner.
The research was thorough enough to provide insight into several different people's points of view which made this account much more interesting than the narrow view one usually gets when reading biography. It's hard enough to recover personal papers and anecdotes to document a famous person's life, but the authors here had access to letters, journals, and pictures from several of the families in the story, as well as personal interviews with surviving family members and friends, and all for the story of a middle class family. It's a welcome addition to the large collection of World War II stories and you don't have to be a WWII fan to enjoy it.
The occupied garden : recovering the story of a family in the war-torn Netherlands by Tracy Kasaboski and Kristen den Hartog. Published in 2008 by McClelland & Stewart. ISBN: 978-0-7710-2622-5.
A few years after reading the short story, I saw one of Kristen's novels at the library and had to see what it was like. I first read her work because I once knew the author. Now I read her work because I enjoy her writing. I'm pleased to see that she's been getting noticed in literary circles.
The occupied garden is a departure from her usual fiction because it's not fiction and it's not written by her alone. The garden is co-written by Kristen's sister, Tracy, and is a beautiful account of their grandparents' and father's lives in Holland around the time of the German occupation.
One of the things I enjoyed most about this book is the parallel drawn between the events and circumstances of the den Hartog household and the events and circumstances of the Dutch royal family at the same time. Getting married and having children at the same time heightens a feeling of connectedness between the two families despite the fact that their lives should be considered a world apart. I also appreciated the view of ordinary people surviving extraordinary times. We're not looking at master spies or war heroes here, but ordinary people at a time when daily life required daily acts of heroism and despair didn't always stay around the corner.
The research was thorough enough to provide insight into several different people's points of view which made this account much more interesting than the narrow view one usually gets when reading biography. It's hard enough to recover personal papers and anecdotes to document a famous person's life, but the authors here had access to letters, journals, and pictures from several of the families in the story, as well as personal interviews with surviving family members and friends, and all for the story of a middle class family. It's a welcome addition to the large collection of World War II stories and you don't have to be a WWII fan to enjoy it.
The occupied garden : recovering the story of a family in the war-torn Netherlands by Tracy Kasaboski and Kristen den Hartog. Published in 2008 by McClelland & Stewart. ISBN: 978-0-7710-2622-5.
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