Wen I was 4 or 5, I kept on hearing on the radio about World War III, so I assumed for some time thereafter that there had been three world wars, and the third one ended a few years before I was born.

Mike

Up until the age of seven or thereabouts, I believed that world war two was still on, but I had no idea who Germans were or what the war had been about. I did think though, when playing war games in the playground, that they did have better uniforms than we (the British) had.

Andy H

When I was about 9 or 10 years old I read a fiction novel about a little Jewish girl growing up in the US in the years after WW2. In the book, she would play act with her friends about the war, and specifically, about concentration camps. I had no idea what they were talking about it. But, I assumed that it was something that the author of the story had just made up, and had nothing to do with real events.

Deidre

I once got in a lot of trouble in school, when I was in Grade 5. I was obsessed with battleships, and tanks, and aircraft and all that, which isn't really all that unusual. I was obsessed with World War II at the time, but no one had ever told me about the Nazis and the Jews. One time at lunch hour I was running around with some friends of mine, and I decided to pretend that we were planes from the war. We all got to be British planes, and when I ran into some other people I knew, they became the Nazis, which at that point I think I believed was synonymous with 'German'. Because one of these 'Nazis' was Jewish, my teacher yanked me into the classroom and gave me a stern lecture about how what I did was wrong, and then made me go out and apologize to this child, who (I think) was about as oblivious as I was. The teacher then called my parents at home, and I hid in the closet, because I was afraid they would be mad at me.

I'm not sure exactly why the teacher made such a big deal out of it, when a basic clarification of terminology would have fixed the situation... I'm still obsessed with the Second World War, but I know the difference between Germans and Nazis now. :)

Matthew

When I was small
My father told me about his aunt
Who foretold the event of the Great War
(It was World War I)

She said that one night,
She saw soldiers marching across the
moon.
That story never failed to give me the shivers.

Elissa

When I was around 7 years old (1961 or 62), we used to have 'air aid rills' at school, where we lined up in the hallway, in alphabetical order, with cardboard signs hanging by strings around our necks. We had to squat down and fold over our legs, with the sign protected by our bodies. Some of the kids told me that we were going to be bombed and the signs were so they could identify our bodies. I was really upset until my mother explained that this is America and it is against the law to bomb America.

DL

I used to believe that a war was when men in colonial outfits would tell their enemies to meet them at an area with green grass and a metal fence surrounding the area like in many playgrounds. They would then all meet there. There, the good guys and their enemies would sword fight and the winners of the war were the ones that won the sword fight.

Aerith

I believed that Winston Churchill was an American, because only an American could be that great.I was 7 years old at the time.

Marsha Freeman

When I was little and asked my mom what Vietnam was (this was during the war), she gave me the emotional (but unhelpful) answer, "I hope they remove that country from the face of the earth!" So for years I went around with the mental image of a Vietnam-shaped piece cut out of the planet. That's what I thought she meant should be done with it!

Anon

When I ws told about Pearl Harbor and the war against Germany and Japan I got the whole idea of the war totally wrong. I remember asking my dad why we went to war with Japan and he told me it was because they hurt us. I said, "Oh yeah cuz their eyes are funny huh?" My dad laughed a little and told me no. He told me about the allience made between Germany and Japan and how they were trying to hurt as many people as they could and I said, "So the German people have funny eyes too?" My dad laughed a little bit this time and still tryed to explain it to me. I dont know how but by the end of the talk I had with him I thought that the Jews were the ones with funny eyes and thats why we went to war...weird huh?

Mike

When I was a little boy, my grandma went to Germany. She, of course, brought back some gifts and stuff. I liked them so much that I thought Germany was a cool country and it hasn't beed in any wars because it's so good. :)

Edgars

I can remember when I was about 5, I thought the Gulf War was being fought in the Gulf of Mexico! I think I could have sworn that was also being fought in China. Hmmm...

Mr Andy Man

We had a cannonball in our back garden (I had a strange upbringing), and my brother told me it was the very one that had destroyed the castle at Scarborough, where we would go on holiday each summer. Later, it transpired this was a lie - it came instead from a museum my mum used to run in Dundee, and dates probably from the nineteenth century.

Nicholas Jones

During the Vietnam war, I had this belief that it could be brought to an end so simply. All the President had to do was stand up on a pedestal in the middle of the front line and just wave his hands and tell them to stop fighting. It would be over just like that.

Lynn