WHAT a contrast. The year 2000 and our supposed caring society sees drivers fighting on petrol station forecourts to get to the pumps, selfish motorists hoarding gallons of petrol in cans in their garages and people frantically driving around looking to fill up the last cubic centimetre in their already threequarters full tanks. All the result of a few days of blockades of the oil refineries.

In 1940 it was a different story when people in Britain faced the terrifying threat of a German invasion and the submarine-imposed blockade of the North Atlantic.

As our story about Edith Kup shows, there were so many prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect their loved ones and homeland. And there were many others readily accepting hardship in the same cause.

Although war is a terrible event to live through, the sacrifices made by the young pilots in the Battle of Britain displays a level of selflessness which we would do well to emulate today.

Those same sacrifices were made by people at all levels of society, from men and women in the forces to the workers in the factories, distribution industries and the coal mines who made the war effort possible.

Now we can't even hear a rumour about petrol shortages before we race to the filling station to be first to grab what we want and hang the rest of them.

Added to the petrol fiasco was the panic buying in supermarkets which hadn't even begun to run short but were still invaded by the selfish, eager to strip the shelves of necessities before anybody else got there.

Looking at Britain today, those young men and women who survived the dark days of 1940 must be wondering whether it was worth bothering at all.