Happy Days Are Here Again History?

Contributed by: platingman
Location of story:: Windsor, Ont. Can.
Background to story:: Army
Article ID:: A3109448
Contributed on:: 09 October 2004

"Happy Days Are Here Again"
And now permit'south move ahead to the summer of 1942. How could anybody experience anything else but good knowing this was a fourth dimension of rise prosperity, even though it took a state of war to bring information technology about? I don't like to say information technology, only I have to admit that in this respect, state of war was a godsend, a real godsend, at least in the economical sense. By the third twelvemonth of the war practically every factory in the city hummed on a iii-shift basis churning out the goods of war. Few were there in 1942 that didn't have a job. Any able-bodied homo who didn't take a chore was just too damn lazy to get one. Even women were at present working in factories, a domain that was, until then, populated strictly by men. Now, with their hair neatly protected by turban-similar headwear they worked on production lines making everything from machine-guns to shells, to wiring harnesses for army vehicles. Some even became welders. About the only place where the women of Windsor weren't working was in the foundries or in other heavy industries like stamping plants and forges. Yeah, It was a dandy feeling for the breadwinners of the households to be finally bringing habitation pay envelopes or cheques every Friday. "The day the eagle shits" was the mutual expression i heard on Fridays in those days. Pay-day! As happy were the merchants around town whose cash registers were ringing to the delightful melody of money rolling in. It filled the tills as people went on spending sprees buying what they hadn't been able to purchase ever since hard-times hit in '29. Although in those days nosotros kids enjoyed our young years in a way kids of today could never hope to friction match, we didn't know or else pretended not to know that our mothers and fathers we're forever worrying about where the next dollar would come from to put food on the tabular array, or to pay the hire, or to pay the taxes. Far too many lost their houses during the hungry thirties. And we weren't that far from it. In fact our father lost property he owned on the eastern side of the metropolis for non-payment of taxes.
To say the war years made life once over again worth living again, was only speaking the truth. No more sitting down to a plate of pork & beans for supper or a bowl of clear broth soup with a few small chunks of meat floating around in it. Now we sat down to steaks, pork chops, roasts, and chicken every Sunday. No more 'hand-me-down shirts', corduroy relief trousers and inexpensive running shoes. Now the heads of the household could plunk down coin for good clothes and improve running shoes and boots from Grayness'southward on Ottawa or Wilkinson'southward downtown. The elite Smith's Section Store and every other shop in the weeks before Christmas were finally doing a land-office business, and people were buying appliances, article of furniture, clothing, shoes and everything else they had coveted for and then long but couldn't afford. Good times were back, and whether information technology was right to remember this style or not, is not for me to say. All I know is that that in that location was a heck of a lot of people around who were supremely glad they were earning the kind of money that could bring them all the necessities and comforts that had been across reach before. Regardless in that location was a war on; they were indeed good times. Information technology was a adept excuse to sing that lively song, 'Happy days are here again,' I don't call up in that location were all that many war workers who lost sleep or suffered guilt pangs over profiting from the avails of war. After all, the war was almost a one-half a world abroad, and as far as most Canadians were concerned, we hadn't really gone to war yet.

There was plenty to read near the war every dark in the Windsor Daily Star, as was its official name in those days. The pages every mean solar day were full of the events happening on body of water, on land, and in the air. In 1941. The only heartening news was the fact that the Luftwaffe'south bombing campaign against London and other major English language cities had been largely defeated. And so, things also looked good for awhile equally the British eighth Ground forces collection Mussolini's million bayonets back beyond the sandy wastes of the Due north African desert. That is, until General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps came on the scene, and things started going the other way. Back and along the battles in the bleak mural went on between the British 8th Army and the Afrika Korps. And and so came the monumental defeat of the British at Tobruk, past now a household name. Tobruk fell, and with information technology, a huge supply of equipment, guns, fuel and supplies became German property, while 15000 men went into captivity.

The state of affairs all of a sudden became pretty grim, simply then came a change in the command of the British 8th Regular army, a man past the name of Bernard Law Mont-gomery. Under his leadership, it wasn't long before the resurgent 8th Regular army began to ringlet upward the Germans and Italians, pushing them back all the way across the face of North Africa and eventual defeat in Tunisia. All this made keen reading later on. Upward until the time the fortunes of war slowly turned in our favour in May of 1943, the Germans and the Japanese had everything going their way. Where Canadians overall should have been deeply concerned about the way things were going on the state battlefronts and at body of water, this, outwardly at to the lowest degree didn't seem to testify. You wouldn't know it if you stood by the gates of the city's factories at end-of-shift time and observed the smiles and the full general feeling of well-being every bit the workers with tiffin-boxes in paw were on their way dwelling. "Some other day, another few dollars earned" had to accept been what was on the minds of these people, more so than the progress of the state of war itself.

Equally for the Canadian Services, just the Air Force and the Navy was taking the fight to the enemy. British Bomber Command had a lot of Canadian Air Forcefulness personnel manning the planes in the nightly raid over Occupied Europe. While on the high seas Canadian sailors were in almost daily contact with U-boats as they helped escort convoys on their way to England and Murmansk in the frozen wastes of norther Russia.

As for the Canadian Regular army based in the U.K. information technology was a well-known fact that it hadn't washed much of anything except chase over half of England'south picturesque landscape on endless schemes and exercises. It was nothing at all that made for nifty reading or that information technology could stir the country up into an outpouring of patriot-ism. In other words, war hysteria, at this phase or so information technology seemed, hadn't yet taken hold of the Canadian people by and large. Granted, we did lose a couple of infantry battalions in an outrageously stupid try to placate the British by bolstering the defences of Hong Kong. Most probable because the Regiments that were based at Hong Kong were from the prairies and Quebec, the grievous losses somehow didn't hit dwelling with the people in Windsor and district with anywhere nigh the same depressing impact as information technology did in those sections of the state whose sons, brothers and fathers did the bleeding and the dying. For this reason at least, Hong Kong was soon forgotten hereabouts. A selfish feeling had taken over the minds and hearts of the people in Essex County, or and then that'due south the manner it looked to me. "If it doesn't affect me, why should I worry about information technology?" This sort of outlook was the heartless way a proficient many Windsorites were thinking about the war in general.

Except for the outset yr or so of the war, patriotism slackened its jingoistic grip on Windsorites by early 1942. Virtually of the so-called patriotic types, adventurers and sundry others had long since gone into the services, most with adept intentions, others but to run across what they could become out of it. The rest of the service-age young men were either too busy making money to answer the country's phone call or were waiting for Ottawa to come calling. Patriotic fervour Globe War I fashion hadn't seized the imagination of Canadians overall quite every bit much as it did in that other state of war. The early rush to the Colours when war was declared in September 1939 was the upshot, at least it seemed to me, to be one of desperation on the function of men of military machine age to escape the dreariness of the depression. To take on a uniform would hateful no more manus-out article of clothing, no more than soup-kitchen food, no more hopelessness, with i dreary penniless mean solar day leading to the dreariness of another. It was these negatives of life that thousands upon thousands of young Canadians put behind them as they flocked to the Armouries in every town and city across the country to join upwardly. Patriotism, for most was merely part of the reason for their willingness to serve their state. Of course, this is merely my interpretation of what prompted young Canadians to serve their state in war, I could very well be wrong in good function.
The young men waiting in long line-ups at the recruiting centres knew that from their commencement day in uniform whether it be Navy bluish, Regular army khaki, or Air Strength bluish, they'd be well taken care of. They knew they'd be sitting down to three square meals a day, their vesture needs met, and there'd exist a comfort-able bed to sleep on—not quite every bit soft equally about were accustomed to, just comfortable nonetheless. They could also exist assured of their recreational needs. How could they go wrong? The services spelled security, and that'south what really mattered most. The "die for your country outlook" the WW I generation had been hoodwinked into, was clear-y absent this fourth dimension around. Modern youth was getting to be a little too smart to be taken in by flag waving politicians and other assorted jingoistic types. Giant posters urging them to serve their country and reminding them of their duty to fight for liberty didn't sway all that many into rushing to the enlistment centres. If personal security wasn't the whole reason for a lot of boys doffing their civilian dress and replacing them with khaki, Navy or Air Strength uniforms, then it had to be the simple lust for adventure to motivate them into joining up. What else? In whatsoever branch of the Services they chose take chances in plenty awaited them, Few, it seemed to me, gave much thought to the very real possibility that they might not come out of the war alive or in one piece.