大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of Barbara Haynes and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I remember that the meals in the BR restaurants were very good. We were all on rations then. The lumps of cheese were so small that you could hardly see them. They reckoned that we were healthy though. They used to sell horse meat, which we gave to the cat. My mother did give some to my brother as he was a big eater, but the cat made such a fuss that my brother would not eat it in the end.

One day I was having a bath in the front room. The Home Guard were on manoeuvres and passed right by the window. I had to hide quickly. I used to take Oxo drinks to the guards to help keep them warm.

Once we had a land mine in our road and we all gathered in the church where we had corned beef sandwiches. Corned beef was nicer in those days, especially with onions and potatoes. You could get the ingredients to make your own faggots. Two old ladies round the corner made them. We used to take a jug round and could get faggots and peas for 3d.

The German bombers followed the line of the canals. You would hear that distinctive funny noise and would know that the German doodlebugs were coming. Dockers, the Paintworks in Birmingham, got hit. All the paintwork on that side of the town was burnt. If you came down Cape Hill you could see Birmingham in flames. My dad was an ARP warden in his spare time and he was helping. The heat was so intense that the fire spread very quickly.

We had to have black-out curtains. In those days we would go out during the blackout, but I wouldn鈥檛 go out after dark nowadays.

We used to make beautiful gloves from rabbit skins. We could buy soles from Woolworth鈥檚 to make our own sandals and we made our own handbags too.

Next-door鈥檚 son escaped getting hurt at Dunkirk, only to come back home to be knocked down and killed by a bus. It shows that when your time has come, that is that.

A lot of boys that I knew got killed. A lot of marriages broke up. You were liable to get yourself a bad name if you were seen out with the Americans.

We used to play games such as rounders in the playing fields at the top of City Road, Birmingham and we used to walk for miles. One of the places we walked around was the reservoir at Edgbaston. We would look at the plants and collect tadpoles in jam jars. We used to grow our own beans on blotting paper in glass jars too. Sometimes a group of us went flax pulling.

Orange peel could be baked in the oven and then painted. When it was dry we would fill it with soil and plant a crocus. There was a little garden outside the school where we were taught to grow things.

For cookery I had to make a pale green apron and cap by hand. I had to undo mine because the stitches were too big. We learned how to make bread. The first thing I remember making was toad-in-the-hole and banana trifle. I had to take a jug to bring my Lancashire Hotpot home.

I was taught how to sew and knit. Invisible darning was taught and we were shown how to turn the heel of a sock. Laundry was another thing we were shown how to do. We had to get to know different starches and things like that.

In the last year of school we had to visit a house to clean it 鈥� walls, windows, everything. We even had to know how to lay the table properly.

When we were short of sweets we used to make our own chocolates from a tin of sweetened condensed milk, cocoa and dried milk. It was like fudge. My brother used to call them 鈥渄irt bombs鈥�. Easter eggs only cost 6d and they were engraved with your own name.

My brother Cyril was in India looking after Italian prisoners-of-war. He sent me photos showing him sitting in a park with the monkeys. He was pleased to come back home to find that his sister was still a decent girl.

Everybody seemed a lot happier in those days, though perhaps they were only making the best of things.

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