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Transcript of an interview between Pauline Mottershead and her grandson Luke Mottershead, as part of his school WW2 project in 2001.

Pauline Mottershead, nee Holden was born in August 1930, so was aged 9 at the outbreak of war. She lived in Macclesfield, Cheshire, with her mother, who worked in a Silk Mill. Her father was away serving with the army, as were two uncles, one of whom was killed fighting in Tobruk. Another uncle was in the RAF. She has no brothers or sisters.

Q: What are your memories of the Blitz?
A: Well, of course I lived in Macclesfield, which was about 18 miles from Manchester, so we didn’t actually get a lot of the bombs, but we got, sort of after blasts of it. Woodford Aerodrome, near where your grandfather (Wilf Mottershead) lived in Disley, when they bombed Woodford, on the way home, they used to let all the bombs they’d got out, so he, at Green Farm, got quite a lot of these blasts and he used to pick up the shrapnel and the pieces of incendiary bombs and which I have still got for you. The thing that sticks in my mind was when I was about 10. The doodle, what we called the doodle bombs.

Q: The doodle bugs?
A: Yes, the doodle bugs were sent over from Germany and I can remember one night, that we always used to say we were alright while we could hear them, but then when they stopped, you counted about 5 or 6, like 1,2,3,4 etc and then there’d be a tremendous explosion. And one doodle bug, one night, I can remember being in bed with my Mum, because my Dad was in the army fighting, and we were trembling together, when there was a terrific explosion. We heard the next day that it had dropped on a farm called Bluebell Farm, which is quite close to where I live now, but it was sort of a stray. Other than that, with the Blitz, it was what I saw as a child, or listened to on the radio, or saw on the newsreels at the Picture Houses, because of course, we hadn’t got television, and we’d see all the devastation that they’d done. Coventry was very badly damaged and I had an aunt who lived in Coventry and she said how dreadful it was.

Q: How were you directly affected by the Blitz?
A: I wasn’t affected very much directly, apart from every time the sirens went, we had to dash off to the air raid shelter. The one nearest to the house where I lived, had been built into the hillside (of the local playing fields called the ‘Tip’) and all the inside of the hill had been dug out and was all supported by wood. We all used to run off down the road and go into there, and there were quite a lot of us. Then at school, if the sirens went, we used to go into the air rain shelter, that had been specially built with bricks and strong beams, supported with concrete. We always had to carry our gas masks with us, and oft-times, we had what we called ‘gas mask drills’, where we had to pretend that there was an air raid and we had to put our gas masks on and go down to the shelters.

Q: How did the Blitz affect other people you knew?
A: I said about my aunt in Coventry and also we, as a family, had an evacuee, who came from Manchester and she stayed with us for quite a few years. Also my aunt (Ida Rushton) had two girls who stayed with her as evacuees. So we had to share our schools with people from Manchester and Salford and places round there.

Of course, we all had to have ration books and, on each ration book, you had just a small amount of butter and cheese and sugar each week, and when that had gone we had to improvise with all sorts of things. We had to make cakes without butter and we had a good supply of eggs, as a family, because my aunt (Ida) had a poultry farm. She used to have to send so many eggs to the Marketing Board and then they were distributed around, but we were alright, because she used to let us have eggs, where as other people, again it would be so many on your ration book. We were only allowed a very, very, very small quantity of sweets. You could buy possibly one bar. One small bar would be a months supply. We used to use tins of Nestle's milk to sweeten our tea, because we had no sugar.

Also we had to have blackout curtains. You had to put them up every night and you were not allowed to show any sort of light through any of your windows, because of enemy aircraft. We had air raid wardens who used to come round checking, and if you had a torch, you always had to have part of it blacked out, so that light just went on the floor. We used to carry torches because there were no street lamps, or anything, because they were all put off. We had to carry identity cards, and, oh, clothing coupons we had, so you found that most people made clothes out of any old thing and children had clothes made out of, say, their parent’s clothes. They used to unpick and make them up again.

But we were always, as children, very happy, really, and there was always a sense of companionship with your neighbours and children at school, because we were all in the same boat together, and, in my opinion, we pulled together a lot more than people do nowadays. I’ve got a book I made up of souvenirs from the war, I’ll send to you….

Q: What happened to people if they lost their homes?
A: Well, they were taken in by neighbours temporarily and then you had to go with relatives or neighbours. We all shared our homes and that sort of thing.

Q: What did your father do during the war?
A: He was fighting with the Royal Engineers in India. He was in the Indian Command and I’ve got some letters I’ll send you, which he sent to me when he was in India and some photographs of it. And his number 14721362RE.

Of course your Uncle, Neville Mottram, was with the 8th Army at El Alamein and was with the Army when they invaded France on D-Day — I’ve got one or two letters from him and Christmas Greetings from the 8th Army. My Uncle Fred (Hitchiner) was in fighting in Egypt. My Uncle Arthur (Hitchiner) was in the RAF and a Welsh person, I used to write to, was with the British North African and Mediterranean forces He was in the invasion force which invaded Italy and then Germany in 1945. He was in Cairo for a long time. I’ve also got a postcard of the Girl Leaders’ School in Germany which I’ll send to you…..

What was the effect on you of not having a father around?
Well, how shall I say, because everyone was in the same situation, I suppose you drew companionship from each other, but I needed him very, very much. I can remember the day when he came back on leave - we didn’t know that he was coming - and I just happened to be walking down the street, when I saw my Dad, with his kit-bag, coming up the street. He was on leave from India, and when I’m talking about it now, I can feel what I felt then - the absolute happiness of seeing my Dad again. Of course, all the letters were censored, so that no information was given about the whereabouts or any information that would help the Germans. Yes, I would say you missed your Dad very much.

I had an Uncle Bill (Holden), my Dad’s brother, who, I can remember my Gran getting the telegram, early on in the war, to say that he’d been killed. So that was a painful experience for any one. I also knew someone who got the George Cross for bravery in the field of battle — a Mr Charlie Morgan, who used to go to the same church that your Dad used to go to when he was a little boy.

Q: Were you evacuated?
A: No.

Q: What was your school like?
A: My school? Well, for the first part of the war, I was at a school called Christ Church, which was a church school, and things really went on as normal, apart from we did have big classes, because we had a lot of evacuees. Then when I was 11, in 1941, I went on to the next school and we then had people from Grammar school in Manchester and Salford and, apart from big classes, we all joined in together.

Q: Were you more unhappy during the war than in peace time?
A: No. Things were very, very unsettled, but I can’t say I look back on my childhood as being unhappy, because we always had friends and we all joined together and we all laughed with each other and cried with each other when things went wrong. Which people don’t do nowadays, so I suppose, in many ways, it was happier than now.

We didn’t get luxuries ‘cos of course. We had precious little food and what we had, we never left and we never pulled our noses up. We just made the best of it. But, as girls have lovely dresses and things nowadays, in my teens, we had precious little. For instance, wedding dresses were made out of silk, which had been used for parachutes.

Q: What did you do for fun?
A: Well, in those days you could play out a lot more in the street, because there weren’t so many cars. We used to play top and whip, hopscotch, throwing balls up to the walls. And then we used to have clubs at the churches we went to, and to raise money for the forces, we used to do pantomimes and shows. My Mum would help organise and I would perform in them and then the money would be sent to buy things for the soldiers.

And we made up lots of special, sort of boxes, to send as treats for the forces. And then, really, with the blackout and things like that, you stayed at home quite a lot in the evenings and played board games and cards and pastimes like that. There weren’t lots of clubs like there are now to go to, apart from your church, because of the air raids etc.

Q: Were children expected to help with the war effort?
A: Yes, because, like I said, we did concerts and pantomimes and all the money was given to that, and with the old people and all the women, who weren’t in the army or who did work in munitions factories, we used to have jumble sales and things like that, and give money to the war effort. Any gates or railings round your house were sent off to the munitions factories, so no-one had a gate that was metal, or anything, because it all went off to be melted down.

Q: What was the worst thing about the war?
A: I think it was the combination of things — you couldn’t buy clothes, you couldn’t buy food and you had blackout curtains up and all things like that. You couldn’t go anywhere without your gas mask and no street light, and when you went to bed at night, you didn’t know if you would sleep all through the night because of the bombs etc.

Q: What were the best things about the war?
A: Well, the best things in my opinion, were that you were content with the simple things in life — you were thankful that you were alive the next day. I think it was that and everybody feeling that they belonged to each other.

Q: What was the role of the Home Guard?
A: The role of the Home Guard was to make sure that when the air raid was on, they'd help people to the shelter and then help clear up after the bombing, and generally were trained in case there was an invasion, which, of course, we never got. I don’t know if you’ve seen the TV programme of Dads Army — well, that was the kind of thing they did and they’d go round to make sure no chink of light was coming out and they’d go round and help distribute gas masks and they’d go round generally helping out anyone in trouble after the bombing.

Q: Did you know anyone involved?
A: No. because most of the people I knew were soldiers and things like that.

Q: What was the people’s attitude towards the Home Guard?
A: Very friendly, really, but I was only a nine year old when the war started, so I didn’t really know from an adults point of view — I only knew as a young girl and then as a teenager. And, of course, a lot of people older than me, when the Americans came over to England, were highly delighted, because they used to get nylon stockings and chocolates and things which our soldiers hadn’t really got — ‘cos you know what the Americans are. They were stationed close to a cousin of mine, she was about eighteen or nineteen then, and I can remember that, at their house, they had a lot of Americans. They used to entertain them and the Americans used to bring them all sorts of things.

Q: Do you think the role of the Home Guard was important?
A: Oh, I do, yes, because they were the kind of people that people who were, sort of, bombed, afterwards would be helped by them, but as regards their role for Germany invading, well, it never came to that, fortunately.

Q: What foods were plentiful?
A: Well, if you lived on a farm, then eggs and poultry and things were alright. And then everybody used to use their garden for growing vegetables and things — you grew as much as you possibly could by yourself, because very little food that came from abroad was plentiful. Sugar wasn’t, fruit wasn’t. Fruit and oranges used to come in, perhaps once every three months and then, someone would say ‘Oranges have come into so-and-so’s shop!’ and everyone used to rush there and you’d be in a big queue. Then you got one orange per ration book, ‘til they’d all gone. They used to mark, with a big indelible cross, on the back of your ration book. So you possibly got one orange, if you were lucky - and if you got in the queue quickly enough - once every three months. And a banana, well, you hardly knew what a banana was! Apples were better, of course, because there were apple trees, but oranges and bananas were unheard of, in a sense.

Q: Why were things rationed?
A: Because merchant ships couldn’t get through from other countries very well, bringing that kind of food, because of course, German ships were out to sink them. So it was very rare that things like that got through to you. They were not plentiful at all, and what food you did get, you had to give so many coupons for it. When your coupons had gone, well, that was it. If you had used your coupons up in a week - ‘cos you used to get different month's supplies - if you used them up in a week, well you had nothing for the other weeks of the month. It was like a buff coloured little book, maybe about four inches square and said ‘Ration Book’ with your name and identity number on it. Mine was LFIR.7.4. Then it had pages of clothing coupons, that people from the shop would cut out of it when you went to get any material, or any clothes. I think food, I’m not sure whether that was cut out — yes I think it was cut out, but for some things, they put an indelible cross on the page. At the butcher’s shop, again you only got so much meat or bacon.

Q: And how did rationing affect your diet?
A: Well, I would think that the number of people of this (war) generation, who are living to their nineties, mean it was OK — we were not eating cholesterol all the time. It was noted to be very good for your diet, because you didn’t indulge in the things you now do, which make you fat and obese. I think the amount we got was adequate, but we learnt to eat what we’d got and had to be content with it. No-one starved, we all had enough to keep us going. And maybe our stomachs got smaller, so we didn’t need as much.

Q: What other things were rationed?
A: Clothes, coal. You also had to give coupons for curtains and blankets, or whatever. You had to judge accordingly what was a priority, because there were things you just couldn’t get. We had to live on things that were available or grown in our own country.

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