大象传媒

Memories of World War 2
Outbreak
I was 5陆 years old when the war began, and 11 when it ended. These are therefore the memories of a growing child, and subject to the limitations that that implies.
I don鈥檛 think I heard Neville Chamberlain鈥檚 announcement (鈥淚 have to tell you now 鈥︹��). At that time my parents lived in Croydon, Surrey, in one of the leafier suburbs. I can鈥檛 remember what my mother told me 鈥� my father would have been at work in London.
My first definable war memory was of an air-raid siren. We were visiting friends in Reigate at the time. They turned the dining table on one side, and we sheltered behind it. Nothing much happened, and it was not long before the all-clear sounded. It may well have been the first practice siren (used as an audibility check).
My mother was worried that the sirens might frighten me, but apparently my only remark was that 鈥渋t goes up to C sharp鈥�, and I then went over to the piano to prove my point. (I had already been having early piano lessons, and had evidently developed absolute pitch.)
I was at that time at a local kindergarten, and remember the (French) windows being covered with sticky paper tape in a sort of Union Jack pattern. My grandfather鈥檚 house 鈥� Edwardian, with large sash windows, was similarly treated, but I don鈥檛 think we did the same to ours, which was more modern and had steel-framed casements with small panes.
My mother had to make blackout curtains from (government-issue?) material. We had a tall window to the stairwell, and my father made a plywood cover for it, removable during daylight hours.
Serious hostilities
I have no clear recollection of the start of rationing. I was never a heavy eater, and probably the only thing I missed was bananas. I do remember the introduction of orange-flavoured cod-liver oil for us children.
For a short while at the start of the war, we all went to stay with relatives in Leeds. However, we did not stay long, probably because it soon became clear that this was a likely industrial target for bombing, and thus no safer than London. Again, we were in a fairly leafy suburb (West Park), at the end of the tram line. I remember being impressed by the strange (to me) loop power collector, which was simply forced over to the opposite direction at the end of the journey, greatly straining the overhead wire 鈥� as against our Croydon trams, which had to pull down one trail-arm and put up the other. One of our neighbours was the Totterdill family; Alan Bennett has said that he also knew some Totterdills, but I don鈥檛 know if they were the same ones. (Nor do I know how to contact him to ask.)
School
As the prospect of bombing became serious, my parents scraped together the money to send me to a boarding preparatory school. At first I was sent to Eaton House, near Twyford, Berks. There I was inoculated (painfully, in the bottom) against German measles (rubella), but caught chickenpox.
By this time, we were all dutifully carrying our gas-masks with us in little square cardboard boxes on strings around our necks. One day, we were led into one of the larger rooms of the school, to be confronted with a strange-looking machine with flat cylinders with louvres. We were made to put on our gas masks and the machine was somehow turned on; we were told that this was to test our masks. I don鈥檛 know what gas was used 鈥� probably tear-gas at worst.
We were taken on country walks 鈥� in neat crocodiles 鈥� past stinking middens, and a pond with enormous (to us) blue dragonflies (presumably chasers). They terrified us, however much the teachers assured us that they did not sting. On one occasion, one of the masters showed us a hornet that had invaded the school grounds; it was sitting quite peacefully on the trunk of a tree 鈥� one of those conifers with very soft bark that you could punch with impunity. However, I later fell into a wasps鈥� nest in rhododendron bushes in the grounds and got quite severely stung, though that can hardly be blamed on the war.
After a few terms at that school, my parents moved me to another, Long Close at Farnham Common, just outside Slough. (鈥淐ome friendly bombs 鈥︹��) This, like Eaton House, was a minor stately home, converted to hold about 40 pupils. There, our coal supply was delivered by a steam-powered lorry, which impressed us boys mightily. We learned science in the conservatory.
In the later stages of the war, we saw one V1 (鈥渄oodlebug鈥�). We were a bit scared, but it passed by harmlessly (at least, to us). But see later 鈥�
Holidays
Out of term, I had to go home for holidays. There was one year when I was sent to a farm in Wales (Newport, Mon). All I can remember is finding a duck-egg in the farmyard (which I was allowed to eat), and going out at harvest time with the party of farmhands shooting rabbits (which I suspect we also ate).
Other holidays were spent at home. In the winter, fuel rationing meant the house was deadly cold: my mother would not light the coal fire in the living-room until about 4 pm. There were constant electricity cuts, and at other times the frequency was so low that electric clocks became useless. My mother used to warm the house by lighting the gas oven, which she reckoned, at its lowest setting, didn鈥檛 use much, but still took the edge of the freezing temperatures throughout the house. One winter, we chopped down a sycamore tree in the garden, which gave us a good supply of logs, though some of these were further chopped up to provide kindling. We ran the hot water boiler twice a week, and all had a bath (serially, not together!) 鈥� in 2陆 inches (63 mm) of water, by government fiat. All solid fuel was of very poor quality: sometimes coal was little more than blackened slate. And then there was 鈥渘utty slack鈥� 鈥�
We had to have an air-raid shelter. There were two kinds: the Anderson, which was a pit in the garden, covered with a kind of mini Nissen hut, and what we had, which was the Morrison. This was a seriously reinforced steel cage (15cm angle-irons) inside the house, and supposedly able to withstand the collapse of the house on to it. Ours was in the dining room, and my parents and I had to squeeze into it to sleep as best we could. I, and I think also my parents, wore the 鈥渟iren suit鈥� popularised by Winston Churchill. At least they kept us warm.
The other shortage was food. Rationing became ever more severe. (鈥淲hat shall we do with our egg this week?鈥�) Meat rationing was, sensibly, by price: if you wanted steak, you only got a small one; stewing beef was more generous. Fats, at one point got down (if my memory serves) to two ounces (55 gm) of butter and the same amount of margarine per person per week. If you got a bad egg, you had to keep it (yuk!) to show the milkman, who would then allow you a replacement. You had to be registered with a particular supplier for each commodity 鈥� though you could register with one for a wide range of goods. Milk (and other dairy produce) was delivered by horse-drawn float. Gardens were dug up and set to vegetable growing (鈥淒ig for Victory鈥�), and horse manure was highly prized. Hence the cartoon of householder, approaching milk-float with shovel, and horse looking round and asking, 鈥淎re you registered with me?鈥�
Fish supplies were mostly maintained, and we managed to eat fish twice a week. However, we had to learn about new species, such as gurnard. There was no fish ration as such; you just had to queue for ages.
Once the USA was bombed into the war, they became quite generous with emergency supplies. A great standby was powdered egg, which came in waxed grey cardboard boxes. You could make quite passable scrambled egg with them, or batter puddings; at a pinch, they would make cakes, though my mother mostly used an egg-less recipe. The 大象传媒 ran a series about the Buggins family, created by Mabel Constanduros (I think), which told us how best to use our rations. (Grandma Buggins was always complaining 鈥淚 must have something soft鈥�.)
Of course, there were few luxuries. There was some tinned fruit, of variable quality. We were encouraged to make our own jam: the ration for bought jam could be exchanged for additional sugar for the purpose. Evaporated milk had to stand in for cream, though we had a cream-making machine which would re-emulsify milk and butter (or even margarine). The ingredients had to be warmed; one Christmas, we made some, and set the bowl outside on the kitchen step to cool. Unfortunately, some passing cat had a better Christmas than we did.
My father spent some nights away from home, doing ARP duty.
Doodlebug
Our Croydon house escaped the blitz. However, towards the end of the war, the Germans invented the V1 鈥� the 鈥渄oodlebug鈥�. These were designed to glide down and explode on the surface of the ground, rather than penetrating into it. As a result, the blast damage was much spread around. They were fitted with a timer that cut the engine and started the glide. The glide was not in a straight line, so the silence was the moment of fear, waiting to see just where it would land. They were aimed at London, but many fell short, and Croydon took the brunt of the barrage.
One landed behind the houses on the opposite side of the road to ours. The blast came between two of them, and hit ours. It lifted the roof by a few inches, sucked the walls outwards, and then dropped the roof down again, holding the walls from falling further. The result was a house with a one-inch gap between the ends of the internal walls and the outer walls. Heavy wooden shoring was put up round the outside to make the walls safe, and the house was deemed habitable, so we just had to live in it. The ceiling plaster had come down and the window glass had blown in. The glass was replaced, but holes in the ceilings were just covered with brown paper. My mother in particular had the job of clearing up. On opening the glassware cupboard, it was full of broken glass, but she saw some intact pieces, and started to rescue them. To her amazement, almost everything was intact: it seems that the cupboard doors blew open, window glass blew in, and the doors blew shut again. We also had a diamond-studded piano for quite a while.
Luckily there were few casualties form our doodlebug, because most people were out at work (or, like me, at school). The houses opposite, in whose gardens the bomb landed, were wrecked, most losing their back walls. In fact the surrounding houses were on roads in the form of a square, so that they all backed on to the blast, and all suffered damage. In particular, those on one road had rear toilets, each severed neatly at its base by the blast. In front of each house, therefore, there was the usual pile of ceiling plaster and broken glass, surmounted by a toilet pan; for a while, the road was known as 鈥減an alley鈥�.
VE day
The end of the war in Europe was obviously a relief, tempered by the revelations of death camps as Germany was progressively invaded. My school managed to find some bunting, hung from the top of the house to the bottom and back up again, to make a huge V. We boys all had a day off from lessons, and I think had some kind of a sports day.
The atom bomb
The war with Japan went on, of course. Then came the news of the atomic bomb. The newspapers鈥� science correspondence indulged in a lot of speculation as to how it worked. There was more relief that the war was finally completely over; only later did we see the horrifying pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For schoolboys, the war was mostly about adventure and excitement. The horror, apart from what any of us suffered directly, was only borne in on us with maturity.
Aftermath
In due course, the War Damage Commission came to assess our house, and made a grant towards repairs. It was not enough, and the final cost left my parents in somewhat reduced circumstances, particularly as my father鈥檚 salary, as a local government officer, had not kept up with inflation.
We had nowhere else to go, so we had to live in the house as three outside walls were taken down and rebuilt, one at a time. At one point, the only way of getting to the bathroom was to climb the scaffolding 鈥� towel and toiletries in hand 鈥� and walk the plank across the stairwell. The redecoration we had to do ourselves 鈥� the beginnings of DIY.
The nirvana we had all hoped for at the end of the war was a long time coming. Rationing did not end, and austerity was the name of the game, as the cost of the war became apparent. Little luxuries started to return 鈥� like bananas and ice-cream.
Still, we were glad it was over. For me, seven years later, militarism returned, in the form of National Service 鈥�

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