大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Oxford on behalf of Ruth Clarkson and has been added to the site with her permission. Ruth fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Ruth has a mental picture of herself standing on the back lawn and becoming aware that something was afoot. She was four and a half years old and lived on Iffley Road, Oxford, with her parents Lilian and Walter Powell. Was that the moment when Chamberlain announced that the Nation was now at War?

But the first part of Ruth's story pre-dates 1939. Ruth's mother and her friend, Auntie Trixie, had both studied Modern Languages at university. In about 1933 Auntie Trixie was youth hostelling in Germany where she met a young German very keen to visit Oxford. Auntie Trixie put him in touch with the Powells and in due course he came to stay. After he left, Ruth's mother found in his room some strange papers covered in undecipherable writing. Years later she saw a photo of Hitler with his inner circle and recognised Martin Borman as the man who had stayed at her house. Ever since, the family have wondered what Borman was doing in Oxford. Was he making some kind of advance reconnaisance for Hitler? After all, Hitler always said he would make Oxford his Headquarters once he had defeated the British. Wouldn't it be interesting to know?

The first concrete evidence of War for Ruth was a long crocodile of evacuee children walking two by two down Iffley Road. Rene and Lily were billetted on the Powells, and little Ruth was delighted to have these two big girls in the house. Unlike many of the evacuees of folk memory, these two were decently clothed, well behaved and clean, but they did not stay long, since the Powells now had baby Eileen in the house and families with babies were not supposed to have to look after other children. Subsequently other evacuees came to stay, including a Mrs Jessop whose husband was serving in the RAF. 'Why did she not stay in her own house?' puzzles Ruth.

Even businesses were evacuated, and Ruth's father, who ran Powell's Timber Merchants on Cowley Road, had to share his Yard with a firm which had been moved out of London.

Soon gas masks were handed out. Little Ruth found her mask frightening and was loath to pull the repugnant thing over her face. To encourage her, her parents brought out a beautiful doll they had been keeping hidden for Christmas. Ruth was persuaded to try on the nasty mask with the promise that she could have the doll straight away if she did so.

Ruth's little sister Eileen was too young for a gas mask, and Ruth recalls walking with her mother and the pram along to the Food Office on Cowley Road to collect one of the special respirators for babies. The thing was enormous (as big as a modern-day television) and they pushed it laboriously home on the pram. As Ruth remembers it, the respirator was to go right over Eileen as far as her waist, and then air would have to be pumped in by hand. Ruth wondered what would happen if her parents were overcome by gas and unable to pump! Luckily Eileen was soon old enough to have her own mask, and she - to her big sister's profound envy - was given a brightly-coloured one decorated with Donald Duck pictures. In the event, neither masks nor respirator were ever used, although Ruth still had to take hers with her every day when she started school in January 1940.

Ruth cannot remember an air raid shelter at school, but there were public shelters built further down on Iffley Road for people who did not have gardens in which they could instal an Anderson shelter. An alternative was a shelter for indoors which was invented by Herbert Morrison and called the 'Morrison' shelter. It was like an enormous metal cage. Ruth's cousins had one in their living room and the family ate their meals off it. Blankets were kept inside and it could be slept in if necessary. In the Powell home it was judged that the oak staircase would be perfectly adequate to protect the family in an air raid, and in the early days of the War they often took refuge beneath it. Later, since Oxford was never in fact bombed, they became blase and did not use their staircase, even though they could hear the German bombers going over on their way to drop their bombs on Coventry.

Of course blackout had to be put up every night. The Powells blocked up some of their smaller windows for the duration, but a huge plywood panel was made to cover the kitchen window and was stored in the passage during the day. In addition some of the windows were taped and at the end of the War the girls had the job of laboriously scraping off the tape with pennies provided by their father. So much was the colour black associated with blackout material, that when Ruth saw some nuns walking down Iffley Road in their habits she asked her mother why they were wearing blackout curtains!

One day Father had to go to Bristol in one of his company's lorries. Mother decided to take Ruth and go with him. An aunt came in to look after Eileen. In Bristol Ruth saw signs of real bomb damage for the first time. She saw houses that had been blown apart, with wallpaper exposed and flapping and a sorry teddy bear lying in the wreckage. This affected her deeply, and her mother told her that it came out in the drawings she made afterwards.

At some point a German bomber was shot down in Oxford in the Long Bridges area. In aid of the War Effort it was put on display in St Giles. For a small amount the public could have a look at it, and there was a continuous flow of spectators climbing up one stair, moving past the cockpit and down again. Ruth's father took her to see this curiosity, and as they passed the cockpit the officer in charge picked her up and sat her right in the pilot's seat. No-one else was granted this privilege: a source of great pride and excitement for the little girl.

Everyone had a ration book. There were three different colours: green for the under fives, blue for those aged five to sixteen and buff for everyone else. One of Ruth's cousins was very clever and he won a scholarship to Magdalen College when he was just sixteen. He was the only student in the College still to have a blue ration book!

When Ruth went to stay with her relations in Kingston Road, her mother would pack up her butter and tea ration for her to take with her. To use your meat ration you had to be registered with a particular butcher and the Powells were registered at the Co-op. Their butcher always had an indelible pencil behind his ear to cross off the ration in the book. Helen Powell (born in 1943) had an Eskimo doll called 'Eski'. Eski had a cloth face whose features had worn away from too much handling. So every time they went to the butchers, Eski was handed over to have his face touched up with the indelible pencil!

When rare produce such as tomatoes came into the shops, word would go round, and Ruth and Eileen would be despatched to stand in the queue. Bananas never appeared in wartime, and it was not until around 1945 when Ruth was waiting in line at school for her class to go inside that she was offered a bite of a banana by the girl standing behind her. What a thrill to taste again that unforgettable flavour!

Ruth's father had a special allowance of tea and sugar for the six men who worked for him in the timber business. It was Ruth's job to go and collect this allowance and she remembers women in the queue behind her wondering out loud how come she had the right to collect such large quantities.

Coal was also rationed, so Ruth's parents lit a fire in the kitchen first thing, then later let it out before starting one in the dining room, or perhaps in the sitting room. There was no question of fires in the bedrooms, but that had been so even before wartime. The girls used to put their clothes under their eiderdowns so that they would be warm to put on in the morning, and then they would dress beneath the bedclothes.

Knitting wool was rationed, but darning wool was not. To prevent people knitting with it, the darning wool was cut into short lengths. Ruth's mother resourcefully knitted mittens for Helen in a Fairisle pattern which could make use of the short lengths. Ruth remembers all the ends of the wool hanging down on either side of the knitting.

One day Ruth and Eileen saw a beautiful pink dress in a shop which they thought would be wonderful for little sister Helen. They found the clothing coupons and went and bought the dress, much to the annoyance of their mother who considered they had wasted valuable coupons on something completely unnecessary. Normally she made all the children's clothes herself.

Everyone had to be frugal. Paper bags were saved and taken back for re-use. Empty vinegar bottles were kept and re-filled. Petrol was rationed, but some people, such as doctors, had to have petrol for their work. Their petrol was coloured and woe betide anyone found using this coloured petrol who did not have a right to it!

There were many American soldiers in Oxford and they were not subject to this tight rationing. Once Ruth and Eileen went to the cinema with an Aunt, and the two Americans behind them offered them chewing gum. The girls, not usually permitted to chew gum even if they could get it, were delighted to accept. It was excitingly different from English chewing gum and came in long strips.

Amphibious tanks were made in Oxford during the War and they would be driven down Iffley Road to Donnington Bridge, where a special ramp was built (which remains to this day) so that the tanks could be tested in the River Thames. The noise and vibration they made as they rumbled down the road was tremendous, so severe that it cracked all the ceilings in the Powell's house.

Ruth's father was at home all during the War. He had an old polio injury and in any case was too old for call up. He had already served in the First World War. But he did do fire watching and a family friend would come to stay the night and keep his wife company on those occasions in case there was an emergency and the young family had to be taken to safety.

'But we didn't really suffer' says Ruth. 'We were not badly off, we had enough to eat and we didn't really have anything to fear. We children could barely remember a time before the War, so we took the strange way of life for granted. Nevertheless, there was a real feeling of a burden slipping from our shoulders on VE Day, when we took part in the great celebrations in St Giles. My youngest sister, Chris, born just as the War was ending, was christened on VE Sunday. A new beginning.'

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