7. I Believe You and I Have a Few Things in Common

Chapter 7: I Believe You and I Have a Few Things in Common, steps away from Norah’s diaries to deepen the discussion of wartime romance. This chapter makes use of two further collections of letters to sock-knitters, both in the Imperial War Museum Archive. Some of the letters to Doris Dockrill, a teenage girl in Streatham, South London, who knitted for and corresponded with men all over the world, read like dating profiles. Mollie Baker, a married woman and a member of a Maidenhead knitting bee, received long, flirtatious (and very lovely and funny) letters from two of the sailors aboard their ‘adopted’ minesweeper. I end by asking about the place of romance, in different forms, in boosting morale in WW2 and whether we need to be concerned for the young women knitters. I conclude that, for Norah at least, the sheer excitement of her budding romance over-rode any concerns she may have had about Jim’s motives or sincerity.