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This account was written down by my mother in the early 1990s. It is not spectacular,just a genuine account of how she remembered the war.

1939

I was thirteen in 1939 with my hair on my shoulders and tied up with a ribbon round my head like Deanna Dunlin. My father, who had been on one of his long business trips abroad had arrived home earlier than expected in the spring; he had arranged to stop off the boat at Port Said and spend a week or two among his Egyptian business contacts, but the imminent sense of a European war was so apparent there that he got back on to the ship and came straight home. We were able to have a summer holiday all together, consequently, and as we had been offered the use of a bungalow near Scarborough for the last two weeks of August, off we went in the Austin 14 that Dad was running at the time.
We had been living with the build-up to war for over a year. It was obvious that Neville Chamberlain’s visit to Hitler in Munich was not going to stem the tide. We all went up to the Town Hall to have our gas-masks fitted, nasty rubbery things that we young ones thought were rather a joke, but ordinary life proceeded. School finished for the summer which was a relief as I had been travelling 12 miles by bus each way for a year which meant a long day.
The prospect of a seaside holiday over-rode all these rumblings although I was old enough to follow the newspapers and the gloomy forebodings of the grown-ups. I loved a car journey, packed a bag full of all the treasures I wanted to take with me, including a "biff-bat" which was the craze of that summer. The bungalow proved to be a delightful holiday location with a large garden where my brother (aged 8) and I could let off steam while meals were being prepared. It was about three miles inland from the coast between Scarborough and Filey and we spent much of the time on the beach at a small bay which at that time was quite undeveloped.
There were frequent excursions into Scarborough, and I remember that nearly every female aged between about 16 and 30 wore navy "slacks" which could be purchased at Marks and Spencers’ for five shillings. They were slightly "avant garde" that summer but must have proved invaluable for the air-raid shelters in the not-so-far future.
The holiday sped by, the weather was glorious, and the news got worse and worse. On Friday morning, September 1st which was our last day, we went into Scarborough and Dad bought a "Daily Mail." I can see the headline now: "Hitler invades Poland." Dad said, "That’s torn it - we go straight home now!"
We were on the road before midday and as we passed through one of the Yorkshire towns I remember seeing a long line of children with labels attached to their clothing carrying all sorts of bundles and cardboard gas-mask cases which hung from their necks by string. A new word - evacuees !
We got home about tea time to find that black-out restrictions were already coming into force. I can’t remember how we managed that evening, but the following day was devoted to procuring and hanging yards and yards of drab dark grey-brown cloth over the windows, the black having already been sold out.
On Sunday morning, I was in bed late as usual, as early rising was not one of my virtues in those days. Dad called up the stairs: "Come down and hear war declared." The radio (or wireless as it was in those days) was switched on to relay the chimes of Big Ben striking eleven o’clock followed by the weary and defeated voice of Neville Chamberlain declaring that we were at war with Germany.
And then nothing happened! No false air raid warning, as in London, immediately after the declaration. Everyone was expecting immediate air attack but as the days went by and life continued fairly normally the jitters subsided and we entered the "phoney war" period of the next few months. In Buxton in the centre of the country, surrounded by hills, we were far away from any active involvement although ration books were issued and identity cards had to be carried. Gas masks had to be taken everywhere as nobody could foresee what the enemy would do. The cardboard boxes soon began to disintegrate and commercial and home-made cases began to make their appearance. The blackout soon wore off as a novelty and became depresssing as the daylight hours shortened.
The best thing that came out of the war for me was that I had to go back to being a boarder at school. No longer could I travel daily as the bus services were curtailed and I re-entered the School House as a weekly boarder that winter, and at a more senior stage than my previous experience of boarding. My father was too old to go to war, my brother too young, so there were no agonizing partings as in so many families. Christmas approached and there were the last "long frock" parties and school dances in spite of the black out. Food was not yet in short supply and the festive season was still festive. I was given a board game called "Black Out" in which you had to find your way across blacked out London and this occupied many a winter evening. My brother had Dinky Toy battleships and aeroplanes. But the New Year came in with forebodings that were soon to be justified.

1940

After the Christmas holidays winter set in relentlessly and in the Peak District we were soon feet deep in snowdrifts. One Monday morning I struggled to school in Bakewell by train, very late, to find that owing to fuel difficulties the school was closed and I had to remain at School House all week when I felt that a telephone enquiry by my mother wold have kept me at home. But a phone call to Bakewell was SEVENPENCE and out of the question so to school I was despatched! We were then sharing the school with a North Manchester boys’ school which had been evacuated into the area and we worked mornings and afternoons turn and turn about. This meant that every other weekend was a glorious long one from Friday lunchtime till Monday afternoon. I cannot remember when I gradually phased from being a weekly boarder to a full time one but it may have had something to do with the worsening war situaton. For Hitler’s troops struck suddenly and down went the European nations in swift succession. It was a beautiful warm spring, perfect for the Blitzkrieg. Every morning before breakfast I stole into the front hall, which was strictly out of bounds, to read the appalling headlines in Mr Harvey’s "Sheffield Telegraph." Then France fell in June and the wireless was moved into the dining room so that we could all hear the news bulletins. "The evacuation of Dunkirk goes on" was the headline for days. Then, suddenly we were all in the front line even in the Peak District. One warm night we had our first air raid alarm and all had to go downstairs. We had no shelters but could not take it seriously that first time and Mrs Harvey presided quite calmly in a stylish bottle green ´siren suit.´ We heard planes going over and Mr Harvey stuck his head in and said, "those were Jerries." I remember the disbelief I experienced that an enemy plane could be allowed to get as far as us - whatever were they doing? Remember, I had been nurtured in the British Empire when it was unthinkable that Britain could be on the losing side in any war!
After that there were many night alarms and daytime ones too when the whole school had to go to "safe" areas away from glass - difficult in our building which had been constructed on modern lines in 1937. Many hours of lessons were lost that summer and those taking School Certificate and the Higher Certificate were greatly handicapped especially as we were sharing the school anyway. One summer day we came down the hill to hear an alarm bell ringing and the rumour immediately went round that the Germans had invaded - parachutists were the favourite. It turned out that they were using an ancient fire alarm bell as one couldn’t use the siren, but as ringing the church bells was to be the signal for invasion, people naturally jumped to conclusions. The church bells remained slient throughout the war.
Compared with those living on the South Coast and eastern areas we were lucky. The Battle of Britain was already being fought over Southern Britain and they were tense days. It was a summer of clear skies and brilliant weather and I remember us all crowding round the wireless set in the common room to hear Churchill’s sonorous tones rolling out about fighting on the beaches and in the streets, offering us nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat, and later at the height of the battle declaring Britain’s finest hour. It was, too - the spirit we had was felt by everyone in the land and well I remember that - and regret that we no longer have it!
It was June when the L.D.V. (Local Defence Volunteers) which later became the Home Guard, came into being. One of my memories is that of sitting on the wall at the bottom of the School House garden watching the first volunteers drilling. We thought it a huge joke as some of the older boys from school were lined up drilling with broomsticks - yes they really did for a few weeks until they were able to issue rifles. They used pikes and swords from museums and stately homes too, but I didn’t actually see that. When I went home from the summer holidays I asked my father if he was going to join and he replied briefly, "I’ve joined." Having served in the First War he was only too pleased to find a role in this one. Truly, "Dad’s Army!"
When I went back to school in September the threat of invasion was receding, but as the dark evenings came on the bombing of the cities began and that was the dreadful winter of the Blitz. We were the lucky ones in our circle of hills, but night after night the sirens went and we had to spend hours downstairs at School House or in the cellar at home. The latter wasn’t as uncomfortable as it sounds, as it had been cleared and we stretched out on mattresses laid out on the stone slabs. The German bombers went over in waves on their way to Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. One evening, quite early, there were two loud bangs quite near - a couple of bombs had been jettisoned on the outskirts of Buxton and I realised to my surprise that my mother was more terrified than I was. She was always a "stiff upper lip" person. Bakewell also had a two-bomb "blitz" which hurt nobody. But the surrrounding cities were having a dreadful time. On the morning after Sheffield was bombed, Mrs Harvey bravely went in by bus to find if her family were alright. They were, but she saw Margaret Broughton’s father digging about on a heap of rubble which had once been his shop. The number of boarders swelled to capacity as children from Sheffield families were sent out for safety and no longer did the ranks of school colleagues present an unbroken uniform of navy blue. Day children from surrounding cities swelled the numbers. Fortunately, the Manchester school had returned "en masse" at the end of the summer term and we had full time classes again. During this period my father went on an overnight business trip to London. It had been relatively quiet for about a week and he went off hopefully but with his tin hat slung behind him. The news was heavily censored and they never said which city had the bombs, but we knew somehow that London had had one of its worst raids that night. I went to meet Dad at Buxton station the following afternoon - strangely, the train was on time! He said he never wanted to experience another night like it, worse than anything he went through in the First War trenches.
So the year came to an end. No end of term parties this year, no festivities at Christmas. People were reluctant to go far from their homes while the planes were going over and the air raid alerts were in force. The blackout at night was total - if you dared to show a light apart from a dim torch to get you from place to place an air-raid warden would thump on the door, "Put that light out" and heavy fines could be incurred. Rationing was beginning to bite but as yet shortages were not acute apart from No 8 torch batteries and onions which were almost unobtainable. But in the Derbyshire Peak district we escaped the suffering of the bombed towns.

1941 1942 and 1943

The war now settled down into an ongoing thing you had to live with. Once the evenings began to lengthen and the daylight hours increased, the bombing became less acute. In the summer Hitler unexpectedly attacked Russia and the acute anxiety of standing alone against the enemy lessened. Gas masks were left at home, the siren ceased to sound (at least in our area) and we all carried on living our own lives as best we could. Shortages now began to be really felt and unrationed food became prized. Sweets and chocolates were rationed but very soon the shops were empty and the "quota" largely went under the counter for regular and favoured customers - this applied to most commodities. There was a particularly horrible brand of chocolate called "ration chocolate" which was sometimes available on coupons, and some of us, one evening in the common room, decided to make peppermint creams out of it, using peppermint flavoured toothpaste as a centre. The process involved melting the chocolate on a hot shovel (the fires were all open in those days at School House). The resulting mess smelling of hot metal and indescribable "goo" was so revolting that we returned to "ration chocolate" with relief. A worse cross to bear was clothes rationing which, as I grew up over the next few years into my later ‘teens, was a real wartime hardship. We had 66 coupons a year to begin with, and this was later cut. A pair of fully fashioned stockings was 3 coupons and we all went barelegged from Easter to October whatever the temperature - except for really grand occasions, but there weren’t many of those.
That Easter, my aunt from Kent came to stay - she lived in "Bomb Alley" on the Thames Estuary and over the next few years she came to us regularly for a rest and relief from the raids. She brought me a present of enough beautiful pale yellow knitting wool to make a jumper from her pre-war stores. I made it carefully and successfully and it was one of my treasures for the next year or two until it shrank too far to be worn any longer. I was fifteen and growing fast. I took my School Certificate that summer, school now running reasonably normally. One or two of the masters had been called up, but being co-educational the women teachers were pretty long term and I had no trouble in passing the exam.
An A.T.C. group was formed for the older boys, drilled by the headmaster on Friday afternoons and a V.A.D. cadet corps for the girls where we learned elementary first aid. At the end of the summer term some of us went to help local farmers with the crops. I only went once - hoeing turnips on a hot day for 6d an hour dampened my patriotic fervour!
It was towards the end of the Christmas term when I stole into the forbidden front hall at School House to read the "Sheffield Telegraph" headlines and there learned that the Japanese had attacked the US navy at Pearl Harbour. This really was a stunner as nobody had expected that! From now on the war atmosphere and emphasis changed. We were no longer alone and had America and Russia as allies, but the disasters and anxieties of the next few months depressed everybody as the Japs swept over the Pacific and South East Asia. Singapore fell and Hong Kong. We had two brothers who were boarders at School House - they had come very young, about three years previously when their mother had died and their father had had to go out to Hong Kong on business. They spent their holidays, partly with an aunt in Sheffield and partly remained at School House, looked after by Mr and Mrs Harvey. It was awful when the letters they had written to their father began to be returned, and for several months they did not know what had happened to him. It was worse when reports of the awful things the Japs were doing to their prisoners began to filter through. I’m glad to say that this had a happy ending. He had managed to get away from Hong Kong and eventually turned up in Vancouver. A year later he married again and sent for the boys. They crossed the Atlantic safely in a convoy but Mrs Harvey always said she never knew how they would manage the journey as a bus trip to Sheffield never failed to make them sick!
I left school at the end of the summer term of 1942 with all my friends. In the last week of term we had a visit from one of the previous boarders who had been at school when I was in the junior forms. He was now a navigator in the RAF and had come to see Mr and Mrs Harvey while on leave. Afterwards he came out into the sunny garden where I was watering lettuces and talked to me because I was one of the few still there that he remembered. I remember him saying that he did not expect to come again as navigators could only expect to last so many operations and he had already exceeded that number. I said, shocked,"Oh no Blag, you will come back!" But he didn’t - he was killed not long afterwards as he had known he would be. He was 20 and he still rises before me on Remembrance Sundays.
Another memory I have of those last weeks at school was of one early summer evening in the School House garden and seeing a German fighter come over and hearing the machine gun stutter. He was a lone raider who went over and shot up Chatsworth House which had a rather upper-class girl’s school evacuated there at the time. There wasn’t much damage done and no-one was hurt but it served to remind us that the war was never far away, even in our peaceful surroundings.
The northern cities were no longer bombed and I was able to enrol for a course of Art and Design at the Manchester School of Art, travelling into Manchester daily by train from Buxton. About that time the family moved to a larger house in Buxton, and now living at home all the time, I had a lovely big front bedroom to myself. It was cold in winter, though - central heating did not become widespread until after the war! I had not been at Art School for more than a few days when I came down to breakfast one morning to find my father seated at the table with the paper. He said, "There’s very good news this morning, Rosemary - we have won a great battle in Egypt!" This, of course, was El Alamein and from then on the atmosphere of the war seemed to change. We had had nothing but defeats until then and that was the turning point - from then on we began to look forward.
I enjoyed being an art student and finding my way about Manchester although the journey in winter was quite fearsome. I had to start early to catch the 7:50 am train from Buxton station. The carriages were old and fusty and lit only by faint blue electric bulbs, which were not enough to read a newspaper by. Some of the commuting business men used to bring their own brighter bulbs and screw them in, removing them at their destination! Smoky, steamy carriages, filling up with bowler hatted, dark suited, white collared Manchester business men, all middle aged or elderly as the young ones were all in the forces, and Manchester as black as the layers of soot which covered everything from the buildings to the statues in Albert Square. But the art school course was enjoyable and I made new friends. The first year students were pretty evenly balanced between the sexes, but after that the boys were called up and the second year and above had only the medically unfit males. On Wednesday afternoons which were free, I usually stayed in town to meet up with ex-school friends who were at the University or training at hospitals, or to go to the cinema which was at the height of its glory in the 1940’s. Those films did a lot to brighten the leisure time of those restricted years, when for a bob or two, even the impecunious such as myself could afford to go once a week at least.
At home in Buxton, as I look back now, I realise how very restricted life was. The black-out kept everyone indoors on winter evenings, as did the fierce climate - feet of snow every winter! There were dances at the Pavilion but my mother would never let me go - I might meet SOLDIERS !! Social life was confined to the New Year Rotary Party which my mother and father regarded as the highspot of the winter season, or rare social evenings with my parents’ friends. In summer, with the lighter nights things were marginally better - I was usually over at Chapel with my friend Kathleen on Saturdays, or she came over to Buxton. And we began to go on Youth Hostel holidays, two or three of us, to the Lakes or North Wales - the only districts available to us. The coasts were barbed wired and mainly out of bounds to civilians, trains always overcrowded with forces in transit, but those first holidays on our own without parents were great oases of enjoyment.
Food and commodities were now really in short supply. We, as a family were very grateful for the food parcels which came at irregular intervals from abroad, legacies of my father’s long overseas travels before the war. Little wooden boxes of tea from India, dried fruit from Australia, Christmas parcels of tinned jam and fruit, often arriving months afterwards but appreciated like gold. There was always enough to eat but the standard wartime diet was stodgy and dull. " Fish and sausage, fish and sausage !" my mother used to exclaim - " I’m sick to death of fish and sausage!" It was pointed out that we were lucky to have that when so many people were starving on the Continent. She had a point - fish was usually Icelandic cod, not nearly so well refrigerated as nowadays, and the sausages were mostly made of soya bean flour - but they were off the ration and meat ration at that time fed us about one day a week. Mother used to recruit us all on Saturday mornings to get the food for the weekend. Saturday was market day in Buxton and you had to be there early to queue for the nicer sorts of fruit and veg. I always volunteered for the salad stall - you usually had to buy a lettuce to be supplied with ½ lb tomatoes. Mother took the important queue outside the pork butcher for the sausages, sometimes only ¼ lb per person. Then we all used to change round and join different queues. If we were lucky all four of us could get ¼ lb of sausage and tomatoes but sometimes supplies ran out before the last one got there. And we usually had an awful lot of lettuce! Mother also took to spinning awful hard luck stories to the grocer in the hope that he would slip her a bit of extra margarine or bacon "under the counter." She was quite shameless but quite often successful! Once, I remember, a shipload of oranges came in and we all had two per ration book. This was an enormous treat - we put them all on the mantelpiece and feasted our eyes on the lovely glowing golden colour before eating them.
My father, like most people, "dug for victory" on an allotment and the resultant vegetables were a great addition to our diet. Buxton’s climate is far from kind to gardeners, but we had early potatoes, Brussel sprouts etc, and of course onions. Everyone grew onions after the shortage in the early days of the war. Bread was always available but it was rather grey and known as the "National Loaf", not very attractive!

1944

By the time the New Year came in, people were beginning to talk and look forward to the "Second Front." American forces were now everywhere - not in Buxton apart from the few on leave, but plenty in and around Manchester. Life continued very much in the same routine, but as the year progressed it was obvious that sooner or later we were going to invade Europe. Montgomery’s victories in the Western Desert were heartening and the awful deadness of the two previous years began to lift. On a rare car journey (petrol was now virtually unobtainable except for official purposes but Dad had a Home Guard allowance) or a bicycle trip on moorland roads, one would come across great numbers of tanks and armoured cars parked along the verges - I suppose massing preliminarily in the moorland districts away from prying enemy aircraft. By the Spring, we were all waiting for it to happen, and one June morning I was just coming off the train in Manchester and passing a shop when I heard a radio booming and people gathering to listen. It was D-Day and we had landed in Normandy! Everyone was swept up into the excitement and anxiety. We all knew that there would be heavy casualties and desperate fighting. The next few days we were all glued to the radio and devouring the maps with the arrows on them in the newspapers. We had to take Caen and the fighting was some of the most desperate. Then the armies broke out of the bridgehead and the heady days of that never to be forgotten summer began. The Allied armies swept across France and reached Paris in August. It was marvellous, everyone was on a high. Meanwhile, Italy had been invaded from North Africa and the armies were battling their way up from the South. I can’t remember much of that summer apart from all these events that were taking place in Europe.
But the war was far from over, and London and the South East were facing a new form of air attack from the flying bombs or "doodlebugs" as they came to be known. They were unnerving as one never knew when they would cut out and come down. In Derbyshire we were remote from all this except for one instance in early December. One night I awoke to hear the air-raid siren, a sound we had not heard since 1941. As I sat up in bed there was an enormous orange flash and an explosion and I was downstairs and in the cupboard before you could say ´knife.´ Dad rushed in and grabbed my brother who was slower on the uptake. The Germans had launched the "doodlebugs" from planes over the North Sea in an attempt to get at the North. It was too costly for them to repeat as the RAF got them nearly all and we never had a repeat raid. One bomb caused damage and casualties in Stockport but many fell on moorland and killed only sheep. We went up to look at one of the craters subsequently on the moors near Buxton.
On the Continent things were going so well with France and Belgium liberated that Dad was actually able to receive one of his business agents from Brussels. Mr Frings came over and stayed at the Leewood Hotel in Buxton a couple of weeks before Christmas, keen to get his agency established as one of the first. It was like someone from another world and we were able to hear first hand stories from an occupied country, some hair-raising. Then the blow fell - there was a mighty counter-attack through the Ardennes by the Germans and the Allied forces fell back. Poor Mr Frings could not get back to Brussels and had to spend Christmas in England desperately anxious for his family. We entertained him several times and he became a firm friend in the post-war years, but it was with great relief that he was able to return to Brussels in the New Year when the counter-attack had been smashed.
In that December I became nineteen, having spent all my teenage years under wartime conditions. The restricted life imposed by the war was common to all and we accepted it - the shortages, the lack of social life, the blackout, the frustrations. My war was very ordinary compared with some people’s and as a student I was not required to be called up for the services or war-work although had I been a few years older I may very well have been. When I was 17½ I wanted to join the W.A.A.F but my father put his foot down firmly so I remained at home and continued with my art course in Manchester, helping occasionally, with my mother, in the W.V.S. forces canteen in the Town Hall.
Everyone felt that the war in Europe would be over in a few months and that this would be the last wartime Christmas. My father had an office boy who reared turkeys in his back garden and we had a grand bird that Christmas.

1945

I have very few memories of the early months of that year until the final weeks of the collapse of the Germans. I do remember the ghastly revelations as our forces overran the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Belsen, the dreadful pictures and accounts in the papers. Remember, we had no television then - thank goodness - but I forced myself to go and see the newsreel at the cinema. The results of the Holocaust (although it had not been named as such then) appalled everyone so much that it came home to us how much the war had been necessary.
The weather turned very warm at the end of April. First Italy capitulated and the Allied Forces reached Berlin. Everyone hung on the news bulletins. On the 7th May I reached London Road Station (now Picadilly) in Manchester to catch my train home to find the evening papers coming out in headlines "War Over in Europe!" It wasn’t, officially, until the next day, but there was no holding the population. We took down the blackout curtains that evening and felt strange and guilty at letting the lights shine out but everyone was doing it. The next day, the 8th May victory was official and the war in Europe was over! Was it a holiday? I just cannot remember if I went to the Art School that day. If I did there can’t have been much work done! But I remember the evening - I believe they got some of the street lights going and we rummaged in the loft for some pre-war Christmas tree lights and put them up over the front door. Excitement mounted and we all went down into the town - everyone was out in the streets with dancing going on in the Crescent. I remember two soldiers jiving together, both extremely drunk. Every time they fell over the crowd gave them a cheer - it was all very good humoured and slightly hysterical. When we got home my father announced that he was going into the nearby field to let off six shots from his revolver. This was one he had kept from the first World War and had licensed it ever since although it never left his top dressing-table drawer. My mother was horrified - they were both strong characters, but she won the day eventually and persuaded him not to. Looking back, he had probably had one or two! Dad had taken the war very seriously and the relief was enormous.
Although the war was over in Europe there was still the Far East and we all thought that it would be a long time before that would be resolved. The shortages continued and became even worse as supplies were directed to starving and ravaged Europe. But we had the lights and in the South there was blessed relief from the doodlebugs and the rockets (or VE2’s) which gave even less warning. The last few months of the war were bad in London and the South East but now at last there was nothing to fear from the sky.
As soon as the war in Europe had finished, moves were put in hand for a General Election. Party politics revived and there was great heat, debate and excitement after the years of combined wartime government. Well, as everyone knows, there was a Labour landslide with the servicemen contributing heavily. I was very interested in this election although still too young to vote in it - you had to be 21 in those days. My father was absolutely shattered - Churchill was his hero and he was always a true blue Conservative. My mother was interested but I don’t think she dared vote Labour with my father around although they had some passionate political arguments! When all this was over two friends and I went Youth Hostelling in North Wales for a week and had a lovely time. We were at Ffestiniog on the 8th August and had not seen a paper for some days. On coming down to breakfast in the Youth Hostels we found flags at the bottom of the stairs and on the dining tables, and learned that the war with Japan was over! The significance of the Atom Bomb did not immediately hit us - the relief and amazement that it was really all over - all over the world - was enough for us at that moment.
We moved on to Harlech that day where we had booked in for the last two nights of our holiday. After supper when it was growing dark, all the Youth Hostellers went out to join the celebrations. A great bonfire was lit overlooking the sea and all the Welsh people came out on the point and sang. It was unbelievably moving - the dark sea, the blazing bonfire and "Cym Rhondda" in Welsh from hundreds of voices was unforgettable.

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