大象传媒

I鈥檝e had to think hard, over 60 years when they told me today what was happening, about people collecting our stories. What comes back to me is the food rationing, and the dried egg powder we had. Some people say it was terrible, but I quite liked it- you could make some quite nice meals with it. I think you got one egg a month, and you used to have to save them up if there was something particular you wanted to make.
At the time I was travelling around a lot. I was married just before the war, to a man in the regular RAF. When the war started he was away on operations- he was a very brave man, but he never told me anything about what he did. I know he went in one of those big bombers, on operations over Germany, and he had the worst job, because he was a rear gunner, a Tail-End-Charlie. I didn鈥檛 see a lot of him during the war, but I moved about. I had a baby, so I couldn鈥檛 do very much. I remember when the baby was born, I was in a terrible maternity ward- it wasn鈥檛 even a hospital because they were all being used. I had to go into a maternity ward that was actually a workhouse- just one big long room, and it was terrible, and the food was ghastly. It was summertime, and I remember I was there for 2 weeks, you had to be in hospital for 2 weeks in those days, and they didn鈥檛 change the bed linen for the whole fortnight I was there!
It wasn鈥檛 easy bringing up a baby during war time, because of the food shortages, but they were fairly well looked after. They had proper baby food, but if you wanted things like proper nappies, you had to hunt round all over the place and see what you could find. And you had to buy material and make nighties and things like that. I remember my radio being really important to me, it was the only way you knew what was going on, but the battery was one of those big acid things, and if it ran down you had to take it to the garage to get it charged up again, but I was so thankful to have it! And there were some good programmes, like the Tommy Hanley programmes, which saved your life because they were funny.
I was at home when the war started, and as I said my husband disappeared almost at once into operations, so I had to move to just outside Swindon, where he was working at an air base. I lived there to start with, and it was hard going really, with the bombers flying over occasionally. Then I moved up to Yorkshire. When my baby was a few months old I was . living in Bath, and there were terrible raids. There were 3 terrible raids, one in Exeter, one in Coventry and one in Bath, and we lived through that one in bath, and it was absolutely ghastly. It went on all night long and there was no way you could protect yourself. I lived in a big old regency house, very tall, three or four stories. All the other people in the apartments came down into mine, because I had an apartment on the ground floor, and we all just sat there and cowered all night long. The bombs used were screaming bombs, and you could hear them coming screaming down and you thought the next one would be you. Actually, I was very lucky. We did get bombed in the end, and all the windows and doors were blown in, but we didn鈥檛 get hurt. It was simply awful at the time, and that was my worst experience during the war.
After that I moved again, to Bridlington, where I had my little girl, and that wasn鈥檛 fun either. There were no maternity hospitals, and though I did get into a hospital the only place they could fit me in was into a storeroom with no windows! I hadn鈥檛 got my radio either, and I couldn鈥檛 wait to get out of there!
Then my husband was stationed at an airbase in Abingdon, and I went down there to live with him in married quarters, which was very nice. I was there when I heard that the war was over, and I was on my own and didn鈥檛 know what to do because no one seemed to be celebrating.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jessie Atkinson of the 大象传媒 Radio Shropshire CSV action desk on behalf of Dilys Hardman and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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