大象传媒

The Second World War started when I was 11 years old. Life was sweet at home in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Dad, a farmer鈥檚 son, had a steady job with the Council. Mother had just given birth to another sister making us five in family and I had just started at secondary school.

We had few luxuries. A trip to the new Odeon cinema on Saturday afternoons was our one great adventure. Queuing for what seemed hours with kids and parents milling around, Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Diana Durbin films filled our young minds with a world of glamour and excitement. If we missed the beginning of a film we were allowed to sit through it again. Intervals of ten minutes were filled the magical rising from below stage of the cinema organ with its flashing, dazzling coloured lights and hundreds of unusual sounds, and an organist perched on his wide seat flinging his legs in all directions to hit the foot pedals. There were prizes for those who went up on stage and everyone had to sing along to the latest songs.

Mother bought the weekend joint of meat at the end of Saturday Open Market because it was cheaper then. You could even buy a wafer ice cream for tuppence, fish and chips for three pence and a spangled liquorice strip with a bag of sherbet for a few hapence.

Granny Parker owned a corner shop in Norfolk Street. She sold small items of domestic goods like vinegar, soaps, boot polish, sweets, home made toffee apples and herbal remedies. As I got older I was allowed to help out in the shop and serve customers. But I could never replace the Cornish woman who met and married my grandfather from Rotherham. She had her clientele and was always ready to listen to people鈥檚 troubles. I was often sent into the back of the shop when there was any gossip to be had or scandal to relay.

My extended family in town became the focal point of our trips on Saturdays. We called at Granny鈥檚 on our way home for a cup of tea and a cake, often staying for a singsong with mother at the harmonium and everyone playing their Salvation Army brass band instruments. We鈥檇 go through all the choruses and songs we knew in harmony together. I was often given a tambourine to play. Dad, not a singer or a Salvationist sat and listened to the noise. With the war-time blackout imposed we had to walk two or three miles home in the dark through Clifton Park. Once, when it was nearly midnight, I was so tired that I drifted into the road and was hit by a local doctor on his way to a sick patient. I still have that bump on my head to prove it!

My new school was over two miles away from home. I had been given a place at the High School but Dad knew that it would be an added burden to the family budget. Providing a strict uniform, books and all the equipment I would need was way beyond his meagre wages. He had other children to think of too and was far too proud to ask for help. So I attended South Grove Central School for Girls, a large, old Victorian building with high windows, dark green and mustard-coloured walls and large forbiddingly cold classrooms. The school Headmistress, Miss Blair, gave us two strict rules, 鈥楧on鈥檛 look in the direction of the boy鈥檚 school鈥� (upstairs) and 鈥榥o fraternizing with the boys!鈥� Needless to say that didn鈥檛 stop the boys from sneaking a look down on us in the playground our navy blue baggy knickers when we played rounders, netball and went through our PT drills.

Many of the younger members of school staff wen to serve in the forces. French lessons were learned from records on a wind-up gramophone and art sessions were diverted to a nursery where we painted murals on the walls.

Adult conversation was focused on the war in Europe. Parents told stories of when they were our age (mother was eleven at the beginning of the First World War). Like them we thought we would have to eat horrible black bread, soldiers would be gassed in the French trenches (like my friend鈥檚 father) and Zeppelins would fly overhead. Dad related the painful memory of his father鈥檚 beloved horses on the farm in Norfolk. They were all commandeered by the government to serve on the battlefields of France.

At home we all gathered round the crackling radio for news at home. I think dad hoped he鈥檇 be too old to go to war. One or two uncles were called into the Army and Air force and an aunt was sent away to work in an aircraft factory. Mother, who had worked in an iron factory in Rotherham before she was married, volunteered to go back to do her bit making cores for bomb casings in the foundry. She was pleased to earn some money too. My sister and I were left to take our baby sister to nursery each day and pick her up after school. Being the older of the two I was expected to 鈥榮ee to things鈥� before mother arrived home.

We were issued with gas masks, ration books, and identity cards and there were bottles of concentrated orange juice for babies and young children. My baby sister was given a big gas mark to fit into. In the event of an attack it had to be pumped constantly with air. Thankfully it wasn鈥檛 needed. Granny Parker, a soldier and matriarchal commander of the Salvation Army, refused to a have her compulsory gas mask in the house and told the authority, 鈥淚t鈥檚 no good giving us one cos鈥� there鈥檚 no gas laid on in the cellar.鈥� (That鈥檚 where she and Aunt Harriet went whenever there was an air raid.) She really thought that gas masks had to be plugged into the gas main like her house gaslights. In 1941 and during a heavy air raid over Sheffield she and my Aunt Harriet took refuge in the coal cellar under the shop where they spent all night in the dark, dousing a blanket a blanket hung over an open grating with water to keep out the gas. In the morning they were found wet through and perished with cold. How the family loved to pull their legs about it!

Air raids and enemy aircraft overhead frequently interrupted school days. Sometimes we travelled to school only to collect homework. The shelters there were old, single brick toilet blocks situated at the far end of the schoolyard. What good they might have been with bombs dropping is anyone鈥檚 guess. Many lessons were curtailed or abandoned because schoolteachers were thin on the ground. Drill practices were hilarious, though, especially when we marched across the playground wearing our gas masks 鈥� almost as funny as in our knickers!

Early in the war I wanted to emigrate to Canada but my parents didn鈥檛 think that was a good idea. I remember forging their signatures on the application form but was discovered in time. The ship I would have travelled on was torpedoed in the Atlantic with 300 children drowned. I was never allowed to forget it!

With food rationed, growing children were always hungry. Dad dug up the garden and grew everything he could to help. 鈥楧ig for Victory鈥� was his adopted motto and his farming skills came in handy. He also took me into the fields to catch rabbits and taught me how to skin and gut them before they went into the pot because mother could never bring herself to do it. He kept chickens and ducks to provide fresh eggs because she hated cooking with powdered egg. But she learned the new art of bottling fruit and preserving eggs. We all took our turn for what seemed like hours shaking the top of the milk into a minute little pat of butter. The margarine on our bread smelled strongly and sometimes tasted rancid. Dad had the cheese ration in his packed lunches and mother and baby had the butter ration. We cleaned our teeth with salt and Granny Parker saved some of her sweet rations to give to her grandchildren.

School dinners consisted mainly of potatoes and vegetables brought to school in huge steel bins. Everything smelled and tasted of metal. Roly-poly pudding came in long metal cases and was eagerly awaited. School milk was a stomach-filler. Mother sometimes sent us to school with a little packet of Ovaltine to sprinkle on top of the milk and flavour it. My sister and I were members of the Ovaltinies club and listened to the radio programmes whenever we could until we grew out of it.

Mother spent many hours in the Anderson shelter with we three girls. Dad dug the hole for it into the clay ground of the garden and when it rained the water drained into the bottom of it. Mother put us up on bunk beds at night above the water line. Often she sat beside us in a deck chair with my baby sister on her knee singing us to sleep with a rendition of First World War songs about Zeppelins flying overhead and pretending to be very calm and brave. This was especially when Dad was on ARP duty and we could hear the ack ack guns firing in the distance. She told us stories to divert our attention from bombers flying overhead. One night she rocked the chair so vigorously it collapsed and she and the baby fell into the muddy water. She laughed through her tears, but how we avoided catching pneumonia in that cold and damp hole I will never know.

I asked the wider family to donate their old coats for making siren suits to keep us warm. Whiston Churchill gave us the idea. Some coats had fur collars and were made of thick, warm cloth. My efforts were commendable but the design was lacking. I did not know that I had to insert a gusset between the legs and my hand-made garments often came apart at the seams causing the wearer to feel a cold draught in the backside region.

Light came from candles and they were precious, but no light at all had to be shown to the enemy. Even cracks in the doorway and windows had to be covered over. Dad had to cover the headlights on his car because of blackout regulations. Only a tiny slit of light was allowed. I think he wrote off one or two cars because he tried to supplement the petrol ration with a drop of mentholated or other 鈥榮pirit鈥� he could find. His imaginative enterprises often turned into disasters. Street lighting and street names were not allowed in case the Germans landed and were able to get their bearings.

My friends and I had ideas about concerts in the garden to raise funds for the Red Cross. Dad built us a stage behind the garage and encouraged our endeavors. We begged for old clothes and invited all the young children to come to our shows. Mother provided the drinks, dad took photographs with his little Brownie camera. We had such fun and crowds came with their hapennies and safety pins to pin up curtains and costumes and sing the popular songs of the day.

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