11/11/2023 0 Comments Keep calm and carry onThese were the incendiary bombs lighting the targets the high explosives followed in a few minutes. The searchlights began to probe the night sky, and explosions leading to multiple fires began to glow. That night, the planes flew over us for about 10 or 12 miles and then the guns sprang to life. The sirens blared there was a short interval of silence, and then the drone of aircraft. One night when we were expecting another bombing raid over a nearby town, a British army officer called Captain May took me up to the top of our house and said we could watch the bombing. I decided another story might help to answer her question. I asked the children if they had any questions and it was then that my little eight-year-old friend immediately spoke up: “How do you keep calm?” Many years later, we learned that in light of the expected invasion and our inadequate defenses, the British government had ordered the printing of large posters, which bore the emblem of the Crown and the words “Keep Calm and Carry On!” During the long days of blackout and bombing, rationing and uncertainty, death and destruction, we had repeatedly been encouraged to “Keep Calm and Carry On!” And we heard rousing speeches from the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, telling us how to be brave and resist and to pray that God would save our country.īut the enemy never came the church bells did not ring. We were told we would be alerted to the enemy’s attack by the ringing of the church bells - they had been silenced from the beginning of the war. I shared about friends and neighbors going off to war and how some of them were killed and others were captured and held prisoner until the war ended. I told them about rationing, which restricted how much food we could buy or even which clothes we could purchase. We could hear the roar of the engines as the planes flew over our town, the crash of bombs exploding, and the barking sound of the anti-aircraft guns. I explained about the bombing and how we would go to the cellar when the sirens woke us in the middle of the night with their eerie wailing. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. It flew so low overhead that it seemed to block out the sun. I told them about the day the Zeppelin flew over my home in broad daylight. I had been invited to talk to a group of a few hundred homeschooled children about “growing up” in wartime England. I explained how World War I had been called “the war to end all wars,” but World War II started little more than twenty years later. The question was not the only surprise of the morning. “How do I keep calm?” I responded, scrambling for an answer, wondering how I explain in language that an eight year old can grasp. But it was her eyes! They held me with the kind of searching wondering, unblinking gaze known only to children in innocence. Although thousands were produced only a handful ever saw the light of day and they were completely forgotten until a poster was discovered in a box of books at a second hand book store called “Barter Books”.The question startled me. The poster was held in reserve for use only the time of such an extreme crisis and was never used. The original poster would have been issued as a means of allaying public fear had Britain been invaded. This print of Keep Calm and Carry On is a high quality re-print of the British poster designed but never used during World War 2. We loved this design but were caught out a little bit by the deluge of re-mixes and tributes to the original poster so we are discounting to sell the left over prints that we still have on hand. In the exact size of the original poster, this print of “Keep Calm & Carry On” was printed by the actual UK bookstore that re-discovered this classic 20th century design and was imported into NZ back before the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was well known. WakefieldĪrt Print Print size in millimetres: 595 x 420
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