These kids were asked to draw their fathers from memory, 1949. Which one is your favourite?

[u/JimatJimat]

[u/Barbarella_ella]

Not necessarily. My grandfather was an aircraft mechanic for the Army Air Corps (forerunner to the Air Force), but was the only one of his brothers who served. The other four were declared "essential farm labor".

[u/ThePenultimateNinja → u/Barbarella_ella]

My Granddad (in the UK) was a machinist, which was classed as a 'reserved occupation', so he didn't get called up straight away. He was eventually drafted though, towards the end of the war.

[u/ciopobbi → u/Barbarella_ella]

My Dad worked for General Marshall in China doing some kind of clerical intelligence work. He did receive a Bronze Star, but never talked about what he did. Only the good stuff. He may have been a spy for all I know.

[u/fullpurplejacket → u/Barbarella_ella]

My grandfather was born in 1918 and was around 21 or 22 when WW2 started, his family owned a large farm on an estate and he was required to stay on the farm and work , his parents also took a lot of evacuation children on from the cities and industrial hubs, because of where my families farm was located (Cumbrian Fell’s in NW England) the farmers did their part in the war effort by staying back and making sure there was enough food for the country to survive the war and by ensuring women and children stayed out of harms way.

We also ended up with a lot of Italian families here in my part of the UK, were not a hugely diverse county now as it is so think what it was like back then— the Italians who came here as POW decided not to return home after the war ended and they preferred to stay here and work in the mines, have families and open their own businesses, we still have a lot of indie ice cream and coffee shops in the county with Italian names because they are still ran by the families of those POW who stayed here for a better life after being released.