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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Deena Campbell from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mr Ian James Pidduck and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Pidduck fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

It was during the War where I worked as an agricultural student in High Ercall when I met my wife Violet who used to work in the local shop. We courted for a number of years before we were married. In that time I was to join the army and went abroad. One of the things that I can remember is that I used to send Vi nylon stockings from Italy where I was posted. I am sure that she was quite pleased about these as nylons were hard to come by at that time in this country.

We kept in touch regularly but after the War the mail service was a lot better so I would then send her chocolates from Rome with photographs. I took the pictures with a German camera and it wasn’t too expensive to get them developed in Rome.

The food during the War times was fair. We existed on it but there was very little variation. You might have a tin of beans or a tin of stewed meat. Sometimes it was warm, sometimes it wasn’t- sometimes you couldn’t even eat all of it.

The tea was like drinking ground up saw dust and bread — I didn’t see bread for weeks on end. I just lived on dry army biscuits. Thank goodness I didn’t have false teeth because I would certainly have cracked them!

But we existed and after the War I was glad to go home to better food even though we still had rations. There was very little meat and butter but there was plenty of potatoes. ‘Bully Beef’ we still had, I remember corned beef and spam which I thought was horrible but we were glad to get some as it was meat.

Things improved over the years and rationing went out eventually, can’t remember exactly when that was. What I do remember is that it was nice to finally go out and buy a joint of beef and pork chops!!...those were the days…Again you could have as much butter on your toast as you wanted.

The drinks tasted the same...yes the strength of the beer was definitely about the same.

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