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I was 13 when I remember Chamberlain saying that there was a war on. At the time I lived at Thornton just outside Berwick and I was still at School. We were issued with gas masks and for practice at a signal we had to make our way home creeping along the hedgerows trying to keep out of sight.
As we lived on a farm, soldiers often used our land as a camp, they came in their green trucks and stayed the night, and would vanish in the early hours of the morning without a trace.
As the farm was self sufficient, soldiers would come during the day to get food and would help with the harvest along with the prisoners of war staying with us.
We had an Italian prisoner of war named Greco staying with us. Once during the harvest, he stacked the sheaves onto the horse and cart and sat on top, when it went up the hill, the whole lot collapsed and he fell off.
Everybody laughed. We used to hold barn dances to make money for the war effort, doing dances such as the Eightsome Reel and the Gay Gordons. When two of the Italian POWs took to the floor and did the tango, none of us had ever seen it before and we were amazed, and also two men dancing together was not something you saw everyday.
My Uncle Norman had German POWs staying with him who wanted to stay in Britain but were not allowed.
As well as the barn dances, I also used to make sandwiches for the Red Cross and attend Red Cross whist drives, where I met my husband Arthur, who stayed on the farm to produce food.
Everything was in short supply during the war and we had to live on what we had. We had to stand in ration queues with all the other women and children and if there was anything left, like chocolate or bacon rind we had to queue for that too.
Our weekly rations were
· 4oz - bacon and ham
· 8oz - sugar
· 2oz — tea
· 4oz — cheese
· 8oz — jam, marmalade or syrup
· 6oz — fat (no more than 2oz butter)
· 12oz — sweets every 4 weeks
· One fresh egg every 6 weeks.

Thankfully vegetables and salad were not rationed so we could eat what we grew but when our hens layed eggs we had to take them to the packing station to be rationed otherwise the government men would chase us.
Along with our ration books we had coupons, clothing coupons, bread coupons, butcher meat coupons and furniture tokens which we swapped for commodities and if lost were not replaced.
We had utility furniture which was stamped on the back. Sometimes we got the opportunity to buy grey army blankets and those good with a sewing machine would make coats and short jackets. Others would sew fur on the bottom of their coats and round the cuffs, we called this the ‘new look’.
As food was in short supply we went out into the hedgerows and picked rosehip syrup and we substituted a lot. We used prunes instead of currents in our cakes and the people at the women’s institute used to make cakes with liquid paraffin.
The women’s institute would give is sugar to make apple jelly which was sent away for redistribution.
We also got vegetable marrow jam which was not nice but which we ate because we had nothing else. If the globe of our oil lamps broke, we could use jam jars. If we put the jar in a dish of cold water and poured in boiling water, the bottom would drop right out.
Nylon stockings were currently unavailable, so we would paint our legs with coffee and draw a line op the back with a pencil.
The picture house was full every night with soldiers and other people as we had no television and because of the blackout; there were no street lamps either, so we would walk along the street holding cigarettes out in front of us to light our way.
I remember the first bomb that was dropped near us, it was at Grindon and thankfully no one was hurt as it was dropped in a field. If the bombers had spare bombs on the way back from Glasgow, then they would drop them in the fields.
Near the beginning of the war, Berwick was not a target but later on, the Germans tried to bomb the railway bridge as our troops used it to get into Scotland. Thankfully the bridge was not hit but houses near it were and there were a few casualties.
Every night at quarter past seven, we would hear the bombers pass overhead going to bomb Glasgow shipyards. It was a horrible droning sound, at first it frightened us but you got used to it over time.
When we passed, the searchlights went up. They were beautiful and manned by the women’s Auxiliary Tutorial Service.
If planes were spotted, they would be fired upon. We had a blackout curtain nailed around the window and the glass was crosshatched with masking tape so that if it shattered, it wouldn’t come into the house.
There was a map in the paper every day with a big black line showing where the troops were and if they had advanced, I looked at it every day.
At the end of the war, we held a sports day to commemorate it and to raise funds for the homecoming soldiers. We were really happy for the first time in years and just glad that it was all over.

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