While You Were Away

I am currently sorting through and selling a lot of books. I am finally parting with the majority of my homeschool books and I am just happy that with Facebook there is a way to sell them and know they are going to another family to help in their homeschool journey.
I also have many of my grandfather's books. My grandfather was a travelling book salesman for Oxford University Press after the war and spent lots of time away from home, travelling the country via train to show his books.

This isn't my grandfather - it is what one of the country train stations would have looked like.

He gradually worked his way up at Oxford until, by his retirement, he was in top management. As such, he had a lot of books at his death and lots came to me, as the resident book lover in the family. When I was a child, I loved nothing better than to visit Pa's library. And since then I have always wished for a dedicated room of my own for a library.
But sadly, I cannot keep all the books (I wish I could!) My most treasured would have to be a signed first edition of Patrick White's The Tree of Man, with letters from Patrick White to my grandfather. But there are so many amazing treasures. My grandfather would always file any letters from an author pertaining to their book inside the front cover of the book itself. So I have found letters from lots of famous people. They are all staying with me, in their original book.

But this is the booklet I wanted to show you today.

My grandfather was a medical officer in WWII, serving in Singapore. As such, he was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942 and became a POW at Changi for the duration of the war. When he returned home in 1946 (after spending time recuperating in Burma), there were so many general knowledge things that the returned men just did not know about. So they were all issued with this little booklet. It contains sections like politics, general news items, show business, the war itself (as they heard nothing about the progress of the war while prisoners), the home front, etc.

I suppose until I found this little booklet, I hadn't thought about all the information at home they would have missed out on. It would have been like coming back to a strange new world, with people talking about all sorts of unknown topics. My uncle was a baby when Pa left for the war and in school when he returned. I cannot imagine missing all those years of your child's life.

I am so interested in the history of the World Wars and hope that we will never forget the sacrifice made by so many.