大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Jacky Hayward of Hastings Community Learning Centre for 大象传媒 SCR on behalf of Joyce Taverner and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Teverner fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born 1924 and the 1939-1945 war years were very strange in retrospect, we were ordinary people leading extraordinary lives. Most of the time life was very drab, we got used to always being in danger and just got on with life. So many things were rationed or unobtainable, nothing was wasted and reasonable appetizing meals were made out of very basic foods. Nothing was imported so in those years we never saw such foods as Bananas, oranges, peaches. Meat, butter and cheese were rationed to an ounce or two a week, the only eggs available were dried, even bread was rationed and everyday items such as custard powder were unobtainable, there were queues for any deliveries that were in short supply, but through all this there was a special feeling that we were all together and a certain vital sharp edge to life that is hard to explain, of course a 鈥淏lack Market鈥� flourished.
I worked for most of the war at Vickers Armstrong, Crayford, in the stores and shipping office, we worked long hours, sometimes 7 days a week and barely seeing daylight. It was a large office and when we arrived in the mornings it was quite worrying to see an empty seat, I can recall at least four people from that office who were killed in the air raids. One girl, I shall never forget her name was Rita Illot, she was only 15 and we used to go dancing together, she was one of 9 children, a direct hit on their home killed them all including their mother and father, all except the eldest son who was away in the army. I will never forget that line of coffins, some so small.
Living east of London we were bombed constantly, the Thames was a perfect guide to London on a moonlit night, so there were many barrage balloons around to keep the planes high also they lit foul smelling cans of crude oil around the Thames as a smoke screen pervading our homes, just another hazard, as was shrapnel falling from the guns in the park nearby.
Lack of sleep was a way of life. I was on a fire watching rota which meant a 2 hour shift spent in a cold empty house with a lady I barely knew, how I hated getting out of bed at 2 o鈥檆lock in the morning , getting dressed, walking on a cold winters night to this cheerless house with no heating, lighting or any comforts, we were usually too tired to make polite conversation and after 2 hours we would be relieved by the next shift and crawl back to bed for a short sleep, raids permitting, then up at 6 o鈥檆lock to be at work by 7 o鈥檆lock. My mother was an ARP warden (Air Raid Precaution) so when the siren went day or night if she was on duty, she would put on her uniform and tin hat and go to the ARP post, she seemed quite fearless. She also knitted a great many jumpers for the army and navy, large bails of wool arrived at the house and my mother ploughed her way through them. The wool was thick and difficult to knit especially navy wool which was oily.
When the first doodle bug went over our house, I was in the bedroom, it was quite frightening to see this strange object with flames shooting out the back. We held our breath when the engine cut out as it fell to earth. The land mines demolished large areas but the Rocket (V2鈥檚) were most frightening because we had no warning. It鈥檚 hard to realize now how we carried on with our lives, at times the sky was full of German bombers, it was a horrible noise. We had an Anderson shelter in our garden, all five of us tried to sleep down there, it was impossible to move once you laid down.
I went to dances at the local ballroom and would carry on dancing during the raids trying to ignore the noise going on outside. In the cinema a message would come onto the screen to say the sirens had sounded but after a while few people would leave the cinemas even though you could hear the gunfire and bombs. No lights anywhere at night of course, we wore phosphorous discs that glowed in the dark to avoid bumping into people.
We made coats out of army blankets which we dyed, I managed to get hold of an obsolete drawing from the drawing office, these were made of waxed linen, I boiled the wax out of them, a dreadful job, and used the linen for table cloths etc which I embroidered I also made a very nice house coat out of a blackout curtain.
Many times when the German fighters were heading home over the towns they would machine gun the people, I remember this happening along the Broadway at Bexleyheath, Kent.
After the war houses were rebuilt in the same style and this returned to normal, no trauma counseling for us or the armed forces many of which suffered extreme hardship, we were a tough generation.

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