大象传媒

I was born just before the Second World War, so I could not remember life before it started. We lived in Birch Avenue, off Norcot Road. How surprised I was to find out from people and story books that there had been a time known as "Before the War" when things could be bought for money only and there was no need for ration books, coupons or permits, and probably you did not even have to join a queue which snaked right out of the shop and half way down the street.
Every night the blackout curtains had to be drawn before the lights were turned on. We did not often go out after dark, but on rare occasions we had to turn the light off first, then open the door and feel for the steps with our toes. I remember seeing searchlights at the back of the Pulsometer Works in Oxford Road, and parts of aircraft which were no doubt being repaired. It was a treat to go out at night for some fish and chips. The shop was so well blacked out that we had to get right up to the door before we could see whether the lights were on and it was really "Frying Tonight".
We kept gas masks in the hall cupboard and sometimes tried them on for fun. At first we had no air raid shelter, and once my mother and I crawled into the cupboard under the stairs, which we had fitted with an electric light bulb. Then the Anderson shelter was delivered in pieces and while my father and the neighbour were putting it up and bolting it together I kept wanting to be lifted in and out of the hole they were digging. But we never used it, for it seemed unlikely that our street would be targetted. After the war, it was bought from the local authority, dug up and reassembled as a garden shed.
We got used to hearing wailing sirens at night. One Wednesday afternoon my father was at home because it was early closing day, and I was playing on the floor near our french windows, when they all rattled in their frames. My parents went outside to look in the direction of the town centre where they had heard explosions, when a plane swooped over our garden. "Look" they cried,"It's got a swastika on it!" and got back inside pretty quickly. That night my father was on fire-watching duty in Fergusons in Broad Street and found it full of dust and the doors jammed in their frames. My father had been in the First World War, and when his age-group was called up for the Second, he was exempt because of being in charge of firewatching for a section of the town. His equipment was a bucket of water, and a stirrup-pump which we afterwards played with at home.
At the top of our road was Ranikhet army camp and we used to hear bugles and see the soldiers about, for there was an old right-of-way across the camp and local people insisted on being able to use it. The soldiers practised digging foxholes in the nearby woods, Lousehill Copse. When D-Day was approaching this camp was full of Americans and when my mother and I tried to cross the camp as usual we were turned back by a teenage US soldier with a rifle. I remember being in the garden on D-Day when the sky was droning with thousands of aircraft, flying in V-shaped formations, and all heading the same way. There were gliders and with good eyesight you could see the cable which attached them to the towing aircraft.
Most people were growing vegetables,and many began keeping chickens, rabbits and sometimes ducks in back gardens. Where the Dee Road estate now is, a golf course had been dug up for allotments and some people kept pigs there.
My grandparents lived in East London. At first they came to us as evacuees along with other relatives, but most went home when things were quieter. They slept in their cellar on camp beds with nice white sheets beside their heap of coal. It was a joke in London that if you got trapped in a cellar, you could choose whether to to be drowned, gassed or electrocuted, so they had the coal hole enlarged in case they had to wriggle out that way. I went into their garden and counted all the barrage balloons in the sky which could be seen from there, and I think there were eighteen or twenty of them.
One of my uncles was a conscientious objector and was sent to do farm work near Evesham. He got chilblains through picking brussels sprouts in freezing weather, and his mother knitted him some mittens. He lived with other objectors in very primitive huts and his sister used to go down at weekends to collect his washing. This aunt worked for the electricity company and had to arrange for the coin-in-the slot meters in bombed East End houses to be emptied promptly, otherwise looters would get there first.
On the way to visit the grandparents, in a Circle Line train near Aldersgate, there was a wall missing and we could see through a gap St. Paul's Cathedral standing alone in the midst of what looked like a meadow of weeds growing on the remains of bombed buildings.
When the war was getting near its end we had a bonfire ready prepared at the Highlands School, Wardle Avenue, but there was some doubt when the victory would actually be declared. Finally a boy came back from lunch and said he had heard it on the radio, so this bonfire was lighted and we danced around it singing "Here we come gathering nuts and may", and were allowed to spend the afternoon playing games. My family went to a thanksgiving service at St. Michael's church, Tilehurst, and it was packed to the doors with extra benches carried in, a very unusual sight.
That summer we managed a holiday in Bournemouth were there for WJ day, when there was a lot of red, white and blue bunting hung out. We found both piers had gaps in the middle where they had been blown up and there were stakes along the beach at low water. My Dad took me to a news theatre to see the newsreel. Mountbatten was in this film in a white uniform. Although it was a historic occasion I really preferred the Donald Duck cartoon which filled in the hour's programme.
We children expected that peace-time would bring some sort of fairyland at once. Instead we were well into out teens before rationing was abolished.
My mother kept an accounts book throughout the war years. This shows several purchases of blackout material for cutains early on. There were payments of two guineas for War Damage Insurance. Shoe repairs, socks and stockings, and darning wool were big items, as we walked so much. There were electric trolley buses and the fare was 1d. or 2d. and my father had a bicycle, but otherwise we walked a great deal, and took country walks for lack of anything else to see. I remember seeing prisoners of war digging out ditches, supervised by a soldier. They were based at Basildon, near Reading. There were several "pill boxes" to be seen at road junctions, and "static water tanks" to be used if the usual supply was cut off.
My mother bought a lot of dress material and knitting wool, and made and stuffed toys. It was hard to get Christmas presents for our extended family, and we exchanged a lot of calendars and handkerchiefs for lack of anything else. Second-hand children's toys fetched high prices - my toddler's tricycle which cost ten shillings (50p) in 1940 was sold for the same price in 1944. Dolls were taken to a "dolls' hospital" in Kings Road to be repaired. My father bought a lot of seeds for the garden and even fruit trees. It was hard to get a film for a camera, but I had a set of "Polyphotos" (one large sheet with a lot of different poses) taken when I was four in January 1943 at Wellsteeds department store in Broad Street, but the shop was bombed a month later.
People learnt a lot about food values from Ministry of Food leaflets and the Radio Doctor, who was amusing as well as sensible. We tried whale meat, but could not face it a second time. We kept a rabbit, which was destined for the pot eventually. My mother would get bones to boil for stock and anything off the ration, like bacon off-cuts which were mostly all fat. We had to eat all our fat meat in those days. We began to get extras from the USA, and one of them was called Karo syrup (which was like golden syrup but darker). There was a recipe for mixing this with powdered milk, rolling it into balls and making sweets. I think we had peanut butter, and tinned blackcurrants. We children were dosed with cod liver oil and things like rose hip syrup. We generally kept healthy. This was before the NHS was set up, and the family account book shows I had teeth extracted with gas which cost ten shillings, but we scarcely bothered the doctor during the war. We children all caught ailments like mumps and measles as a matter of course. Everyone I knew took them mildly, and they were not regarded as half so fearsome as they are today. My parents did not bother to call in a doctor for a mere case of mumps, and for measles he sent along a large bottle of a brown-coloured medicine flavoured with aniseed, which I suspect had little effect. They did not have antibiotics, so all our cuts and grazes were carefully washed and treated with an antiseptic which stung.
On the whole, life was quite pleasant for us children in that area, thanks to the sacrifices made for us.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.