Home Fires

Oh! Has the plane crashed on the house where the baby's being born?

Yes they did, but I think Marek will want to go home, and we have to get rid of Bob! !! Also Marek has to stay alive!! Lots of hurdles, but fingers crossed!

WW2!

Didn't some Czechs go to Canada after WW" - we can only hope that the lovers manage to get there and live happily after after, perhaps Bob will fall into the canal.

Russia liberated a lot of allied POW from camps in eastern germany, and once the cold war started Stalin was reluctant to release them, and in return demanded the repatriation of Warsaw Pact nationals! He had to be placated to prevent further incursions into the West particularly Berlin and to get the POW back, so the nationals had to go back.

Yes, I remember, and had a friend who was a child refugee from Hungary.

However, because the Soviet troops had withdrawn from Czechoslovakia and the government colluded with Moscow expelling ethnic Germans from the country, it was still a 'free' country therefore those Czech soldiers would have been sent back again.

Whereas Poland became part of the Soviet Union, therefore the Poles were allowed to stay here.

In 1948 Czechoslovakia became part of the Warsaw Pact, in other words a Soviet satellite country, with a puppet government approved by Moscow. Remember the Prague Spring in 1968, and how that ended. Hungary was the same, rising up in 1956 and both uprisings brutally crushed by Russian military. None of the countries of the Eastern bloc were part of the USSR, but all had puppet governments approved by Moscow. Almost certainly Marek would have gone home, but who knows what his future would have been, pre war officer classes were viewed with suspicion by the communists!

The Soviet army withdrew from Czechoslovakia after WW2, so presumably the Czech soldiers featured in this series would have gone back there after the war. It was a communist state but not part of the USSR.

There was a Polish Government-in-exile in England during the war. A lot of Poles stayed here afterwards, and of course many pilots had joined the RAF here; if you have ever seen a White Eagle Club it was started by Poles. One of the boys I knew when I was young had Polish parents and I am sure the family visited Poland in the 1960s (he brought me back a present which I still have).

That's the key Welshwife, your Polish chap married his nurse so he would have been allowed to stay on here after the war. Someone working on defence projects would never ever have been allowed to visit Poland which was part of the Soviet block, until the fall of communism. I knew someone who'd married a German POW, and through that marriage he was able to stay here. Luckily he came from West Germany and could visit as frequently as he liked. There is a book called The Victims of Yalta which does explain, in detail the reasons for these repatriations including the fact that Britain and America agreed to hand over Poland to Stalin in return amongst other things that Russia would support the allies in the Far East. Not really cosying up to Stalin, more like protecting particular agendas. No different from today really!!!!

I wonder what criteria they used to decide who stayed and who had to return to the Eastern bloc. We had a Polish neighbour who had been in the Resistance as a young man and been captured and in a concentration camp. He managed to escape from the lorry taking them to be shot and hide till the American liberated the area. He stayed with them and British troops acting as an interpreter, as he spoke several languages, and ended up in hospital in UK as he had developed TB. He married one of his nurses and went to University in UK and worked for a defence company till he retired. He was not allowed to travel back to Poland etc once he was working on defence projects.

Some of the things that went on after the war did rather take the gloss off winning didn't they? The thought of cosying up to Stalin is so incredible now.

Oh, thank you Dd. Yes it was a very sad story, both for us and thousands of others. After the war the forced repatriation of foreign troops who fought for the allies and whose countries were by now in the grip of 'Uncle Joe' was imo a very black mark on the part of the British Government, particularly the Cossaks (Stalin demanded their return) who were going back to certain death, and begged to be allowed to stay, some even committing suicide sooner than being forced back to the USSR. Luckily later,my mother met and married a wonderful chap who had been a POW in the Far East, so we were the lucky ones, unlike so many others. War is hell, and that's the truth!

What a sad story nigglynellie although I suppose there must have been many similar ones. My father in law was lucky. His family were Italian immigrants and he joined the army and ended up being captured and sent to a POW camp in Italy. He had to spend his time there pretending to be English because the Italians wouldn't have taken kindly to him fighting against them. His mother had to write to him using a false name.

I'm sure you're right starbird about the conkers(and acorns!!!) Imported Maize, and then conkers were really only used for making cordite in WW1. By WW2 cordite was only really used to operate navy guns and was quickly superseded hence the redundant conkers!!!! If Marek survived the war he would have almost certainly been forcibly repatriated back to Czechoslovakia. The only way he could have stayed here, if he had wanted to, would have been to have married Pat, and as you say Bob would never have divorced her. After my father was killed, my mother met and became very fond of a Polish Airforce Officer. When the war ended he wanted to go back to Poland to help rebuild that shattered country, with us following later. Unfortunately Stalin had other ideas, and their plans of building a life together ended with him and thousands of others on their return being arrested and shot as traitors. I'm afraid this is what would would certainly have happened to Marek if as it seems he would have wanted to go home and take Pat with him.

I heard that the conkers were never used there were piles of them left at the end of the war. I also thought the maize was unbelievable.
Pat could live in sin with her airman after the war - Bob will never divorce her. The reality was that such women had little choice - they had promised to honour and obey and that's what they had to do.

I do like the programme but do think the continuity is poor, as well as historical fact. But it doesn't real,y matter I take it for what it is.

Well exactly, when imported maize ran out it was supplemented by conkers not by home grown maize. Farmers were growing wheat, sugar beet, barley, potatoes carrots, turnips etc. The nation had to be fed.

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/makhist10_prog3d.shtml

I posted this link a little further up-thread, niggly

Maize could no longer be imported from USA so we had to grow our own to aid the production of cordite.

No doubt some use would have been found for the husks and the stems.....Fuel maybe?

Well yes!! but I think it's beyond poetic license to film a crop being harvested that wouldn't have been planted in the first place!!!! Maize was first grown in the UK in the late 1950's early 1960's not 1940! Bit like the outgoing Wing Commander having a beard in the first episode! The air force didn't and don't have beards!!!!

DH thought the field was too large for a WW2 crop. It was also harvested too quickly, cleanly and neatly but that's dramatic licence. It had to be a crop that could be filmed being harvested by hand and there are plenty of fields of maize available for filming given that nowadays it feeds anaerobic digesters.

Interesting reading about needing starch from maize to make acetone which was vital in the manufacture of cordite. Potatoes would also have been suitable but they were a necessary food crop for the nation.

I think you're all right about the maize!!! Big boo boo by ITV!!

They're doomed, doomed!!!!! Well it looks that way, with the Czechs moving out to goodness knows where, how can they possibly be together? It's only 1940, so five years minimum even if Bob 'disappears', before they can think of a life together, together with the fact that even should Merek survive, he will undoubtedly be repatriated to Czechoslovakia, to a very uncertain future, unless of course Pat is a widow by this time, then he could marry her and stay! It's a worry that's for certain. Mind you there seems trouble ahead on every front, so nerves are clearly going to be frayed one way or the other!!!!

Perhaps she'll bump him off and bury his body under that pile of maize!