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I can remember when the war started very plainly because I had a baby brother in July 1939. He was christened in the September. We were all issued with gas masks and there was a body sized one for the baby.

I was nine and we still went to school and had blackout at the windows, something called ‘fibrene’ was used, it was like thick cardboard but more durable. There were thick black curtains on top of it. At school we used to have air raid drills in readiness. On some occasions we didn’t know which school we would attend because some schools would be bombed. Sometimes we would share school buildings. We would go in the morning and another school would use the building in the afternoon.

We had an Anderson Shelter in our garden. All five of us, my mom and me, Auntie Addie and her baby Norman and my brother Royston used the shelter.

My dad was an air raid warden. You could see Coventry ablaze from where we lived in South Birmingham. My dad went there to help. It must have been terrible digging out bodies. He was gone for at least two weeks. Whenever I hear an air raid siren, even now, my stomach knots.

I can’t ever remember feeling hungry although rationing was quite severe, but we did grow vegetables and we had hens. I can remember wearing wooden soled shoes — like ordinary lace ups with leather tops. I loved them because they were really warm. We used to wear buttons that glowed on our coats — about an inch in size and they glowed a mauve colour.

Once there was a time bomb in next door’s garden and we had to evacuate to my grandma’s in Northfield about 6 miles away. The trams kept running all through the war.

My dad had a car with a gas bag on top. This provided the fuel to run the car — no petrol. People having cars weren’t common, but we had one because of his job.

Parachute silk was made into wedding dresses sometimes. We children had to make knitted thick socks for seamen. It was oiled and thick for the sailors. We also knitted vests for ourselves, pink with square necks.

When I left school, aged 13 I went to art school. We used our coupons and got material to make dresses, which we designed ourselves. It was called Moseley School of Art and Craft. Rationing went out in 1953 after I got married in 1950.
On one occasion I remember a low flying enemy plane, machine-gunning along the Pershore Road. I stayed by the hedge in my garden to hide.

We used to play the following games, ‘hopscotch’, ‘the square’ and ‘oblong sorts’. We had ball games, ‘7 up’ in particular, where we bounced a ball against a wall in different ways.
There were lots of skipping and jumping games. But we didn’t play tennis; the nets had gone for the war effort. We also played hockey, rounders and racing rounders.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jacci Phillips of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Beryl Davies and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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