大象传媒

I first heard the dreaded word 鈥榳ar鈥� in connection with Italy and Abyssinia when I was at primary school. The reality of war came, on that fateful Sunday morning, when Dad said 鈥淲ar has been declared鈥�. It had been threatening for a year or so. It was here: I was terror stricken!
Many of the men around us left home and went to join the forces. Every man, woman and child joined in the war effort. Food was rationed, manufactured goods were scarce. If you saw a queue outside a shop you joined it. Then you asked along the line, 鈥淲hat are we waiting for?鈥� It may be toothpaste, an item of make-up, a cot blanket 鈥� anything! We were taught to 鈥榤ake do and mend鈥� because clothes were rationed. Lawns were dug up and every inch of spare ground grew vegetables. One unlikely nutritious vegetable was boiled nettles! Our constant companions were identity cards and gas masks.
A week after the declaration of war we went back to school. I was thirteen. The school was newly built and unfinished because the builders were called away to build new camps for the forces. The school was built on a hill with open corridors and verandas with no trees or shrubs to break the wind. In our classroom we had assorted chairs and card tables borrowed from the local clubs, there was no heating at first and we had to sit with our gabardine macs on. Almost immediately, at the beginning of the term, Queen Mary鈥檚 High School, Liverpool, was evacuated to Shrewsbury and they came to share our school. We had the morning session and they had the afternoon. Our class sizes swelled. We had one girl whose family had fled from Germany and another whose whole family had been killed by a bomb and she had been rescued, uninjured, from the bomb damage. These and some other children, who came to Shrewsbury, joined us as classmates. We had gas mask and air raid drill in the shelters behind the school and when there was an air raid warning we sat in the dark on wooden seats in the shelter. We produced food on ground which should have been playing fields and at times were called away from our lessons to help with potato planting and at harvesting time.
We collected sheep鈥檚 wool from hedgerows and barbed wire for spinning, and rose hips to make babies鈥� rose hip syrup. We knitted balaclava helmets, mittens and 鈥榮ea boot鈥� stockings for members of the armed forces. At the week-end, and in the holidays, we worked at the food office, writing addresses on ration books and some of my friends worked at the sorting office at Christmas time. (There was a necessary age for this work). I worked on my Father鈥檚 farm.
When school certificate exams were over I left school and our Headmistress arranged for me to work in the Local Education Department, I did this for about a year and as I neared 鈥榗all up鈥� time I wanted to volunteer for the WAAF, but my Mother said it would be better if I worked on the land thus releasing a man to join the forces. This I did for the rest of the war.
There were five of us working on the land including one Land Girl. We shared the work of the day and the season. My favourite work was tending the milking cows and the dairy work. I fetched the cows from the field, tied them up, gave them measures of corn, and milked them, with milking units from power for which was supplied by a petrol engine because there was no electricity supply. One or two of the cows kicked so they had to have a 鈥榢icking strap鈥� around their back legs. Once a week their milk was measured individually and recorded. The new milk was taken to the dairy to be cooled on a 鈥榗ooler鈥�, the water from which was pumped by hand from the well. The milk churns held twelve gallons each so help was needed to lift a full churn up the dairy steps. The churns were rolled on their rims down the concrete cow yard and, again, help was needed to lift them on to the milk stand from where the lorry collected them to take the milk to Birmingham. The milkman sometimes called in the farm house for a cup of tea and 鈥榚gg on toast鈥�.
Work on the farm was varied, muck spreading, hoeing sugar beet, potato planting and harvesting, hay and corn harvest and beet pulling. My most interesting project was helping my Father to drain a river meadow which, then, had to be ploughed in preparation for a potato crop.
Petrol/diesel was rationed so we had an allowance for the milking machine and the tractor. My Father loved horses so we made good use of our pair. We did not have a car, we rode bicycles or used the horses and float for travel. I was afraid of horses and they knew it! Darkie trod on my toe and caused me to lose a toenail, Jinnie bit my elbow when I tightened her girth too much!
One day it was my duty to take Darkie and a cart to Hadnall station (four miles away) to fetch a load of coal for the sterilizer boiler, and to collect boxes of live, day old, chicks which were travelling by train from Yorkshire. Darkie either went very slowly or shot off like a 鈥榖ullet from a gun鈥�. At the station I parked her near to the coal truck for Mr Murphy to load the cart; meanwhile, I went round to the platform to collect the chicks. Darkie did not want to lose me, so she followed me leaving Mr Murphy with one foot in the coal truck and the other in the air!
We enjoyed a great social life. There was a wonderful sense of community. We belonged to a Young Farmer鈥檚 Club with farm walks, lectures, stock judging, public speaking, competitions, whist drives and dances. We had weekend residential courses at Radbrook, in Shrewsbury, for such things as bottling and preserving fruit and vegetables. I went to Women鈥檚 Institute with my Mother. There were dances in the village hall and at the RAF station and there always seemed plenty of partners for the local girls.
Feelings were heightened during the war, before nor since have I known such feelings of gaiety of each moment, you enjoyed it because it might be the last for yourself or especially for your dancing partner who may not return from a bombing raid or an air fight with an enemy plane. Inevitably when you received bad news you felt so low, but you had no choice but to 鈥榮oldier on鈥� with great determination.
Being a teenager in wartime caused you to grow up quickly and to take responsibility for yourself and your country.

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