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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Janette Hill of Age Concern Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, on behalf of the author who wishes to remain anonymous, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was a child when the war started, living with my family in Leominster. Our house had a large garden with a field/orchard attached, where we kept pigs, goats and chickens — we also had dogs and cats. The pigs were fed on household waste, with a special allowance of pigmeal* for those keeping pigs to use the meat in their household. A local butcher would come to slaughter them, etc. My mother then cured (salted) the sides of bacon on the stone slab in the back kitchen.

My father was an agricultural machinery and farm equipment salesman who was medically unfit for military service. He was highly regarded by the farmers for his reliability and knowledge, and would receive gifts of butter, pigmeat etc. — although often stopped by local police, he was never searched (food rationing was in force). He travelled all over Herefordshire, receiving a petrol allowance because he was connected with agriculture/food production. Sometimes he had to travel to Hereford for overnight firewatching duties, guarding the building in which he worked and surrounding premises — but there were no incidents.

Father was very good with his hands and could make almost anything. We had an Andersen shelter delivered, which he constructed inside a very large hole which he dug at the top of our garden. At first we went into the shelter when the sirens sounded, but soon we ignored them as nothing much happened in Leominster and it was quite a safe area to live. Though one night a parachutist did land in a tree in a field owned by the family, and had to be rescued by ladder. Nearly all the evidence was cleared away by daylight.

Near Leominster, at Baron’s Cross, there was a large American encampment. Some of the men on the camp attended the church services at the Moravian Mission church in nearby Cholstrey, where my father preached -he had been taught by his father, who also belonged to the church. When the camp closed down, the church, which had a beautiful organ, received many hymn books as a gift from the servicemen. Some American soldiers were billeted in our house, and would throw sweets or chocolates onto my bed in the evening when they came in, though they never entered the room.

We took in three evacuees for a short time, mainly because my mother already knew them, but as they were different ages from me, I didn’t have much to do with them.

I attended a local Dance School, and sometimes our class would entertain the troops. The floor was so highly polished that our shoes would slip, so we danced in bare feet.

For some school PE lessons we would go to an open air, unheated pool for swimming.

We had to walk almost everywhere, as there was very little public transport.
Sometimes we walked from Leominster to Bircher Common and back — 6 miles each way.
At hop-picking time, we would walk to the hop yard for bushelling, then walk home again.

There was a weekly farmers’ market in the town, which I think was divided into two sections: one for livestock, the other for vegetables and other food. Cattle were driven on foot through the streets to and from the market, and to the slaughter house.

Milk was delivered to the door in a lidded milk pail with half pint and one pint measures hooked inside. The milk was put into customers’ own jugs. One milkman walked the streets on his round wearing a yoke, from the ends of which were suspended lidded milk pails. Other milkmen used a milk float pulled by a horse.

*The meal ration was known as the Domestic Pig Animal Feedingstuffs Allowance. It was a formulated ration to feed the pigs fed on cooked/uncooked kitchen waste (known as pig-swill). Not all domestic pig keepers used it, some preferring other meals.

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