Ancestor: Hugh and Gwendolyn "Gena" MacIntosh Greason
Descendant: Phyllis J.
My British grandparents survived WW II in London.
The first day of the War, my grandfather Hugh Macintosh Greason wrote to my mother (by then an American citizen living in Joplin, MO) that there had been an air raid and they had decamped across the street in an underground shelter.
He finished his letter about their situation with the sign-off K.B.O., which is a very British statement meaning "Keep Buggering On. i.e., meaning we must keep going on.
Hugh was usually a man of few words. He was the youngest child of six and only son born in Ceylon where his British parents had immigrated to manage a tea plantation. When Hugh was only three his father was killed. In order to survive his mother became a matron at a boy’s school in Columbo, taking Hugh and two of his older sisters with her.
St. John’s provided him with his early education. He continued his education at the University of Glasgow where he finished courses in Mechanical Engineering. This education gave him the opportunity to consult all over the world. In 1919 he moved his family to Rangoon, Burma, where he built and managed the Burmese Petroleum Company for more than 10 years.
At the outbreak of the war he was living in London, but he traveled again after the war to Egypt, Uruguay, and Australia.
Today all of us everywhere must K.B.O.