Looking at my father's family, it appears that I will have plenty of scope to explore different experiences in WWII Britain. Originally, I looked at the children who were listed with my paternal grandparents on the 1939 Register. Included were their three boys plus the boys' married sister, the only girl in the family. But what about the other older brothers? The ones who already had families of their own? I've now started looking them up on the 1939 Register as well.
Those older brothers will widen the scope of my inquiry and, I'm sure, provide more areas of research. The first one, Harry, born in 1899, served in WWI and raised objections to my father joining "his branch of the service", as my father joined the RAF like Harry had long before him.
Military records will be of help when sussing out the men's activities but what about the women? They didn't stay home ducking bombs. Their help was needed and by December of 1941 they were being conscripted, particularly the younger single women between the ages of 20 and 30. In many cases, they didn't serve a military role, per se, but they were needed for defence and to till the land in place of the males who had worked on farms. Records about that service will be hard to come by, I know.
Sources:
Women at War: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwtwo/women_at_war_01.shtml
Image:
By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//39/media-39787/large.jpg This is photograph D 9309 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24371738
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