Your post is terrific and very timely - started writing my memoires 30 years earlier... better get moving again. Time is just running away - but I remember childhood events during WWII more clearly than yesterday.
I understand that’s normal for geezers;)
I always loved hearing my mother who was born in 1935, talking about the war. She had a cousin that was a POW and her uncles were pilots. She played with everyone on her street and always had Sunday dinners (lunch) at the Harpers. The lifestyle was wonderful and simple and they paid attention to each other. Lots of cousins, aunts and uncles around all the time. One of her uncles later was a pilot for Pan Am and brought her a real French poodle puppy from France.