To find out
how you or your family can be a part in the most comprehensive record
ever compiled of a nation at war, why not come along to one of our People's
War workshops at the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Learning Centre?
The workshops
explain more about the background to the People's War project, and show
how anyone can add their personal or family memories and mementoes to
this unique internet archive.
Caspar Mason,
of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ History's World War Two team said: "The
People's War is a way of honouring the memory of those who sacrificed
so much. Maybe your story is a brief anecdote, or maybe it's a six-year
odyssey - whatever your experience, you are welcome to contribute."
Call 01452
418180 or e-mail clare.parrack@bbc.co.uk
for forthcoming People's War workshop dates and times. Or call in at any
time and Learning Centre staff can show you how you can add your personal
contribution via our computers when it suits you.
Personal
photos can be scanned and, given notice, we can photograph other memorabilia
for you. Pictures can then be submitted online with your People's War
contribution without the precious originals leaving your possession.
Wartime
life remembered
Here are
some of the stories that emerged at a People's War workshop in D-day anniversary
week, June 2004.
Mary and
Les Weatherburn, from Gloucester, were both children in London during
the war, and were evacuated to the country. Les remembers bomb-scarred
London as "like a Boy's Own adventure - we were never scared and
had great fun picking up shrapnel and exploring bomb-sites."
Geoff
Johnson, from Gloucester, only discovered in 1980 that his father,
who served in the Allied Expeditionary Force in the Second World War,
had been a boy soldier in the 1914-18 conflict, who lied about his age
to join up. He is pictured with some of his Dad's papers - he is now trying
to trace his full military record.
It was out
of the frying pan into the fire for William Ramsden, from Shurdington.
After growing up in India where his father served in the Army - and where
the family survived a severe earthquake in 1935 - he and his brother and
mother came to England when war broke out and stayed with her relatives
in London's East End.
At 14, he
caught mumps and the doctor told his mother she was on no account to let
him out of bed until he was better. She took him literally, with the result
that young William ended up spending 10 days of the Blitz hiding under
the bedclothes while the rest of the family took to the air raid shelter!
William survived
but his father Arthur, a battery sergeant-major in the Royal Artillery,
was not so lucky - he died on active service in April 1945, three weeks
before the end of the war. William is pictured with his father's military
badge, embroidered by his father as part of his occupational therapy while
he was in hospital with malaria.
War
stories and volunteer help wanted

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