大象传媒

Part 5

I was recovering from measles and had just gone to bed in the back room where I was severely bounced about by the effects of another bomb that had landed on the bungalow backing onto our house. The screens of old linoleum held up very well so I was safe enough but the lady in the bungalow lost a leg and bled to death before anything could be done for her. The heavier bomb landed further up the street where it killed another neighbour in one of the seven houses that had eventually to be demolished. On the next morning we were busy carrying out and dumping in the street buckets full of broken glass and lumps of clay. Now it was our windows that were covered with tarpaper. All but one of seven downstairs windows was blown out but upstairs only one was gone.

As part of the air raid precautions, shelters had been built in the streets. They consisted of brick walls with a concrete slab roof. Nobody used them except for amorous escapades. The government also distributed shelters of corrugated steel to homeowners who elected to take and erect them. Few of our neighbours bothered. To assemble these shelters (known as 鈥淎ndersons鈥� after the Minister under whose guidance they were issued), the owner had to dig down about four feet. No cement was available for a floor so wooden duckboards had to be laid. I suppose some lives were saved by people spending the night in these shelters while their homes were destroyed by bombs, but I rarely heard of them. The many nights spent in the damp cold must have done a lot of lasting harm in effect increasing the mortality rate among civilians just as the bombs were intended to do.

Food was becoming progressively shorter in supply. Just about everything was rationed. Ships bringing food were being sunk at an ever-increasing rate by submarines very much as was done in the previous war. Britain was slipping into the position of loser until it acquired the German codebook without the Germans knowing. After that, the positions of the submarines could be tracked and appropriate actions taken. It was about this time that we saw our first canned pork meat from America. It was called Spam and its arrival caused quite a sensation. Immediately the papers were full of ways to cook it. There was no Spam ration as such but its distribution was controlled by a system of 鈥減oints鈥� which we were all allocated. Whenever there was something different to be had, it was rationed out at a certain number of points. Later, we were to receive two-pound cans of ground lean pork meat. Immediately the papers carried recipes on how it should be prepared. The gist of the tips was that the meat was far too rich and should be diluted with lots of breadcrumbs. Even so, I remember it as being incredibly tasty. Towards the end of the really hard times, probably late 1943, a shipload of canned fish arrived from South Africa. The fish had been packed under the Afrikaans name of 鈥渟noek鈥�. It was actually quite tasty but was the brunt of much humour when members of parliament would ask the minister of food how to pronounce the name, etc. The music hall comedians we listened to on the radio did not let the subject go lightly.

Offal was not rationed at all but was given out by the butchers as they thought fit. Needless to say there was a lot of bribery and ill-feeling when ox-tail, liver and kidneys were distributed but otherwise the rationing system worked well and, we were to learn later, much better than the one organized by the Germans. The local shop of the J. S. Sainsbury chain where my mother shopped for most of our groceries was very different from the supermarkets that would come after the war. Our 鈥淪ainsbury鈥檚鈥� sported marble counters at which customers stood in line for the commodities each supplied. Cold meats and bacon were cut in front of the customer with a slicing machine. Meats were laid out on cold marble slabs. The carcasses were cut in a room off the shop where a butcher would obligingly cut what you ordered, or at least he did when the supplies allowed him to do this. The floor of the entire shop was made up of little hexagonal bits of white marble over which clean saw dust was sprinkled each day. The manager, an imposing gentleman called Biddlecombe (he entered local politics as a councillor for the Conservative party), dressed in a blue and white striped apron, would hold court at the end of the counter at the back of the shop where there was an opening into the 鈥渂ack鈥�. From this position he would invite regular shoppers into the 鈥渂ack鈥� for various treats such as liver. I always thought he tried to be fair in the distribution of largesse but it must have been difficult for him to gratify so many obsequious women but he tried his best.

Economy of bulk cooking and feeding was utilized throughout the country by the establishment of 鈥淏ritish Restaurants鈥� in church halls and other suitable buildings. These establishments had a distinctive, rather unpleasant smell that I can still bring to my imagination and hope to never smell again. These establishments provided a two-course meal, cafeteria style, for six pence. Even in those days before inflation, that was cheap. When I returned with my own family to live in England in 1966, I was surprised to find school meals were still the same price.

I bought a hot lunch every day at school for the same sixpence. One boy at each table would collect the money and deliver it to the master at the head table, where he held court with the senior boys. The rest of us sat twelve to a table, six to a side. Everything had to be eaten. Desserts consisted mostly of variations of rice pudding and prunes until Japan came into the war and interfered with the supply of rice. At least that is what we all thought was the cause but now I suspect the rice came from the U.S. After service of rice ceased, we had various forms of semolina flavoured with fruit concentrate that was supposed to keep our vitamin intake at an acceptable level. The dollop of coloured fruit concentrate in the middle of the bland semolina conjured up many names 鈥� mostly disgusting. We were at an age when we could eat forever so we would try to get the squeamish to give up their dessert. One lad called Miller had a glass eye that he would pass around on a spoon in the hope of finding a second dessert. By having both my father and I eat our main meal out each day, our rations went a lot further. What my mother ate at noon I do not know.

Everyone 鈥渄id their bit鈥� for the war effort. Not to contribute was to earn the disapproval of friends and neighbours. I collected salvage material and of course looked after my rabbits. Many older women took up voluntary pursuits while all those below an age that was progressively raised were called up to take full-time work of a specified kind. My mother started off with the Women鈥檚 Voluntary Service (WVS) which had a multiplicity of duties, door to door surveys, looking after evacuees in transit, running canteens for service people, etc. but eventually she was posted to full time work at the Royal Air Force records office in Ruislip where she helped keep track of the payroll records of airmen when they were posted to a different station. She raised a smile when she told the person interviewing her for the job that she could not possibly work full time because she had a child at home to look after. I was fourteen at the time! Her weekly wages were a little over three pounds, then the equivalent of twelve dollars and now a modest tip after a meal for two in a good restaurant. So much for inflation. This job allowed her to eat daily in a canteen as well. The size of wages meant little as there was nothing much to buy in the shops beyond the rations.

Rather than put up the income tax, the government introduced 鈥減ost-war credits鈥� which were deducted from wages and were to be repaid after the successful conclusion of the war. This was actually done years later by paying off the elderly first and then the younger until all had been repaid with a low rate of interest.

Nobody had time off to rest and there were no vacations. Everyone worked full-time and spent weekends cultivating vegetables in line with the exhortation to 鈥淒ig for Victory鈥� All around Britain, a security strip three miles wide along the coast was made inaccessible to anyone except residents so there was no opportunity for the 鈥渟easide holiday鈥� so loved by the British. In any case, the beaches were rendered inaccessible with strings of barbed wire and concrete blocks designed to thwart tanks and landing craft.

Other women鈥檚 voluntary organizations included the Citizens鈥� Advice Bureau (which explained the intricacies of government regulations to bewildered citizens), and a variety of money-raising groups ranging from selling national Savings stamps to nursing. For the younger women who were recruited to national service, there were the women鈥檚 organizations for the three armed forces, the Women鈥檚 Land Army (which helped on the farms), the Auxiliary Fire Service, ambulance driving, etc. For those few who could fly, or were lucky enough to be chosen for instruction, there was Ferry Command that flew aircraft from factory to air force bases. As the war progressed the planes from North America became available, Ferry Command would bring them over the Atlantic. Everybody it seemed had a uniform of one sort or another. I had bought a book to help me identify the multitude of badges and uniforms to be seen on the streets.

Churchill discarded the formal clothes of a politician and was pictured dressed in boiler suit of coveralls that became known as a siren suit. Women鈥檚 hairdressing shops were left without help or materials so few of the women had their hair curled anymore and it became fashionable to wear a 鈥渢urban鈥�. Women with long hair controlled it by means of a net, or 鈥渟nood鈥� which was very popular in factories, or simply braided it. Some popular film stars were prevailed upon to cut their long hair in the hope that factory workers would do the same and so reduce the number of accidents caused by long hair becoming caught in machinery.

As soon as school was over for the summer of 1941 I was dispatched to Princes Risborough again to stay with my uncle Ray and Hester grandparents. It was only 30 miles from home but well away from most of the bombing. My grandfather had been stone deaf for forty years. When he learned the army was about to detonate an unexploded bomb nearby he got through the cordon somehow and hid behind a fence as close as he dared to the site. When he returned home triumphant claiming he had heard the explosion, we rejoiced with him although we all believed what he sensed was the concussion. I was to stay there for the whole month we were off school.

My father joined me for a week while my mother went north to her parents. On one of these days my grandfather Charles Edward Hester, who was then aged about 76, took my father and me by bus to West Wycombe, where he spent his early years following his birth there in 1867 . With him we toured the sites of his youth that included the house in which he had been born and the school he attended. Like most village schools, this one was built following the Education Act of 1871 and was ready for occupancy about 1875. My grandfather showed us the hawthorn bush behind which he and several friends had hidden before rushing to be first into the school when the teacher opened the door for the first time. We also saw the building that had housed the dame school that my grandfather鈥檚 older siblings had attended before the village school opened. We borrowed candles from a nearby house and explored the artificial caves which had been dug as a 鈥渕ake work鈥� project 150 years previously to help alleviate unemployment in the village. Many years must have passed since grandfather was last in these caves but he remembered his way around very well. It was one of those days when I would have liked to have owned a tape recorder, but this was an invention yet to come.

All brand names of consumer goods like clothing, shoes and furniture were disbanded and production for the civilian market concentrated in one or two factories. Products were marketed as 鈥淯tility鈥� items with a trademark 鈥楥C41鈥�. The 鈥楥鈥檚 looked like pies with a quarter segment cut from them. We had utility suits, utility furniture, utility hats, utility shoes and so on, including of course 鈥渦tility 鈥� jokes. The long cotton underwear favoured by my grandfather was no longer manufactured and so became unobtainable. My grandmother had to 鈥渕ake do and mend鈥� as the saying went. My grandmother also was most concerned as the nightwear he wore to bed consisted of a style of long flannel nightshirt that reached down to his ankles also became unobtainable. Neither came back into style! Wearing of long cotton underwear was a habit of his youth acquired before the dry cleaning process had been invented. In order for a suit to be cleaned, it had first to be taken apart at the seams and each piece washed separately before being sewn back. This was expensive and time consuming so it was prudent to keep perspiration away from the suit material by wearing long cotton underwear.

I was thirteen at the time and had never been at all interested in mastering the bicycle. My father determined he would teach me. By the end of the week, I was sufficiently proficient to ride the seven miles to Thame to see my uncle Percy and aunt Vi Hester who lived there. Until then I had never wanted a bicycle, but now I realized how useful one would be to get around there were none to be bought! Eventually a colleague of my father鈥檚 who was in the army lent me his bicycle 鈥渇or the duration鈥� and I was off on my own exploring roads around my home.

During the course of one such excursion the following winter I became overheated and succumbed to tracheitis, or inflammation of the trachea. Sulpha drugs had just come on the market and were prescribed. The doctor told me mine was a very patriotic condition to have as Churchill had the same thing at the time. The pills I had to take every four hours for two days were stamped 鈥淢&B 693" and were enormous but effective. Their after-effect was to leave me feeling very tired and I would lie in bed all day scanning the short wave radio dial. If Churchill felt anything like I did at the time, he cannot have worked with much effect.

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