Children At War by Vanessa Harbour

With history we often talk about silent voices – those who have no voice and who had no chance to tell their story. Children could be perceived like that. The period I am passionate about is the Second World War and children play quite a role in it. Many of those roles were all about humanity and freedom.

The reason I am interested in the Second World War is because I was brought up on stories about it. My parents were teenagers at the beginning of the war. My father lied about his age so he could join up early. He drove tanks initially before becoming an officer in the Parachute Regiment.

My mother joined the WRNS and led quite a life, which she loved telling me about.

The perception of children in the UK during the Second World War was that they were evacuated. And yes, over a million children were evacuated with their schools from towns and cities to the safety of the countryside. Most went by train and were settled with foster parents. For some who’d never been outside their cities it was an adventure; for others they were desperately homesick. It was hard to adjust to being separated from family and friends. One of my favourite books about evacuees is Good Night Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian.

However, for those who stayed in the cities things might have been very different. During the Battle of Britain, they might have watched the planes of the RAF and Luftwaffe in dog fights above them. During the Blitz itself, 7,736 children were killed and 7,622 were seriously wounded. The Blitz meant many children were orphaned or a sibling might have been killed during the bombing.

Their education was also disrupted as schools were damaged. Often, they might have to leave their classrooms when there were air raids. Many children pulled their weight. During the war, children left school at the age of fourteen and would be in full-time work, maybe agriculture, offices or major industries. Those over sixteen, including Girl Guides and Scouts assisted with Air Raid Precautions during an air raid. They’d take messages, be fire watchers or work with the voluntary services. Boys received their call up papers at eighteen, and soon girls were also conscripted, so would receive call up papers too. Check out Phil Earle’s book, When the Sky Falls. It deals with a lot of the issues that children had to face.

It wasn’t just the teenagers; younger children did their bit too. They’d salvage scrap metal, paper, glass and waste food for recycling. Also ‘digging for victory’. They still got a chance to be children though. They might have homemade toys. Books and comics were very popular. Children would happily play on bombsites and sometimes go to the cinema.

Children in Britain at least did not have to face the threat of persecution – unlike those in Europe. In both my books, Flight and Safe, the main characters Jakob and Kizzy constantly face the threat of persecution as one is a Jew and the other has a Romani background. In Safe, I also introduced the idea of 'Lost Children’ or Found Children as I called them. These were children that moved around Europe in packs at the end of the Second World War having lost all their relatives so they only had each other. Can you imagine how resourceful they had to be to keep themselves safe and alive?

Nazis had a tendency to pick on children. They would target them for racial reasons, or because they looked disabled, or if they had a suspicion they were linked to political activities/the Resistance. 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered by the Nazis – thousands of Jewish children were saved by being hidden away. The Nazis also murdered tens of thousands of Romani children, and 5000-7000 physically and/or mentally disabled children were also murdered. The Nazis were very cruel - this was all driven by Hitler’s desire to have a ‘perfect race’.

This is a child’s shoe found at Auschwitz, displayed at Peace Museum, Caen, France.

As well as the concentration camps, Nazis created ghettos. Within the ghettos, Nazis considered the younger children to be unproductive because they couldn’t work so were named ‘useless eaters.’ Children in ghettos often died of starvation, disease, lack of clothing and shelter. If you want to know more about this time, Morris Gleitzman’s Once and Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword are powerful books based on true stories.

Children didn’t accept their countries being invaded or their friends being humiliated. They stood up to the Nazis in their own way whether it was in France, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, or Czechoslovakia. All over Europe children stood with their parents in the Resistance to fight the anti-Nazi cause. Some maybe wanted adventure, some were desperate.

The resistance might take a childish form such as burping in soldiers’ faces or singing patriotic songs. Sometimes they would co-ordinate coughing fits when they were supposed to be watching Nazi propaganda films.

Their innocence could be of benefit though. No one would question a little girl pushing her doll’s pram, not realizing there were books hidden inside, taken from school to stop them being burnt, or a message maybe, or even a gun. The children might be used to hide or escort a shot down pilot or escaped prisoners of war. The danger was constant. A sixteen-year-old girl, whose parents had died, successfully hid thirteen Jews in her house to keep them safe, while looking after her younger sister. Check out Tom Palmer’s book Resist which is based on Audrey Hepburn’s war time experiences, getting information and passing messages to the resistance, while living in the Netherlands.

I want to keep remembering how brave these children were and I know in many wars all over the world there are many children being equally as brave.

Bio

Vanessa Harbour is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Winchester. Previously she ran her own PR & Management consultancy. Also, she used to work as an editor and Academic and Business Consultant at the Golden Egg Academy, and now writes online courses. She’s written for The Bookseller on being a disabled author. Flight, Vanessa’s first novel, is a World War II middle-grade thriller selected for Empathy LabUK’s Read for Empathy Collection 2020. Safe is Jakob and Kizzy’s second adventure, set against the last days of the War, involving horses and this time some ‘lost children’.

Social Media

Twitter @VanessaHarbour Facebook https://www.facebook.com/VanessaHarbourAuthor Instagram @nessharbour Tik Tok @nessharbour YouTube: Channel: Vanessa Harbour https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMZcIV7Ql2bPE1YeZFRwAlw Bookseller: https://bookwagon.co.uk/

First in Flight by Catherine Randall

I was recently lucky enough to spend a few days on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the United States. The Outer Banks are a long string of barrier islands stretching along the coastline, with the Atlantic on one side and the sheltered waters of the Sound on the other. These days the Outer Banks are a popular holiday destination, due to their long, unspoilt sandy beaches and it was these same beaches and dunes which made the Outer Banks the site of one of the biggest breakthroughs in human history. It was here in December 1903 that the Wright Brothers made the first ever successful powered flight.

The Wright Brothers Memorial on Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina

The dream of achieving human flight is probably as old as humanity. Throughout the nineteenth century, a succession of inventors and engineers had worked on solving the three great problems of aircraft design.

LIFT – generating an upward force greater than the weight of the plane

THRUST – propelling the plane forward

CONTROL – stabilising and controlling the plane’s flight

By the end of the 1890s, progress had been made on the problems of LIFT and THRUST but nobody had worked out how to control an aeroplane once it was in the air so that it didn’t roll from side to side or pitch forward, or continually veer from right to left.

It was American brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright who in 1899, after observing the flight of birds, realised that stabilised flight could be achieved by warping the wings of the plane, inventing a system which allowed the pilot to twist the tips of the wings, as a bird does, through a system of pulleys and cables.

The Wright Brothers - Wilbur and Orville

The Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, but from 1899 onwards they devoted themselves to the goal of human flight, spending their summers on the coast of North Carolina, where the huge sand dunes just south of the town of Kitty Hawk, at a place memorably called Kill Devil Hills, were the ideal setting for hundreds of experiments with kites and gliders. The location provided three things that they needed – plenty of wind for lift, sand for a soft landing, and privacy. They didn’t want other people copying their design!

Reconstruction of their 1903 Flyer, viewed from the back

In 1901 they built their own wind tunnel so that they could collect their own scientific data on aereodynamics. In 1902, after hundreds of test glides, the brothers felt sure that they had cracked the problems of lift, control and stability. The following year they designed their own engine and the first effective aircraft propellers and in December 1903 they returned to Kill Devil Hills, finally ready to test out their new flyer.

The pilot in the 1903 Flyer was positioned lying down, between the wings

On 17 December 1903, surrounded and supported by men from the local lifeboat station, Orville Wright climbed into position in the flyer. The flyer was designed so that the pilot lay down between the wings, controlling the machine with a stick and a lever, and controlling the warp of the wings by swinging a cradle with his hips. On the first flight the flyer only stayed aloft for 12 seconds, going 36 metres before pitching into the sand. The brothers took it in turns to make three more flights, getting used to the controls. Each time they spent longer in the air, flying further, until on the fourth flight, Wilbur piloted the flyer for a distance of 260 metres in 59 seconds.

The lift-off point of the first flights is marked by the First Flight Boulder on the left, with four other boulders marking the length of the first four flights

Today, this site is the Wright Brothers National Memorial. The First Flight boulder marks the lift off point for the four flights, and the four flight markers show the length of each successive flight. You can also see reconstructions of the sheds where the brothers lived and worked each summer, and on Kill Devil Hill – like the surrounding area, now sown with grass – there is a huge monument to the brothers, rising up impressively above the flat surroundings. In the Visitors’ Centre, you can see a reconstruction of the original flyer, and on the other side of Kill Devil Hill is a sculpture of the complete scene of the very first flight, complete with sculptures of admiring locals, including the man taking the photograph that is shown here! He had apparently never used a camera before.

The photograph taken of the very first flight. Orville is in the Flyer, Wilbur running alongside

Of course, the Wrights’ achievement was just the beginning for human flight. If you are interested in the history of flying, there are loads of other people you can research, including the French aviator Louis Bleriot, the first man to fly across the English Channel, and the pioneering American aviator Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. Five years later, she disappeared with her plane during an attempt to fly around the globe – but that’s for another blog!

WRITING CHALLENGE: For your writing challenge this week, imagine that you are Wilbur or Orville Wright and write a letter to a friend back in Ohio, telling them about this incredible thing that has  just happened – you have achieved the first ever powered flight! You might want to tell them how hard you worked and the problems you had to overcome. Will you confide in them what you plan to do next?

 Alternatively, imagine you are one of the local people watching – how does this make you feel? Does it make you want to be part of the adventure of human flight? Has it ignited a dream for you too?

The White Phoenix by Catherine Randall is an historical novel for 9-12 year olds set in London, 1666. It was shortlisted for the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award 2021.

Published by the Book Guild, it is available from bookshops and online retailers.

For more information, go to Catherine’s website: www.catherinerandall.com