大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Maggie Smith a volunteer from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Walter Vickers and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Vickers fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My parents Walter and Lilian Vickers (nee Barnard) passed on to me many happenings and events during WW2.
The shortage of food, people making gardens over to grow vegetables, food being stolen from vegetables plots on allotments.
The keeping of hens for eggs and meat, also rabbits and pigeons. Hanging a cabbage on a piece of string so that the fowl (hens) could peck it.
Getting grit from a quarry or builders yard to scatter on the ground for hens to peck (it helped to build a better shell).
When hens became listless or yawning to put a rusty bolt in their drinking water (perhaps to increase their iron level).

We would play on 鈥渂ombed fields鈥� which was a space between houses formed when a bomb had dropped during an air raid and demolished houses. The rubble had been cleared and houses either side made secure and habitable. We would sometimes get into trouble for the noise level, which we didn鈥檛 realise at that time.

We lived about two miles form the B.S.A in Small Heath, during that time a lot of war work was being made and to an enemy a prime target.
Some women at night during the blackout carried some pepper and a hat pin to deter any unwanted males.
I played with a tin hat, rattles (warned of air raids) and gas mask. I would wear the mask and suck in the air and it would attach itself to my face like a second skin, I can smell the rubber of it now.
Community air raid shelters made of brick with a metal door and a thick reinforced concrete roof. We played in them like a big den.
Ration book coupons, the endless saving for clothes and utility furniture.
We lived in a privately rented house, landlords agent called every week. My mother was born in another house in the same road. On her birth certificate it was St. Johns Road, Sparkhill in the parish of Yardley in the county of Worcester.
鈥淒og Fights鈥� fighter aircraft over the house, the sound of shell cases dropping on the slate roof. Standing in the queue at the greengrocers whilst mom went for her purse when bananas came in. Black-market things, (cigs, tinned salmon, corned beef, bottles of sherry or scotch) available to regulars at corner shops at double the usual cost.

The telegram that usually brought bad news. A button box, a box containing hundreds of buttons cut off worn out clothes to save for another day, a part of 鈥榤ake do and mend鈥�. There were still hundreds in an old biscuit tin when she died forty years later.

Casseroles and stew, lots of vegetables and meat stock and whatever meat they could get.

Going with my mother to get a rabbit, they were in rows high up above the butcher鈥檚 window 鈥� you chose and he would get it down via a long wooden pole that had a hook on the end, faggots and peas. Taking a jug and a bowl to the cooked meat shop, jug for peas bowl for faggots.

My father was a telephone engineer for the G.P.O post office telephone. I was told some of his jobs were 鈥渉ush-hush鈥� and never knew where his jobs sometimes took him. He had a leg injury from years before.

My mother was a firework filler for Wilders Fireworks also the making of maroons (a type of distress rocket) my mothers sister lived with us were very close. She was disabled and looked after me when my parents were out.

Taking accumulators (a battery for radio) to the radio shop for charging. You carried it by the handle, it was made of hart transparent plastic you could see the metal plates inside. It was the size of a small loaf of bread.

Doing jobs for pocket money, snow sweeping, errands to shops, some girls looked after babies (baby minding) average 3d if generous 6d. We spent it on sweets or toffee apples, comics. A day out at Cannon Hill Park or the Lickeys, with an adult.

A second-hand wind-up gramophone for a birthday present, (record player 78 rpm鈥檚) some records years old but magic to listen to

Cold winters, wearing a school cap under a balaclava woollen head cover. If a 鈥榮lide鈥� a frozen water channel was getting a bit boisterous someone came out with hot ashes to melt the slide, so we moved on to the next.

What I have written I have experienced, my parents or family members reminded me what I lived through or did.

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