My mother was 18 when the blitz started and she lived in the middle of Manchester, a frequent target of the German bombers. She related stories to me about being a member of the volunteer fire brigades and assisting in the rescue of victims of the bombings. Some of her stories were heart-wrenching, including one sad story of her finding body parts of a young child and baby in one destroyed flat.
Her first love and fiancee was a pilot in the RAF who was shot down and killed during the Battle of Britain, but she never talked much about him or what happened. Soon afterwards, her family decided she and her sister needed to get out of England and she was put on a troop ship that departed Scotland and made it's way to NYC. It was all very secretive and they had no idea of the route when she boarded the train and headed north. It was a round-a-bout trip with several stops and disembarkations before they finally arrived at the port. Her stories of having to go out on the deck in the freezing North Atlantic because of U-boat drills frightened me as a child and stay with me to this day. She married a GI and ended up in Oklahoma...I'm sure it was a marriage of convenience to help her get out of England and ended after only two years.

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It is sometimes harder to fight my superiors than the French.
-Heinz Guderian