大象传媒

An Exciting Childhood 鈥擯art 2

The Evacuees.
After a year or perhaps two, we had to take in evacuees, while still retaining a room for Harold, the soldier billeted on us who still appeared on leave occasionally. A woman named Joan P. and her young son, David, arrived from London. Sometimes her RAF husband would also come to stay. We all had to move beds around to fit them in. Young David seemed to cry and scream all the time. It got worse, because after a few months, Mrs P鈥檚 parents, Mr and Mrs G, who had been billeted in a house across the road, also moved in 鈥� they slept in our downstairs front room. Thus you had five adults (six when Mr P or Harold came) and three children living in a two and a half bedroom, two reception, one bathroom semi. (We used to have a second outside lavatory, but the fittings were taken out, and it was turned into a coalhouse, packed to the ceiling with coal before coal rationing started). The crowding in the kitchen and bathroom was severe. My parents tried to be welcoming at first but the strains were great, and exacerbated by some anti-Semitism, as the evacuees were Jewish. There were a lot of rows between the adults. The evacuees all went elsewhere before the end of the war but it was a very difficult period while it lasted.
Another example of anti-semitism was at my second school in 1943. A Jewish boy, Tommy M., from Austria, joined our class; he spoke good but accented English and looked very Jewish. I regret that the other boys, including me, teased and bullied him. The teachers did not try very hard to stop this. After a few months his parents took him away. Even at the time, I realised we had done something wrong, but we got this from our parents; my mother quite often referring to Jewish acquaintances as Jewboys and Jewesses 鈥� but not to their face. We very rarely saw African, West Indian or Asian people in Chester, but would see 鈥淟ascars鈥� in Liverpool and they were generally called 鈥榥iggers鈥�. When I first used this term, I was reprimnded by my mother, who told me I should call them 鈥渃oloured people鈥�. Mr deS, a middle class brown-skinned man of Egyptian descent lived in our road, but people seemed to accept him happily.

RATIONING
We all had ration books which my mother looked after taking them ito the grocer鈥檚, butcher鈥檚 etc in turn to have coupons clipped out or crossed of, as she bought food. Some categories of food were listed by name while some others were obtainable against 鈥減oints鈥� which applied generally. Bananas disappeared at once and became a legend, and citrus fruits were rare, although there must have been some because Father Christmas always left an orange or tangerine in the toe of my Christmas stocking. My young sister was entitled to a ration of concentrated orange juice, which had to be specially collected from the Food Office - I tried it once or twice and it was not nice, being sickly sweet and oily. Although I occasionally missed sweets, I don't think rationing really hit me, I was never hungry anyway.
Besides hoarding coal (see above), my mother laid in a large stock of soap, her reasoning was that as food fats were rationed, then soap was sure to follow, as it did.
By some wangle, my father used to get American Magazines (Look, Life and Collier鈥檚 and that week鈥檚 issues) from a newsagent in town on a Thursday. The family were allowed to read them that night, but he had to take them to work on Friday and pass them on to a colleague. These photojournal magazines not only contained some amazing photos of the war, but also pictured the USA, a land of no rationing, blackouts 鈥� or evacuees! My mother had kept in touch with a pen friend from schooldays, Mary K. of Piqua, Ohio. This kind woman offered to take me as an evacuee and arrangements were in train, but then a child evacuee liner was sunk [Sept 40] and the government stopped the scheme. Mary K. did however send us food parcels occasionally 鈥� these contained all sorts of treasures. Including chewing gum, Lifesavers, Hershey Bars, Dundee cake, Spam and white margarine, with a separate little packet of yellow colouring you could mix in.

HOLIDAYS
We did go on holidays sometimes. Perhaps because of his work, my father kept his car for a while. We continued our prewar practice of driving to Kinmel Bay near Rhyl on summer Sundays, and over a number of visits I watched a man building 鈥榙ragons鈥� teeth鈥� amphibious landing defences which slowly extended along the high water mark. There was a stretch of several miles of dual carriageway on the way, and at one point one carriageway was closed off and used as parking for thousands of tanks. For a while, we went by train and Mersey ferry to a boarding house in Southport owned by Mr and Mrs P., for summer holidays. The permanent funfair was still open, but not all its attractions. One day on Southport promenade, I met a young US airman, Mike S. (an exotic Polish name), who kindly invited me into the American Red Cross hotel, which was an Aladdin鈥檚 Cave of luxury, where I gorged on Coca-Cola. He was a sergeant bombardier (bomb-aimer) and wore a very well-made uniform which contrasted strongly with British battledress serge. He gave me a number of his brightly coloured 鈥榠nsignia鈥� (what we called badges) which were greatly envied by my friends in Chester. Mike also became a family friend, and gave us occasional goodies, visiting intermittently until 1945 when he was drafted to the Pacific theatre. There was a Bob Martin鈥檚 factory at the back of the boarding house. Before the war they had made pet food, but when John P., who was older than me, and I climbed over the fence and opened a box of their products, we found they were water-purification tablets for the army. We tested one in a bowl of stagnant water, but it didn鈥檛 taste palatable at all! There was a fish and chip shop nearby and we ate a lot of unrationed newspaper-wrapped meals from there. My mother used to take our ration books to Southport and pass them to Mrs P. for the period of the holiday.
Sometimes we went on the Crosville bus to Parkgate at the end of the Wirral. Here we bought newspaper packets of shrimps from beach stalls, 鈥榦ff-the ration鈥� and hence tastier!

POLITICS AND PROPAGANDA
To begin with I saw everything in black and white, but began to realise that there were gradations. We had a book called the Blackout Book which was mainly a collection of puzzles and games to keep people amused in the long Blackout evenings. It also contained some propaganda pieces and one contained a cartoon, showing Hitler and Stalin, one of whom was saying 鈥淎ll we want is peace鈥�, while John Bull looks suspiciously at them and says 鈥淵es, a piece for you and a piece for him鈥�. By the time I could read this, Stalin was our glorious ally [June 41], so I found this a bit strange, and my parent鈥檚 explanation unsatisfactory. Later on, I was reading a copy of the 鈥淎utocar鈥�, (which my father took throughout the war, despite it becoming a very thin journal with advertisements promising shiny post-war cars just like pre-war), and I saw a cartoon over the leading article, showing Churchill greedily helping himself to cash from a chest marked Road Fund. The article said that as Chancellor many years before, he had begun to use car licence fee money for general taxation. I couldn鈥檛 believe that anyone could so dislike our hero! And despite growing sophistication, I was shocked when he lost the 1945 election,
My parents had bought a very good wireless set just before the war (about as big as a modern CRT 24鈥� television) and we all listened rapt to Churchill鈥檚 speeches, not that I understood them in the early years. Later we also listened to Roosevelt鈥檚 speeches, relayed over the Atlantic on short wave, with attendant atmospherics and fading. We often searched the short wave bands for stations of interest, especially for US dance music, and my father who could read morse from his WW1 days, would occasionally listen and translate rather dull messages, sometimes from ships. Beside paying strict attention to the news (especially 鈥楾he Nine o鈥檆lock News鈥�, we used to sit as a family, sometimes with friends, and listen almost religiously to programmes like Tommy Handley鈥檚 鈥業TMA鈥�, Ben Lyons, Bebe Daniels and Vic Oliver in 鈥楬i Gang鈥�, Henry Hall鈥檚 鈥楪uest Night鈥�, and 鈥楬ippodrome鈥�, as well as individuals like Rob Wilton, Jack Warner, and Flotsam and Jetsam. We also occasionally tuned to Lord HawHaw, broadcasting from Germany, although my parents said it was illegal. After a few broadcasts, my parents found him boring and ceased to listen to the station. Once however, he managed to get on to the same wavelength as the 大象传媒 Home Service, just before Big Ben鈥檚 chimes and made quite funny remarks including counting the hour strikes wrongly. Very occasionally the Germans tried to jam the 大象传媒 with noise transmissions, but this activity did not last long. Later, I became fascinated by all the foreign stations on the dial, and used to try to tune to them, but they were usually either dead, or in incomprehensible foreign languages. Athlone (Radio Eire) was very dull 鈥� it always seemed to be farm prices! When the US Forces came over we often listened to AFN (American Forces Network) 鈥� mainly for jazz, as well as the 大象传媒 Home Service and Forces programmes.
The 鈥淪quander Bug鈥� was a symbol used by the Government to try to get people to save money. He headed exhortatory notices and looked like a grubby pantomime devil with horns and a pointy tail; his skin was thinly covered in hairs and swastikas. Someone said it was German Measles and when other children got this, then fairly common, disease, and were isolated, I imagined for years that they too were covered in swastikas!

THE END OF THE WAR
One day towards the end of the war, my parents tried to hide the newspaper (the Daily Mail) from me, but eventually let me see it. The front page was covered with shocking pictures of the prisoners in Belsen, which had just been liberated by British troops [Apr 45].
Eventually Hitler鈥檚 suicide was announced [Apr45] and he was replaced by Doenitz, who I had never heard of 鈥� I even thought this was unfair as Goering was the supposed number two! On the day before VE day [May 45], everyone knew the war in Europe was going to end next day, but I cycled to school as usual on the day to find the school locked and only a couple of other lads waiting. Eventually a teacher who lived nearby turned up and told us to go home, the town was empty, and the whole thing seemed unreal, but soon after we had a street party, which was great fun. The war in the Far East still loomed and looked like going on for years, until the news of the Atom Bomb [Aug 1945], which took everyone by surprise and was incomprehensible - someone saying, 鈥淣ow if I had a 鈥榣ittle bit of atom鈥� I could make that car go for months鈥�. Starting school again in September, one of the boys opened his atlas at the page showing Japan and crossed out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

CONCLUSION
On the whole, I am afraid to say, I enjoyed the war. It seemed continuously exciting and I think we young ones were protected from its worst effects, even spoiled, as much as possible. Looking back it was only the episode of the evacuees that I remember being really difficult, although I could sometimes tell that my parents were very worried about certain other developments, which in turn worried me for an hour or two, before some other exciting diversion came up!

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