大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV Solent on behalf of June Watton and has been added to the site with her permission. June Watton fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I lived in Birmingham during the war years and, to be honest, I cannot remember a great deal about it until the later years of the war. I remember waking up frequently in the air-raid shelter at the end of the garden, but never remember getting there. I also recall sometimes not being in the shelter, but sitting under the stairs holding my new baby sister wrapped in a blanket. Dad was an Air-Raid Warden at night and during the day made parts for tanks.

I remember vividly the street parties for VE day and VJ day - the great excitement of arranging it all, the laughter and the happinness of everyone there enjoying themselves and not a glum face to be seen.

I have three recollections of times before that to share.

After breakfast every day when we were not at school, all the children in the road would meet in a pre-arranged spot. When everyone was there the "Old King" would give the signal and we would all run off in different directions. We went along the road looking all around us and in our own gardens for just one thing - shrapnel. I don't think half of us really knew what it was but it was what we all wanted. When everyone had finished their searching, we all gathered together again and compared our "finds" The one with the biggest piece of shrapnel would become "King for the Day" and it was they who decided what games we would play together that day.

We were all miserable at hardly ever having sweets. We decided to see what we could do about it and agreed to make our own chewing gum. When I think of it now, it sounds absolutely disgusting but I will give you the recipe. You need one good mouth-sized piece of candle - taken from the bottom of the candle, in the hope that your Mom or Dad would not notice! This was chewed into bits, then chewed lots more until it became a pliable lump. Next you aded some flavour, which was a small nibble from an Oxo cube. This was chewed with great glee (I think mainly because we knew we should not be doing it) and of course always out of the sight of adults. I cringe at the thought of what my mother would have done if she knew what I was up to.

My mother, however, was extremely pleased with me when I brought her the glad tidings from school one day that I qualified for some extra benefit and I will explain why. I cannot be exact about the timing of this event but I think it was later in the war rather than sooner, so I probably would have been about 8 years old.

One day at school in assembly, we were all told that we were to have our feet measured and each class in turn would be sent along to the school library where the school nurse would take charge. My class turned up at the library and the school nurse told us to take off our shoes and socks and leave them outside in the corridor. One-by-one we each walked into the library and were told to put our heels against the wall, then if our toes went over the white chalk line on the floor, we were not to go back to our classroom but wait behind. Of course, with my big feet my toes went far over the line and I can remember feeling very nervous about this and wondered what would happen next.

After some time, all the children who had stayed behind were told that, as our feet were bigger than average, we would qualify for some extra clothing coupons. I remember my mother thought I was making it up when I told her, but as I had a note from school explaining everything, she realised it was true. She was over the moon as clothing coupons were like gold dust at that time.

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