Many of our friends and readers have stories about the war that they would like to share.

Whether you or your loved one was on the battlefront or helping fight the war from home, we would like to hear your story.

Here is a story from our Home-Front Memories:

Ane Hanley
Category: Home-Front Memories

I was 13 when the war started. In my childhood, it seemed like the war was going on forever. There was a real difference in that war. Everyone helped. Everybody got a ration book during WWII. Many things were rationed - meat, sugar, coffee, butter, canned goods, gasoline, car tires. My mother used to trade sugar coupons for coffee coupons. Even books were printed in smaller formats - that is when paper covers started. I still have one book from that era, and it has a message suggesting when one is through with it, to donate it to the USO so the soldiers could read it. There was a weekly movie called "The March of Time" that was almost all about the war. There were patriotic songs - one of them was supposedly about a priest in the Navy who was quoted as saying, "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." Every night we listened to Gabriel Heater - a commentator with a sepulchral voice who would frequently open his program with a line such as, "One of our bombers is missing tonight," or "There's good news tonight." When I went to the U of C in the fall of '45, we still had ration books, which we gave to the dorm management because our dorm served meals. There were women in WWII also, of course. I firmly expected that when I got to be eighteen, I would join either the Army or Navy, but the war ended when I was still 16.