- Contributed byÌý
- audlemhistory
- People in story:Ìý
- David Andrew
- Location of story:Ìý
- Wrexham
- Background to story:Ìý
- Civilian
- Article ID:Ìý
- A5807937
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 19 September 2005
Born 1930 in Wrexham North Wales.
As I was 9years old when the war broke out and 15 when it ended my memories are mostly of family life in my teenage years. I lived in Wrexham with my parents and brother Philip who is a year younger than I am. We were on holiday on Anglesey when war was declared and the first effect was that we immediately returned home.
My father had fought in the First World War but was too old for service in the second, although he volunteered. He was put in charge of the local group of the Local Defence Volunteers, which was what the Home Guard was originally called. He still had his pistol and holster from 1918 and so he did have a weapon although it was sometime before the Home Guard were properly equipped. Later he became the Commander of the Air Training Corps of Grove Park School where he taught. He found this very difficult as the boys were used to books about planes and were very good at recognising them but he found it hard to learn.
My mother ‘Did her Bit’ in the W.R.V.S. One special job they had was at the time of Dunkirk. Men who had been rescued had to be moved away from the coast as quickly as possible, so train loads were sent up to Wrexham. There was a real problem to find food because of rationing. Someone sent a basket of tomatoes and Mother started to cut them up as quickly as she could to make sandwiches for these starving and distressed men. Her friend, who was in charge was appalled that she had not stopped to skin the tomatoes as she would have done for a polite tea party. Mother was more practical and ignored her. Another of her jobs was the distribution of the Cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice in our part of town. These were available for children up to 5 who had a green ration book. The problem for us was that our garage was the storage centre and in the summer when it was hot the orange juice would ferment and explode with very messy results. We had an Anderson air-raid shelter. This was like a rectangular metal box with solid top and base and mesh sides. It was table height. The idea was that we crawled inside and lay in it if there was a raid. We had ours in the kitchen and my brother and I had bruised legs all the time from bumping into the sharp corners.
As our house had a spare room we had an evacuee to live with us. He came from Liverpool when his school was evacuated to Wrexham. The local boys went to school in the morning and the Liverpool school in the afternoon. They had their own Staff. They came because of the danger of bombing raids on Liverpool. However the arrangement did not last long as they had drifted back to Liverpool and their own families by 1942. Later in the war we had two American soldiers to live in our house. They were not used to strict rationing and were fed well at their camps.
When you grow up in a situation you accept it. We were used to the darkness in the streets at night. As there were no street lights and all houses had to have curtains, blinds or shutters to prevent a chink of light showing, we became very good at finding our way around. We had bicycles which were our day-time means of transport. They were important to us as they gave us freedom. They were basic with no gears. Our favourite game in the summer was making boats from odd bits of wood and then floating them on a pond and trying to sink other peoples’ by bombarding them with stones. I was lucky to have a Hornby train set at the beginning of the war but I only had the basic circle for the next 6 years. We listened to the Radio a great deal. Our favourite programmes were ‘Monday Night at Eight’ and ‘Itma’. I used to enjoy helping our milkman who had a horse and float with a churn and the milk was measured into customers’ jugs. The School Party for the end of the war was wonderful because we had Cakes & Jelly.
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