All Clear

If you like World War II history and want to tip your toe into a little science fiction, this is a good place to start. I loved this book and the whole Oxford Time Travel series. Connie Willis has a unique talent that brings history alive through her characters and provides readers with a vibrant and accurate historical experience. The second half of this duology is another massive 600+ pages, and it is just as well researched and crammed full of WWII information as Part 1.

Most of the book centres around the London Blitz. In the fall of 1940 through to the spring of 1941, it was a place of true peril, with bombs falling almost every night, thousands of civilian and military casualties and the dire threat of invasion looming. As our time travelling historians continue their struggle to find a way out and return to 2060 Oxford, their desperate scramble, continuous obstacles and impending time paradoxes mirror the daily war struggles and uncertainty of their fellow civilians. As an example of what was faced, Willis provided a somewhat lighthearted contemporary newspaper account. After being rescued from under the rubble of her bombed out home, a London housewife was asked if her husband was still trapped underneath. She snapped back: "No, the bloody coward is at the front". Daily life in 1940's Britain was a struggle, with constant fear of destruction and death. The events of 29 December 1940, one of the worst nights of the Blitz, is really well done. As our protaganists frantically seach for another historian that may be their way out, they again face obstacle after obstacle due to the chaos caused by the bombing. You can feel London's panic, the frantic efforts to save people, property and seek shelter, as the incendiary bombs set swaths of the city on fire. Yet, somehow St.Paul's survives as a beacon of hope for both the British and our historians despite their dire situations (set in the book as a major divergence point for the war). In addition to the Blitz, we also acquire insight into the disparity as rationing began, the miracles of Bletchley Park code breaking, the terror of the 1944 V1 & V2 missile incidents, the intrigue of Allied Intelligence's deception efforts around those missiles and in misdirecting the Nazi's during D-Day preparations and finally, the joy of the VE Day celebrations in Trafalgar Square.

When I finished this book, I could not help sighing with relief, that yes....... we had won the war. As time goes on and the last of our veterans pass away, it becomes easier to forget just how close we came to losing that war. On so many occassions, victory hinged on luck, key events and decisions that could have gone either way. Was it the Allies combined resolve that won the war? Or was it fate? Our Oxford historians don't know either. With their "drops" back home inoperative, they are in constant fear of negatively affecting any of the thousands of events that were necessary for the victory. They are as unsure of the war's outcome as any of the contemporaries they interact with.

One particular quote sticks with me, that perhaps best sums up the Allied victory and our main characters' actions: "So many lives saved and so many sacrificed - so much courage, kindness, endurance, love-- must count for something". We are reminded that wars are not just won by the Generals, Admirals and heroes in the great battles. To defeat the Axis powers, it took everyone doing their "bit" in multiple massive efforts. In All Clear, Willis gives us examples, page after page, of ordinary people doing just that. From the "land" girls who helped keep food production going, to the ARP Wardens and ambulance drivers who faced death daily as they rescued bomb victims, to the amateur entertainers who performed at air raid shelters keeping up morale, and to the workers that showed up to work each morning to maintain some normalcy of everyday life. There are countless examples of others as well, and that by doing so, each was a different kind of hero and a necessary piece of that victory.

This book is a message of hope, that despite all the chaos, in the end, things will somehow be okay. We can certainly use a little bit of that in our lives today as we face our own set of crises.