大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by a volunteer on behalf of Pamela McWilliam and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I can remember the smell of the shelters - brand new untreated wood. The walls were lined with corrugated iron and the smell was of wood and general dampness. Actually it was a welcome break from class. We used to sing songs from the First World War and practice our times tables. It was exciting down in the shelter because you never went anywhere during the war. You never had any treats, the big treat was visiting an auntie round the corner.

Rationing was a great topic of conversation. All grown-up talk was about food, but as children we found this boring! Food was never wasted though. 鈥淪oldiers died bringing you that 鈥� eat it up!鈥濃�e were told. If we were down there for any length of time, our school dinners were brought to us with great difficulty and hilarity by the dinner ladies鈥r any mothers who were found walking past! I remember my mother doing this once and being slightly outraged because she had overlapped into my school world. A make do and mend attitude was very widespread, but amongst the working classes this was no different to the pre-war days.

An average day was like this 鈥� you would get up and the kettle was put on so you could wash and clean your teeth, breakfast was bread, butter and marmite. I think my mom saved the milk for me. At school we had scripture, maths, morning break, then dinner and long play, then in the afternoon we had history. Dinner at school was horrible, the cabbage in particular. You had to eat it though, it was character building.

The mothers suffered far more - they always had to pretend. Children were protected during the war. My mother was a professional singer and taught piano but when she married she gave it all up. Being a wife and mother was considered a full time occupation until the war.

I survived, we all did and after the air raids the boys collected shrapnel, the girls didn鈥檛!

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