Live parents!

My father worked in the shipyards during the war, had tried for RAF but was turned down on medical grounds. My father's teenage cousin was the first civilian, in Sunderland, to be killed in an air raid. Living near the shipyards, papermills and engineering works made us a target for bombs. There were many bomb sites in the streets around where I lived.
My sister was born at the end of 1940 and my mother went to her mother's in the country to give birth. I think she was afraid of giving birth in an Anderson shelter without help. Mother said she had to sit in the shelter on her own with a tiny baby, father ARP warden, house so close to the coast that planes flew low over the house, so low you could see the pilot in the cockpit When you here stories like this it makes you appreciate what strong people our parents were.

None of my rather large family were casualties of the war, but later in life I did have a very close male friend who, with his sister, were with their aunt when their own home received a direct hit during an air raid - he never saw his mother and father again, and had absolutely nothing to remind him of them or his early childhood - everything was lost. He always kept his family close, and was a really lovely man, despite the early childhood trauma.

My father served in the army for 6 years. For a long time he was a searchlight operator and the searchlights were the first target for each wave of German bombers. Fortunately he was never hit, although they tried. On the other hand his civilian brother was killed by one of the first bombs that dropped on the East End of London.

My father was in Singapore but came home in one piece. I am not aware that any of his comrades died - but there again he refuses to talk about the war so I would not know.

I was always puzzled that all my friends' familes were intact.

Anno, my FiL was in the Home Guard - and said much the same thing.

My grandfather was a professional soldier who had retired in 1937 but was recalled when the war started. He was an expert on the safe storage of explosives and spent the war running a committee doing just that. 5 of his 7 sons served in the war but to the best of my knowledge only one saw active service, going over to Fance two days after D Day and fighting all the way to Germany, another was an army chaplain, so at the front with the fighting forces but not involved in direct combat. He too reached Berlin.We have a family photo taken in 1946 showing my grandfather and his seven sons, all in uniform. By then the two youngest had also been called up.

In WW1 my maternal Grandfather, his brother, my maternal grandmother's brother and a cousin died. Three of them within six months in 1915

My father was in the RAF and my mother was in the ATS Fortunately my father didn't fly - he was a compass adjuster, so they both came through unscathed. Only one of my father's large family died and I believe that was illness (pernicious anaemia) not injury. My mother was an only child but she had a cousin in the Merchant Navy who died when his ship was torpedoed. My father's home was one of a handful in the road not flattened by bombs and my mother's home had some windows broken and lost some tiles. One of her neighbours, an ARP warden was killed by shrapnel while walking down the road.

My father was also too old to be called up in the war but an Uncle was a prisoner of the Germans and after returning home was never again the person who went away and all his family suffered his changed personality until he died.

My father and the fathers of very many of my school friends were in reserved occupations in a huge explosives factory which is why I knew hardly anyone whose father had been in the forces. My dad was the captain of the local Home Guard - he used to say that Dads' Army was not far from the truth! - and my uncle also worked in some kind of reserved occupation; another uncle was too old to be called up. The only member of the family to be on active service was my dad's cousin who was (allegedly) the youngest Lt Colonel in the Army. We always reckoned that he was a war casualty because he became an alcoholic, with serious effects on his family relationships.

My father was at home during the war working on radar. Neither of my parents lost siblings despite some of them being in the forces. One of my mother's cousins was in a japanese prison camp and died working on the Burma railway. My mother never forgave the Japanese nation for that and wouldn't buy Japanese goods.

My Paternal Grandfather was killed on the Somme he was a motorcycle messenger, my Dad was born after he was killed , they never met. My own Dad was in a resevered occupation , driving lorries to and from the docks in London he never would talk about it so I have no idea what was entailed.

Both my grandfathers were in WW1 and one served in India for several years. Both survived. My father was a telephone engineer in WW2 - a reserved occupation - working for some time at Bletchley Park. He said no one there knew what anyone else was doing outside their immediate colleagues.

My husband did have an uncle killed in WW2.

My father was in the RAF, he was killed on December 5th, 1942, and I was born on June 1st, 1943. Strangely, my first child was born on December 5th, 1963, 21 years to the day after her grandfather died.

My father only served in th last couple of years as he was at medical school. He then went in at the deep end to Italy and then Palestine then Italy again.

As I was born in 1950, it would have been tricky if either of my parents had been killed during WWII. My father worked for Dutch Military Intelligence in London during most of the war, so the Blitz was his biggest threat and, of course, my mother's too. One of my uncles was killed during the liberation of the Netherlands and another was injured, I think, on Russian convoys.