The Bloody War Mate: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: "Brilliant! I was enthralled. I even missed my aerobics class, a ritual, because I couldn't put it down."

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed the book
Review: "Brilliant! I was enthralled. I even missed my aerobics class, a ritual, because I couldn't put it down."

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed the book
Review: I have just finished your book on life in north west london during the war, well belmont circle actually.

I am from washington near newcastle myself but my wife's family lived in Tenby ave. no 32 from about 1968.

my wifes mum was brought up in weston drive and formby ave. from 1939. I will pass on your book to her and see if she recalls some of the events and places you mention.

I enjoyed the book although it was slow to start. it certainy caught the mood of the times and my wife's grandma will have known those times very well.

we lived in york ave. behind tesco's which I presume was the Essoldo you mention in the book. We were married in St anelm's too but I do not remember it being cold and drafty, maybe barn shaped inside though.

we lived in Portland, Oregon a while and from that experience I would say the house's over here were indeed little but I do not remember those in Tenby being that small but I agree on a US scale they certainly are.

My wifes great uncle at 84 is still around and he worked on the railways but he went off on war service first in europe but got away at Brest and then in africa and up italy and then Normandy.
Luckily never shot at nor fired a shot himself. He did once billet for a while with Dennis Healey, in Normandy, the former labour minister of the 1960's but he has no other claims to fame.

I hope your next book is going well and I did enjoy this one.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyed this book
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed it from page 1 to page 300. In 1939, I was just 5 and my twin brother and sister celebrated their first anniversary the day Chamberlain told us on the wireless, September Sunday morning, that we were at war with
Germany. My Mum was busily preparing for a family b.day party and she started to cry, it was the first time I had ever seen my Mum cry, but she remembered the First World War.

The details in the book brought back SO MANY memories that I guess I had not thought about for many moons. I too learned to define the airplanes, the Spitfires, the Hurricanes and the awful German black criss-cross on their planes, also had a collection of metal gathered after a bomb dropped. I too
hated the gas masks we carried everywhere and were sent home to collect if we forgot.

I seem to recall there was an alarm warning after the regular air raid wail.
We were told to lie flat on the sidewalk, if walking, or go into the nearest shop/house (everyone took strangers in) in case the German pilot machine-gunned you, less easily seen horizontal! Sometimes the Germans managed to fly in low under the barrage balloons that filled the sky, just above the rooftops and you could see their goggles.

We used to have foreign troops two or three to Sunday dinner most weekends,Mum cooked and they brought their ration food coupons with them. First time we had ever met an Australian, or an American. All these years later if I'm clicking on the TV and come across an air-raid siren, it sends shivers down my spine for second or two.

I agree with the book's main character, John, whom I think I almost know after being with him for the past few days that the doodle bugs were the most frightening.