大象传媒

This story was saved at the Bedfordshire County Show and was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Gillian Ridley for Three Counties Action on behalf of June Cornelius and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I went to school at Queens Park School (Big girls school) at 7 years people left school at 14 years old then.

I can remember when the evacuees arrived and we went to school part time for a while as there were too many children, later that was all sorted out.

We went to school with our gas masks and took news papers to school which teachers white washed for us to use as drawing paper and another thing they wanted us to take in where the blue sugar bags again to use as drawing paper.
In the air raid shelters at School I remember a box of biscuits, but never getting any as they were there for longer stays I think.

We had 2oz of sweets a week o bananas or oranges. I can remember queuing up with my sisters green ration book that allowed us an orange and when we got home I didn鈥檛 even get any.
We had to queue for everything. Dad used to like 鈥楥hitlins鈥� which were pig鈥檚 intestines; you even had to queue for them.

We kept Chickens in the garden and had an allotment to supplement the food. We had our own little gardens for flowers.
Fortunately my Uncle had a farm at Emberton Nr Olney, which was a bus journey we had no car.
We didn鈥檛 get away on Holidays. We used to swim in the Bedford river over Honey Hills I have wonderful memories of our time as kids.

I remember the sirens and being bombed, waking in the night and our ceilings coming down but I was too young to be afraid.

We had two evacuees a brother and sister but we couldn鈥檛 keep them, as Mum got pregnant.

We had men and women billeted with us. An ATS girl then a girl from Cromer who worked at the munitions at Stewartby, I remember her going yellow from the gunpowder, an airman who was stationed at one of the camps, a navel man (later a professor) who worked at temsford and Bletchley obviously on secret work we later realised.

At that time my mother was a tailor, she was asked to make dressed and allsorts of clothing out of nothing, we later found out that these clothes were used for spies etc to wear in France, as they couldn鈥檛 go in English dress.

We had a lovely street party a lady got up a sharabang (a coach) and we all went to South end on sea, all the road was decorated with banners Welcome Home.

I used to ask Mum 鈥渨hy can鈥檛 you go out with a Yank鈥� as the kids down the road had sweets and skipping ropes.

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