´óÏó´«Ã½

How I Was Affected By the Second World War

I was born in 1932 and in 1939 the Second World War started between Britain and Germany. I was seven years old and to me Germany and Britain were the whole world.

I longed for a doll and my brother wanted a train set. I got the doll eventually when I was nine years old but it was second hand. My mum bought it from a friend of hers. There were many toys we couldn’t buy such as a doll’s pram. There was a doll’s hospital. It existed near Piccadilly station. It was a small shop and it was always crowded with people getting their dolls repaired.

There were no sweets until rationing started. Everybody was given little books of coupons and some people sold their coupons for a shilling each.

Before rationing, we could put a heaped teaspoon full of coca mixed with a teaspoon of sugar into piece of newspaper and dipped a wet finger into the coca and sugar and sucked it. That was the nearest thing we had to chocolate.

There was liquorice in the shape of a little piece of wood and we sucked it and bit it and it tasted just like liquorice. My friends and I used to pick up clover flowers amongst the weeds and when we took one of the petals off we used to suck it and it tasted sweet.

When the rationing started we were allowed to buy sweets which miraculously appeared in the shops. My mum and dad gave up their sweet rationing for my brother and I. We then had a quarter of pound each of sweet which we enjoyed at weekends.

My brother and I were evacuated to Blackpool and we stayed with a family who looked after us well. They had two children of their own, two girls. Our mother used to come every week to see us. My brother used to weep when mother left us to go back to Manchester. However, the reason why we were evacuated was that there was going to a Manchester blitz. Eventually we went back to Manchester with other children that had also been evacuated because our parents missed us. Ironically, we came back to Manchester just in time for the Manchester blitz.

In our back yard we had like everyone else locally a brick air raid shelter. The brick air raid shelter was made for terraced houses with backyards while people with gardens had corrugated iron shelters.

My brother and I slept in the air raid shelter in bunks. When the siren sounded mother and father joined us. Eventually with another family, mother and us two children also the friends family mother and their two children like us a boy and a girl, moved to Glossop in the country side. The two fathers stayed in Manchester. This was another experience, a new school and a new home. We were very happy. But we only stayed there a few months and we came back to Manchester. Mother became pregnant with my sister Marcia who was born in the Manchester blitz, who was ten years younger than Derek and I.

We still slept in the air raid shelter. My father put in electricity and we had an electric fire. During the air raids mum stayed in the house with the baby. She stated that if we were bombed mother and baby would die together.

I was thirteen when the war ended and we had parties everywhere in streets. Derek got his train set which was made in Germany. I was thrilled for him. Marcia got a doll’s pram.

After mum and dad died, we all carried on with our lives in peace time. Three of us are retired from work now but our friends’ mother is still alive at the age of 97 years old.

When the rationing ended, everybody queued up at the newsagents and everybody were sucking sweets. There was a queue at the ice cream cart. If we wanted ice cream, we would have to queue for at least half an hour.

Now all that is over and we all live our lives in peace. I’m now 72 years old.

Jean Jones.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.