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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jan Bedford of Kent County Council Maidstone Library on behalf of Constance Footman and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

´óÏó´«Ã½ People’s War — Headcorn Library Monday 16th August 2004

Mrs Connie Footman

The Dancing Years

In 1940 at the age of 16, I left my schooldays behind me and went to work in the Civil Service — the Ministry of Pensions — War Service Grants, situated at St Annes-on-Sea. I stayed there 10 years doing a variety of clerical work, most of which was of vital importance — administering grants to the families of those men and women who were in H.M. Forces, and in great financial need. That job was vitally important to our troops that were short of money. And we had to work all the cases out. I think it was a reserved occupation, we couldn’t go if we wanted to because they needed us there. After pen pushing all day we were in need of recreation at night and we found it through the dance floor. There was a very good train service between St Annes and Blackpool and it was there we used to go — at least 3 times a week. In Blackpool there were three magnificent dance floors — the Winter Gardens, the Palace Ballroom and the Tower Ballroom. The entrance fee at the Palace was 1/9d and for that we were able to watch a variety show, spend two hours dancing and enjoy ½ a shandy in one of the many bars, but we did pay extra for that, but it did usually last the whole evening. We had no need to take our own partners as Blackpool was awash — not only with our own troops, but Americans, Australians, Canadians, South Africans not to mention the Polish contingent. The world was our oyster and we danced and danced. Many a battle was fought on the dance floor but never off. We always caught the last train back to St Annes and it was back to the grindstone in the morning.

The Americans were stationed at Burtonwood and they approached our department to see if any of us would care to go to their dances — they were short of females — and they would provide transport. With some trepidation we agreed to go as a group and the transport duly arrived — it was an army truck. We felt like lambs going to the slaughter! Now the Americans were kitted out in expertly cut and tailored uniforms and had a load of money — unlike our own troops who had very rough uniforms and didn’t possess much money. Naturally the whole idea was quite appealing. It was when we got onto the dance floor and the chat turned to the war and how they had come to save us that the whole evening sort of went downhill. Some of us had boyfriends in the Forces and we weren’t prepared to be disloyal. I didn’t go a second time.

This may seem lighthearted and trivial memories but to us teenagers it was deadly serious. We said farewell to Burtonwood and returned to the dance floors in Blackpool. Just one thing though, the Americans certainly knew how to Jive, we had to forget the waltz, the quickstep, the slow foxtrot and the tango, so we did learn something from them!

Did you ever use teabags to dye your legs instead of wearing stockings? That we did. All our legs were the most beautiful coloured brown you ever saw. You had to be careful with it because otherwise you found you had patches all over. It wasn’t sophisticated stuff like we have nowadays. We used to get up to all that sort of thing, because money was tight, we didn’t have much, when you come to think we paid 1 shilling and 9 pence to go in, but you see I was only earning 18 and 4pence a week for a 5½ day week in the Civil Service, so 1 and 9 was a lot of money. We had to find our pleasures cheaply. Blackpool was a wonderful place and there were many, many boarding houses there, that’s why all the troops went there because there were so many places for them to be stationed. It was an incredible place during the war, it’s altered a bit since then.

I think we got the odd incendiary, because my husband was in the Civil Service. And at night they had to do these shifts watching for what was coming over and they used to spend most of the time playing with those huge stationery trolleys up and down the corridor because they were so bored, nothing was happening so they had to make their own fun. But on occasion we did get an occasional incendiary when they were on their way to Liverpool, because we could see the terrible fires that blazed, the whole sky was lit up with Liverpool.

The reason the Civil Service was there was because they were evacuated from London up to St Annes. And I was actually at school and they directed me there you see, you didn’t really have a choice where you went to work in those days, they just said you go there more or less. So it was all done fairly efficiently. And so that’s how there was a great congregation of Civil Servants up there. Where I worked then is where Premium Bonds is - ERNIE. They built special buildings for us.

I was living in Blackpool and travelling between Blackpool and St Annes every day, which was an enormous journey. I used to have to be up at 6 o’clock to get there and to catch the bus from Blackpool to St Annes and eventually at 17 I moved into my husband’s family. He was in the RAF, and I went to live there because the Ministry was just down the road and it saved all that travel.

I think the main thing was we didn’t have television. Nowadays we get the lot and you experience this fear, but in those days it was sort of remote. When I was living at St Anne’s the blitz of London was going on and my husband’s family were all living in London and they sort of got a bit panicky and decided they wanted to get out of it. So I was living in this sort of boarding house and there were a lot of us in it. And we kept getting these phone calls saying can we come please we’ve got to get out of London. At one time there was 7 of us sleeping in the top bedroom because nobody ever said no you can’t. And then the YMCA down the road opened their doors and said you can all come here for free meals and everything. They stayed for a while and then they eventually all went back as did other people, they wanted to go home again. But we were an escape route for them.

When I was at school they did have this idea that we’d be safer if we were sent to Canada. And because my father had been called up and was in the forces, no it was before he went back in … they said yes well we’ll tell you when you’ve got to go. But in the meantime he was called up and he said he decided it wasn’t right for us to go and sort of leave the sinking ship as it were. So we had to stay at home and we were taken off the list. If you remember there was a boat with all these children on, I think it sunk, with all these children on. And I’ve often thought back, gosh I had a lucky escape that I didn’t end up on that boat — the Athenea.

I remember we had to carry our gasmasks every day to school and then they used to have this system and we used to have to practise these drills. If we had an emergency we all had to be dispersed to various houses in the area. So you were allocated this house and we used to have to do these drills. Most of us were so young we didn’t know what was going on we just thought it was a great interruption to our lessons and off we’d trot.

We used to live next to a battery farm where there were chickens. It must have been one of the very earliest battery farms. We were rationed terribly and we didn’t have a lot of food. I don’t know whether our ration was 1 egg a week I can’t remember. But in this farm they used to get what they called soft shelled, they were all soft, they didn’t form a shell and this man that lived next door to us never knew what to do with them, so he used to say, oh you can have some of these. And we used to make cakes of course with these eggs. It was immaterial to us whether they had shells on or not. But it was a great gift to us, although people say did you get hungry? We didn’t exactly go hungry but we were all very thin, there were no obese people round in those days because we had such meagre rations.

When they all came back from the war and wanted to get married and all the rest of it there were no houses for them. And this is how the prefabs arose and they were making them actually at Squire’s Gate and when my father came out of the army he went there and he arranged the transport of these prefabs all over the country. And they were the most marvellous thing that they ever did. Because they were only supposed to last 10 years and there’s still some of them around. Nobody thought of buying a house because nobody had any money, we were all in the same boat. It was a terrible situation, it must have taken years to even out, when you got to the stage where you thought of buying a house. But you never minded because you found other pursuits that made life very happy. And you were all glad that the war had finished. Most of us put our names on Council lists of course because there was no other way of getting a place to rent. In fact we were on a council list for 8 years.

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