大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People`s War site by Alan Magson of Age Concern Bradford and District on behalf of Zeela Fleming and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site`s terms and conditions.

I was nine years old when war broke out and can remember it vividly. It was quite frightening for me at the time .The day it happened a news vendor was walking the streets selling newspapers shouting "WAR ! ITS WAR鈥� and people were running out of their houses to buy a paper because at that time not everyone had a wireless set (radio) as they were run from an accumulator which had to be charged when it had been on for a number of hours as the sound went off, so newspapers were really the only way a lot of people got their news .

We had a wireless set and would listen to the news and you dare not speak in our house when the wireless was on or you could get a back hander so you kept very quieter, you learnt the hard way in those days.

The war did seem a bit of a let down to me as after the first excitement had died down nothing was happening, and then came the blackout. Every one had to have dark curtains Black preferably, no chinks of light had to show in the windows or doors.

Then we had the Blackout Wardens, they would bang on your door if they saw much as saw a shadow of a light at all. The trams were blacked out and the streetlights were painted black and shaded.

Then we were issued with gas masks and we had to carry them about with us at all times in a cardboard box and a piece of string to carry them over the shoulder. What ugly things they were too, but the babies masks were even worse. They were in boxes that the baby fit into, never saw one on a baby though I never saw a mum with one of them either.

Time came and evacuation was the talking point. Oh how I wanted to be evacuated ! I remember I had somehow got hold of a small suitcase and I thought this would hold my clothes. I didn鈥檛 have many, mind you no one did and if you did they would most likely be in the pawn shop as there was not much in the way of work in the area so clothes were not abundant, well not in our house anyway . So I watched the children from my school being sent off to the country but not me so my suitcase was never put to use.

There was talk of bombs and barrage balloons but it was really all talk to me at my age.

The next things we got were ration books. Oh what a to do that was, two ounce of butter, sugar, tea ,every thing was in short supply .If you saw a queue you got in it hoping for something at the end of it. One thing I do remember is I never ate butter all through the war. You see my stepfather would not eat margarine even before the war so he got the full ration of the household and anything special that came out of queuing he got too, that was the way it was in our house and it wasn't till I got married in 1949 that I ate butter. When I got my ration book from my mother, and my mother was taking the page for the butter out of the book and my husband said "no" to my mother. " leave it in, it`s hers" and for the first time in years I got my ration and to this day I still dislike margarine.

Next came clothing coupons. Clothes were in very short supply. My stepfather was a rag and bone man and we were in a state of depression means test, the dole, we had the lot. Our clothing came catch as catch can in those days, they very rarely fit, but it was a way of life to the likes of us.
I can remember the soldiers appearing - not ours - you could hear strange language has they passed by. I soon learned that my stepfather didn't think much of these foreigners. He was a Welsh man and was in a Welsh unit in the first world war and he was a very bigoted man .Even the English, Irish and the Scots were foreigners to him and he voiced his opinions loud and clear.

I can`t say my childhood was a happy time . We were a big family and I was next to the youngest of one family and I had a younger stepsister who got all the favours from my stepfather. It took me a lot of years to figure that one out .

.So what with the war and growing up with the shortage of decent food and clothes, we were used to these things by now .I was fourteen in 1944 and it looked like I might be treated like an adult at last. I started work in the mill as doffer and had a black pinny made out of blackout material but you still carried your gas mask about choose how grown up you were.

After you had been working for so long you got an allotment of clothing coupons for pinafores I took mine home but they were exchanged for coupons for food stuff. I never had a choice. It certainly would not work these days and I would not want it to either.

The food alone was unbelievable. Any fruit that was available was for babies and pregnant mums so it was rationed. No electric, it was gas lights, no fridges or washers. I still have my peggy tub but you won`t know what that is and you will probably never have used one.

And yes I ate horse meat. We were eating it during the war and it tasted good at that time. The French eat it now so it is nothing new but to me in 1947 it was nectar never having tasted anything as good in my life up to then.

So my war time experience was coming to an end and getting married was my new life to come, and it did and my life never looked better from then on.

What鈥檚 the saying ? "you don't know when you are well off' . Well I did. my war ended 6-8-1949 the day I got married and I got my own ration book and ate butter.

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