Beyond learning the academics of rationing, however, children were directly involved in war-effort recycling and, like these British boys, collected all kinds of scrap materials. (Some of those children, now grandparents, requested that we produce this story.)

As they were during WWI, children were specifically asked to help in America, while even small children in Great Britain, during WWII, collected food scraps for pig farms.

Americans, like Brits, grew victory gardens wherever there was available space. These young people planted gardens in Florida.

Salvage drives, in the U.K. and elsewhere, encouraged people to gather their recyclable materials together in one place. So much material was collected (like these piles in Butte, Montana) that it could not all be recycled, although spent kitchen fat was used to make glycerin (an ingredient in explosives and drugs).

Urging parents to buy war bonds to protect their families, U.S. government posters also spoke directly to children:

• Lick the platter clean.



• "We’ll have lots to eat this winter, won’t we Mother?" (Because Mom canned the family’s food.)

As German planes bombed their country, British school children were forced to study in air raid (this is the sound of an actual London siren) shelters while infants wore gas masks. More than 7,500 U.K. children were killed by enemy action during World War II while countless others were traumatized.

Although children in North America were spared that agony, untold thousands had to quit school to help support their families. When one asks those children - now grandparents - what it was like to abandon their own plans and education in favor of helping out, the look on their faces answers the question. Back then, one did not put oneself first. The "Greatest Generation" had, after all, learned such lessons from their own parents.