Home Front Stories

Below are a few of the stories we've received.  If you have a story you would like to share, please email us at kitchenmemories@nationalww2museum.org

“My kitchen was in a dirt hole in North Africa. Our food was in small boxes that were covered in heavy wax. The boxes read World War I 1918. They gave these out to us in 1943, only 25 years old.”
 

-Pat S., Bellerose, NY

"During 'The War,' my mother worked in the payroll department at Radford Arsenal in Radford, Virginia. There was a commissary cart that came around twice a day to the offices with coffee – if they had them, they’d bring snack items, but those were few and far between. One day the commissary managed to get hold of a few cartons of Jell-O, and they sent it around on the cart. My mother described the scene when the cart came through the door. Someone spotted it and yelled, “He’s got Jell-O!” The panic that ensued was something like the opening of the doors at Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Workers leapt from desktop to desktop to get to the cart. My mother and another woman who worked there had small children, and a man who was the first to see the Jell-O grabbed two boxes and gave on to each of them. We came to refer to this incident as 'the great Jell-O riot.'"

 -Peggy M., Blacksburg, VA

“My mother was not into canning food but she was pretty good at counting the Ration Stamps and cooking for my Dad and the four of us growing kids. We lived on Palmer Ave. just one block from S. Claiborne Ave. and on the corner of Calhoun and S. Claiborne there was a grocery store where all the women in the neighborhood walked to buy their groceries everyday. They did this because the supply in the store was limited. Sometimes and early bird would come walking home telling another mother that there was meat or sugar for sale today. It would not take long for my Mom to stop sweeping leaves off the front porch and run in to take off her apron and house slippers, put on her walking shoes, grab her purse and get down to stand in line at the grocery store to buy her supply of meat or sugar or whatever according to the number of people in our house. I might add that many of these same mothers found a way to share their food by inviting a Service Man or two for a Sunday home cooked dinner. The USO could always supply the guests and besides treating these boys we could learn about their home life and families from across the country.”
 

-Muriel M., New Orleans, LA