Knitting at the ready - a little reflection for Poppy Day

I love old books. The other day I was searching the bookcases for a crumbling copy of Winnie the Pooh I knew I had somewhere. But when I opened a rather dusty book I had put my hand on it took me by surprise. Not A.A. Milne but a war time fictionalisation of  real life on a RAF station in World War II entitled Readiness at Dawn by "Blake". I flipped through the black and white photographs peppered through the book - on the last page one paragraph caught my eye.

The year was 1941. It was the early hours of the morning in the operations room....
" The map was empty. The W.A.A.F. with the gasp was reading her poetry again. Two others were knitting service garments, and one a baby's jacket. The men sat and read, or wrote letters or just sat and smoked and did nothing. The hard light beat down on the scene. The telephones were quiet."


The power of a simple task like knitting to calm the nerves, to provide the bare necessities for war heroes and to add to the little tinge of expectation for a new life to come just struck home to me. These days you often come across great nostalgia for the 1940's vintage style but the tragic reality of the era is not one we should forget.