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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Anastasia Travers a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Mr. Cowan and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Cowan fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Britain had been utterly crippled by the cost of the war. Men were back perhaps not so damaged physically as the First World War but more emotionally. How could a marriage resume after an absence of 4-5 years?

It was bitter cold. Electricity was intermittent, no fuel, the family was living in one room for warmth, not social reasons. School was only in morning. I remember my mum dressing me in a hat, coat, and gloves. The wireless was comforting, especially Children’s Choice, Uncle Mac and Dick Barton Special Agent. My father earned less on returning to his clerk job in the bank than as a Major. He was then hospitalized following a hernia, moving documents in the strong room.

My brother, born in ’46 had proved a difficult birth so my mother was given a very early form of antibiotics, consequently he was very gravely ill, and he developed pneumonia.

How thankful we were when the bank manager arrived with his car full of logs. The care and difficulties of marriage had reduced my mother to depression so without my granny, I do not know that we would have survived as a unit.

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