Personally poignant.

Not to get too personal here, but -- having just gotten back from a week of fun and friendship with my German friend, Martina, and my English friend, Sam, this struck me deeply when I read it this morning. How things might have been. How things have changed. Thank god we do evolve, despite all odds against it sometimes. I can't imagine my life without my international girlfriends. Cheers and prost, ladies.

from the Writer's Almanac today:

It's the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Britain, 1940, when Germany began to bomb England during World War II. France had been overrun. Germany's plan was to destroy the Royal Airforce before invading Great Britain.

The British had an advanced radar system, which helped them, but by the middle of August, they lost a quarter of their aircraft. Shortly thereafter, everything changed. On August 24, 1940, a German bomber accidentally bombed London. Britain responded by bombing Berlin. Hitler was so angry, he ordered his airforce to bomb London exclusively, turning his attention away from the Royal Airforce.

On the first night, 600 German bombers came in waves, dropping explosive and incendiary devices over East London where the factories and the docks were. The bombing of London continued over the next eight months. It was so incessant that it became almost a part of ordinary life.

An American journalist named Mary Welsh was living in London, and she wrote in her diary, "Today has brought the usual post-bomb misery, the taste of powder in the mouth, burglar alarms ringing incessantly, glass crunching under our shoes in the flat and also outside, clothes in closets and drawers heavy with dust, my eyes red and face old looking and feeling as though it was burning, and a terrible job to concentrate my thinking."

But the British people were remarkably resilient and went about life as normally as they could. By the end, more than 30,000 Londoners had been killed, more than 100,000 houses destroyed and a third of the city burned to the ground. But historians now feel that if Hitler had focused on destroying the Royal Airforce instead of bombing London, he probably would have won the battle.

The Writer's Almanac :: August 13, 2005