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Polesworth during the War Years
By Winnie Lea
Written October 1975

Many stories have been written about the bravery and courage of the Second World War, but I will try and write a little account of life as it was in our village.

In the late 1930’s people were still recovering from the general strike. Jobs were still in short supply and a lot of men still on the dole, but life for us younger people looked bright, we had grown up and myself and my friends were getting married, everything was looking rosy after all the hard times we had gone through!

The war clouds were gathering over Europe but Adolf Hitler had reassured our Prime Minister Mr Chamberlain that Britain was not included in his ambitions. As time has revealed, Hitler was not a reliable man and Mr Chamberlain, an English gentleman did not realise the type of man he was dealing with.

When war was declared on the 3rd September 1939 we were all rather bewildered, everyone was issued with a gasmask, I don’t know why, but the government of the day seemed certain that Hitler would use some sort of gas. Thank goodness he never did to our knowledge, anyway we were prepared, and we had to carry these gas masks everywhere with us. They were issued to us in a little cardboard box, with a piece of string for slipping over the head. You either slung it over the back or let it hang over ones chest. Of course people started to improvise and make more suitable cases. I know I had a smart leather case for everyday and a prettier one for special occasions.

Air raid shelters were erected in public places and sandbags placed around various buildings. Windows were fitted with blackout curtains and in some- strips of sticky tape were fixed onto the windowpanes themselves in case of bomb damage, the tape restricting flying glass.

Petrol coupons were issued to people with cars, five gallons per month for an 8-10 hp car. Headlamp masks had to be fitted over car sidelights and headlights, with a little narrow slit on each light to see with. White paint was used a lot around edges of buildings, lampposts, curbs etc. to get some sort of bearing to drive around in. Signposts were taken down, also village and town nameplates, anyone asking directions in the countryside were treated very suspiciously, they might be German agents.

As time went by our men folk were going into the services. We womenfolk carried on doing our jobs living for letters and leave. Things were quiet for a time- and then France fell.

I was working for a dispenser for our local GPs and was teaching our new lady doctor to drive at the time. We did a surgery at Polesworth and Dordon, and afterwards a round of visiting. We got as far as Baddesley on our round and the doctor heard the news on a patients’ radio ‘France has fallen’. I remember we sat in the car wondering what was going to happen to us all. When one thinks how strong Hitler’s forces were and the English Channel is only 20 miles across, it seemed very frightening. We both thought of our husbands, hers in the Merchant Navy, mine in the Army, when we suddenly realised we had a job to do and consulting our visiting list carried on. Then Dunkirk, we thanked God for our great deliverance but expected German invasion. Concrete pillboxes were set up at various sites and we scanned the skies for enemy parachutists, everything was tension, but everyone carried on working.

Although we live in the countryside, Coventry and Birmingham are both fairly close. The German bombers seemed to turn around over us to make their bombing runs over both cities. When Coventry was bombed we could see the glow in the sky of the burning city, the planes were droning overhead and every minute we expected a bomb to fall on us. A nearby searchlight was stationed at Alvecote and the beam from that going up into the sky seemed to light us all up, until one night a German bomber dropped a bomb down the light and blew up the searchlight and its crew and also a nearby house causing quite a few deaths.

The next day after Coventry was hounded almost out of existence, our village was overwhelmed with evacuees, poor souls they were suffering from grief and shock, and almost all had lost their homes and some members of their family. Polesworth people were always kindly folk and opened their doors readily to them. At the surgery we came into contact with most of the evacuees at one time or another. The reaction of the bombing and the uprooting of the children from their homes caused quite a few problems, but on the whole we lived together in harmony.

As the war went on petrol for private motoring was stopped, the rotor-arm out of each car had to be taken out and sealed in a little box and with an attached label stating the owner's name, address and car number was deposited at our local police station. Britain had no intention of Germans riding around in our cars if the invasion did come. Looking back it all seems funny, because after all the police station could quite easily have been overcome and the boxes were all labelled.

Food was scarce, and of course clothes were brought with a coupon allowance. It's surprising how we improvised though, unpicking suits and dresses and remaking and borrowing from each other for very special occasions. One little thing I remember so well, soap was rationed amongst so many things and our family had used all ours. A friend’s husband was home on leave from the forces and he'd got a spare shaving stick, which they let us have. Our family of four used that shaving stick for a week. It was never left in the bathroom soap dish, but dried and put away in a cupboard after each wash. How comical it all sounds now, but at that time it was a generous gift.

When I see and hear of the comment of pills and drugs being taken today for the "stress of modern life" I think that our generation had something called (guts). We had to live a life of tension and strain also paying mortgages and rates, most of us with husbands thousands of miles away, not having seen them for years and wondering if we ever would again. I've known almost every day some girl getting a telegram (we regret to inform you ) from the war office. I had one myself. A lot of us were lucky and our men turned up safely, but we didn't know that for perhaps weeks, months, or even years. I know we didn't turn to drugs for help, we fought our own grief.
Lots of women belonged to groups who knitted for the services, the one my sister and myself belonged to was run by Dr Bond's widow. She lived on the corner of High Street where the newsagent and hairdressers shops are now. We knitted for the Navy, pullovers, socks, gloves, scarves, balaclava helmets and sea boot stockings. I think my stockings, which I knit, kitted out the longest legged seamen in the British Navy- the things seemed to go on forever. My sister used to knit full kits for officers, pullovers, socks etc all beautifully knitted. Two sets were presented to our lady doctor's husband and each time the ship was mined and sunk and he lost the lot, we just picked up our knitting needles and started again.

Days at the surgeries were very full, the N. H.I. did not included wives and children then, so we had a lot of dispensing to do, a lot of drugs were in short supply. Our doctors had us to do all sorts of jobs from setting bones, stitching up wounds, removing cysts and even extracting teeth, all in our surgery and with me to swab and hand out the instruments. I shudder to think what a union man of today would have thought. I only know we did a good job.

Shops always looked empty and bare. I remember my husband writing from the Far East asking me to send him a pipe to smoke. I tried shop after shop with no luck; there wasn't a pipe for sale anywhere. And then kind people found a spare pipe tucked away in their homes "unusual gifts" I finished up with seven. I posted each one separately stitched in a canvas bag as instructed by H.M.F.Overseas Mail- not one got through; the ships carrying them were sunk by the Japanese. About the same time a ship carrying a lot of Wren's (Women's Royal Navy) was sunk and most of them drowned.

So many people condemn the dropping of the atomic bomb. I don't think these people had anyone in the Far East. The Japs were sadists like Hitler and his crew and we were fighting evil. Look around your family and see the ones you love, can you imagine what it would be like to have one of your dearest, miles away not dead but being tortured or being subjected to all sorts of indignities. Don't blame my generation for the horror; remember you are walking around free today because of it. We had both Italian and German prisoners of war in this village they went home fit and well. Most of our men came home from German and Japanese POW camps wrecks and just shadows of their former selves. Now in their fifties so many of them are suffering, and some have died from the effects of their POW days.

Before the war our church bells were rung every Sunday by a party of bell ringers. Polesworth men who had peeled out the bells for years, in most cases sons taking over from fathers. The two front rows of pews in church were the bellringers seats, they sat there morning and evening for the services after ringing the bells. After Dunkirk and with the fear of a German invasion church bellringing was stopped and they were to be rung only as a warning when the invasion came. I know we missed hearing them each Sunday, we went to church as usual, but I can still see our ringers looking lost and quite out of place sitting in other pews, amongst the congregation.
Children at school were doing different jobs, most of the men teachers were in the forces so lessons suffered a bit at times, the children had holidays to help with the harvests on the local farms, and also to pick potatoes. As we could not get oranges and lemons the children went in parties collecting rose-hips in the autumn, to be made into syrup which contained Vitamin C for the babies and young children.

We had our irritants too, one of our bugbears was the local Food Office staff, perhaps they meant well, but oh dear their attitude! I have still never worked out why they though themselves so more important than the rest of us. We were all so inferior! Thank goodness they have now sunk without a trace.

We did not exactly starve in the village, yet like everywhere else the food was tight. American sent us things which included dried eggs and spam. The dried egg would make cakes if we sacrificed our margarine ration it also made scrambled egg mixed with a little water or milk, but the taste wasn’t too good so we used a little of our cheese ration grated on it to make it go down. The spam supplemented our meat ration, we grilled it, fried it in batter, or had it cold with a salad till we were heartily sick of spam, still it helped out it was food and we were grateful. Once we were persuaded to try whale meat, but it didn’t catch on.

As the years went by, our country was like an arsenal, American forces were here, Australian and New Zealand airmen, South African airmen, Canadian airmen, Polish airmen and quite a lot of the occupied Europe free forces. Our soldiers were mostly overseas although occasionally a village boy who was serving in the Navy would be home on leave. We got used to seeing or hearing bombers and fighting planes going off on bombing raids and seeing some come limping back with holes in them.

Just before D-day June 6th 1944 convoys were moving from all over the country to the South East. The A5 (Watling Street) was a continuous stream of traffic, lorries, gun carriers etc and I remember the sky was full of planes with gliders attached, they went by for hours, the railway was full of trucks transporting tanks and heading towards the coast. We felt at last the war was getting near the end. Just over a year later peace was declared and those of us who survived were left to carry on with life.

Time has shown how the world has changed and is still changing. Future generations reading this will no doubt have a different way of life. Your Polesworth will be a different one to ours- I only hope you can capture the helpful friendly village that it once was.

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