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Iris O'Dell's Wartime Memories - entered by The British Schools Museum, Hitchin on her behalf.
Mum was wearing a dark green coat with a fur collar and a green velvet hat when she went into Timothy White鈥檚 to buy Cod Liver Oil and malt and we were outside minding Bob in the brown pram. I was surprised to see how serious she was when coming out of the shop and as she popped the big jar under the pram cover, she whispered "We are at war". That night I laid awake for ages straining my ears to hear the expected tramp of Germans marching up our lane.
After that, life slowly changed. We heard about evacuees and ladies called to find out how may bedrooms we had and how many in the family. Charlie Page called while we were at Grandma's and told a packed kitchen that he had volunteered. He was promptly told by all he was mad! Uncle Henry volunteered and Dad promised to keep his allotment going for his family, which he did. As it turned out, Henry, a bricklayer, was eventually drafted into the medical corps and ended up in India.
At St. John's Hall gas masks were allotted - it was chaos! We each had to be fitted and tested with paper. Bill had a Mickey Mouse gas mask, which used to send Mum off into peels of laughter and Bob had a huge contraption to put the whole baby in, at least to start with. School was strict about bringing one鈥檚 gas mask and you were sent home to get it if forgotten. All of them started off very smart boxes, but time took its toll and the original boxes in pretty covers gave way to all manner of new covers including those which looked like a horse's nose-bag. It was soon the norm for everybody to be seen with their gas mask. At school we were given gas-mask drill where we were timed to see how quickly they could be put on and tested by our teacher, Mrs Martin and later Miss Ingle. They came around the desks with a piece of paper and you breathed in a hoped the paper stuck on the end of the mask.
Basics were rationed, but it was still possible to buy custard powder etc. Word would get around and there was a dash and an eventual queue. Rita and I would do the rounds on Saturday mornings and were thrilled to come home with a sachet of custard powder from the corner of Bucklersbury / Tilehouse Street shop where Audrey Wheedan's mother worked and had given us the tip. Or, the discovery that Mrs Pratt had blancmange powder - we survived! Later these things went on to a points system.
School life was good and I enjoyed Queen Street School, Hitchin. It was lovely when Mum brought home some little day old chicks, which she kept in a box in the hearth. I think only Gert and Daisy survived, but we had eggs. Most people were keeping hens and rabbits. Our rabbit, Rachel, grew enormous and eventually Mum took her to the market at the top of the arcade and sold her. Uncle Henry and Auntie Maggie killed their rabbit and cooked it. It was said that Alan, their son, called them murderers and refused to eat it.
Auntie Ethel joined Kings' welding team and loved every minute. She loved talking to Dad about her workshop experiences and I gather she was very good. Auntie Ridy went each week to the railway station to get her weekly ticket to London and I went with her several times - keeping the torch to the ground, in case we attracted enemy fire. Auntie Ridy told me about her work in London and the making of parachutes. Gwenie was only 14 and went off to work every day to Baldock - Mum's heart went out to her going off in the dark at 14 years old. On walks Gwenie had some whistles from soldiers and held her head high and pretended to be aloof- we would giggle afterwards. I remember her taking me to Windmill Hill and she was wearing a lovely yellow frock with tiny little dogs and kennels printed in black - she looked great. Some soldiers tried very hard to get to know her.
We only had one evacuee in our class at the British School (Queen Street), Audry Taylor from Eastbourne. But, Mrs Muncey from St Johns Path had the youngest evacuee of the Ward family and her and Betty became life long friends. Her elder sister Eileen was evacuated to the Griffins and had to sleep on the floor, eventually she went back to the East End. There was another evacuee called Alfie in St. John's Path and he was great fun. We gathered summer evenings, quite a crowd of us, and played great games at the beginning of the path. Alfie was a true cockney and we played leapfrog, chase games - new games flicking cigarette cards (at least new to us). He always had great ideas and all of us were very sorry when he went back to London.
Ration books came in and Mum would regale us about how she managed to fare in Allingham's the butcher鈥檚 queue - offal and rabbits were not rationed and on such a buy Mum would act as though she had won the pools.
School at Queen Street saw us into Air Raid warnings where our class being on the first floor moved into the long downstairs class of Miss Topham. We scrunched up on the seats and enjoyed listening to stories. I was often quite sorry to hear the all clear. A most embarrassing time was when Rita and I had been visiting Mavis Coomber, living opposite the Queen Street garage - as we walked home past the school the warning sounded and Miss Whitehead came out and marched us down into Mr Valentine's cellar. It was agony with teachers, the headmistress and the Valentines. The all clear had never been so welcome.
Much remembered when at Queen Street was dashing up Hitchin Hill to hear Children's' hour. A group of us - Rita, Marie Jerome, Evelyn Wray from Conquest Close, Cynthia Portass, Georgie Clark, Marian Brown of Blackhorse Lane and sometimes Tony Brooker from a junior class on his bike. Larry the Lamb and Toy Town were not to be missed, Out with Romany, Uncle Mac and his lovely stories and all manner of plays. Wartime radio became very important. At News time not a breath was to be heard as adults listened intently. We all became very upset when a ship on its way to the USA was sunk carrying British children who were being evacuated to America. Years afterwards whenever I had an uncontrollable laughter, I had only to think of the children, to sober up!
Life at 4 Stevenage Road was always good and interesting. Barbara became friends with Paddy and opened a new world of Griffens. Mrs Griffen, whom Dad always called Eva Daniels, was great at home decorating and sewing. She was also very pleased that Barbara and Paddy were good friends - which also meant trips later in the car to the seaside. We had a concert in the Griffens with Dorothy getting our parents to make skirts out of crepe paper, refreshments being a stick of rhubarb dipped in sugar. We spent ages planning the programme, which mainly consisted of hit songs, one called "zoom, zoom, here we go, there is a sound of music in the air?" And we twirled in the paper skirts and thought it great.
Home in wartime now included reconstituted egg, dried milk, eggy bread, Auntie Ellen's dried milk sweets, rose hip syrup and orange juice - because Bill and Bob were very young we had a special allocation. Gardening and growing vegetables became popular with families who had only grown flowers in the past. Joining the Brownies, we took over an allotment beside St John's church and grew mainly radishes! Posters proclaimed vegetables "Eat more". Potato Pete was a talisman and each morning housewives including Mum listened to the Kitchen Front on the radio. They heard about making pastry to include potato and less fat. Awful fatless cakes with which Mum had few successes. Eggs and the bacon were strictly for Dad as he had hard manual work. The exception being when Bob believed a hen was laying an egg as the radio sang "Hey little hen when when when will you lay me an egg for my tea?" Mum would hide an egg behind the radio and Bob became a champion egg finder.
Bill grew up very attractively and Auntie Flo took a great pride in running him up little shirt/blouses from some pieces of material she had managed to get from Horrocks. Mum went into rug making and we all cut up strips of old clothes and the rugs looked fine on the kitchen floor.
Air raids at home always seemed quite interesting down in the garden shelter. I remember hating Dad marching about outside looking up at the sky and saying, "There goes Gerry". I was sure he was going to be killed while Uncle Albert and Aunt Ellen were taking up his room! There was the fun of going back to the house late at night and having cocoa and once hot apple pie. For a while we slept in the washhouse, Dad constructed a bedding area in an alcove.
Dad did fire watching Mum made blackout curtains from some material from the market. She joined the First Aid Group and loved going and Mrs Griffin said she was the best. Their group won the First Aid Box for the area. Mum also joined the Good Neighbour scheme. Clothes could be bought at the second hand WVS shop or exchanged. My first dress for work was a cut down navy blue affair, which Mum had sweetly embroidered red French knots on the collar. Bill in the later years always looked very good in some of the Franklin clothes. Mum would let Mrs Morgan have clothing coupons in exchange for clothes for Barbara and I. Babs hated her ginger coat and velour hat, which I always thought she looked gorgeous in.
Slowly Mum's white damask Sunday table cloths gave way to check table cloths because washing powder was rationed and things did became hard for Mum and her standard had to alter. It was still a good life with lots of lovely times. Gleaning for the hens and coming home laughing with bundles and sacks of wheat ears, collecting conkers and poppy petals for the distillery and making home made gifts.
We had a scooter, Bill had a very old fashioned tricycle, Bob had a pedal car and a sledge. So many memories not all war time, some a bit after. But because of the times and so many things being scarce it was a time of making do and feeling inventive. Dad made toys and Bob wore an old helmet and insisted on being called Sarge. Babs and I tried to make dirndle skirts and Bill and Babs had to manage on being short of necessities at the Grammar School. We still had family Sunday walks blackberrying, crab-appling, and journeys over into the Priory Park to collect pigeon droppings and playing in the soldiers trenches.
We heard about dances at Henlow and American and Canadian soldiers. At the age of 17 Rita and I went to Broadstairs. Dad took us to the Railways Station putting our case on his bike - he looked very proud of us. We queued in a snake for hours in London and eventually got into a carriage and had to sit on other people's knees- they all seemed to be Londoners and a terrific lot of people and masses of soldiers. I remember going to London to an Army and Navy Exhibition and seeing street after street of bombed buildings and the sky dotted with barrage balloons.
Uncle Jack came twice while he was in England and Mum loved every minute of it. Uncle Jack was a kind of traffic policeman in charge of food storage at a depot helping towards the war in Ireland. He arrived one time with a large ham, which he had smuggled from Dublin. Mum was thrilled and sent packets of ham down to Grandmas, Auntie Ellen's, all the family and some friends. She did not have much left! I heard uncle Jack asking what had happened to her and the lovely silk stockings she used to wear 鈥� 鈥淵ou were always so smart and pretty鈥� he said. I remember feeling terribly sorry Mum no longer had nice clothes and things. Other families had visitor and returning dad's on leave. Once at playtime the second whistle was actually ignored as we all gathered to look at a banana skin in the dustbin as none of us had ever seen one before.
Many teachers were called up during the war and we had no science teacher even though we had all the laboratories.
I can remember the sky being red from the Blitz and the bombing of London. The incendiary bomb outside our house was put out before Dad could get his trousers on. There were heartbreaking films of forces waving goodbye on the ships with music playing `Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye'.

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