大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of Beryl Page and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The war started on 3 September 1939 鈥� it was my sister鈥檚 birthday. I was 11, going into my 12th year. When the school in Birmingham was bombed we had three months off. That was beautiful. We had a terrible time with bombing before I went to Burton-on-Trent.

I was evacuated to Burton-on-Trent, to a place called Stretton. We went by train and we all had to pair up. The girl that I had been paired with backed out. We went from New Street Station, Birmingham. I was billeted with a family who had a home-help, which was unheard of in those days.

The new school was miles away and in the country. I went home for my dinner. I had to walk home and be back again at school within the hour. I think I was always late getting back. The maid used to make me wipe up. The lady of the house had a baby which she put in my room so that I could feed it and change its napkins. I was quiet and introvert. I wrote to tell my mum.

The person in charge of us moved me to another place. This woman had the one child. She used to play the piano and make me sing: 鈥淯p in the garret away from the din, Someone was playing an old violin鈥�. I haven鈥檛 ever heard this again since that time.

She left me with her son, a toddler, whilst she went out for the evening. We played in the garden. I was supposed to put him to bed. Bedtime meant nothing to me as it was still light and he was still up and dirty when she came back home. She was cross and told me off.

My mum got a job in a big house in Burton and claimed me back. Mum was supposed to look after the evacuees in this house and to see them off to school. I slept in the same room with my mum. Some of the girls were spiteful towards me. I hated school and refused to go. My mum used to have to take me herself.

My mum gave up this job in the big house. She carried a kit bag thing on her shoulder and she took me home. My father used to come and visit me in Burton.

When I came back from Burton-on-Trent, I was 12. I went to a different school, a girls鈥� senior school at Yardley Wood.

I heard on the wireless that war had broken out. Winston Churchill was on. We had an air raid shelter put in the garden. It was quite deep down and we had to jump into it. There was a nice mattress at the bottom which my parents used to get out sometimes to air. One day I remember it hadn鈥檛 been put back in and I fell on to the concrete floor. My job was to put brown paper strips on to the windows to stop them shattering. The air raids used to start at about 6 pm. My father was an ARP warden. If he was on night duty I used to have to wake him. I could recognise if the planes were German or British. The enemy planes were after the Austen Motor Works and used to follow the railway line. Houses quite close to us were bombed.

We were told to dig for victory. My dad had dug a trench in the garden which I fell into one night on my way to the shelter.

There was a lovely atmosphere in those days and everyone would help. My mum used to send me down for a loaf and someone would always take me in if the sirens went.

We used to go to the pictures. It seemed to be the only thing to go to. My mum used to go once or twice each week to the Tudor, also known as the bughouse. I went on Saturday mornings to the tuppenny crush. I went with my two sisters. When the doors opened everyone pushed in. My sisters would take my 2d off me and then let me in through the toilet door. If there was an air raid when we in the pictures, we all had to vacate the premises.

The Maypole was a long way from home and we had to walk there. We had to be there at 1.30 pm and it started at 2 pm. The organ would come up and then at 2 pm we would have the Path茅 News, then the adverts. We had to be home again by 6 pm, so never got to see the end of the films. If we went to the 6 pm show we had to be home by 10 pm but that was too late.

The barrage balloons always went up before a raid. They were quite close to us and we were well protected. There were nightly bombing raids. The Germans had promised to bomb us night and day. They would sometimes start at 6 pm and not finish till 10 pm. Or they would start at 10 pm and go on until 2 am. I remember the fire bombs dropping every night.

There was the rationing with the books and the coupons. My mum was golden and always used to provide for us. We used to queue at Westwoods on Stratford Road for rabbits. We had to queue for everything. The rations weren鈥檛 enough. I had to share a boiled egg with my sister. We used to get tins of bacon and eggs in powdered form which were lovely.

I was brought up on rabbit stew. One rabbit would feed the seven of us. I would get the tongue and the head. My sisters would have the wings and the men had the legs. We were fed well. Other people would live on bare rations, but my mum went out of her way to provide for us. They were hard times.

From 14, I worked at Woolworth鈥檚, in the Bullring, on the cosmetics. I earned 12 shillings per week. If I had worked at the Woolworth鈥檚 in New Street, I would have got 14 shillings. It was most unfair because we were paid from 9 till 6 and had to be on our counters at quarter to nine to count up the till money. In the evening we had to stay over to cash up which was not right. The last customer was in at 6 and we had to serve the last customer and then you had to count your money. It was about half past 6 when you got out of Woolworth鈥檚. Lipstick and things like that were rationed too.

I left there and I got a job at a place called Hopkins. I wanted to be a telephonist or a telephone operator but you couldn鈥檛 really get the jobs easily and you had to pass a test by the GPO. I failed the first test. And spelling! I remember one was Gloucester and I always knew how to spell Gloucester but I abbreviated it. I failed the test. At Hopkins I was answering the telephone but there wasn鈥檛 much doing and I spent the whole day altering wrong-worded catalogues. I think these were meant to be thrown away but it just gave me a job because it wasn鈥檛 very busy on the telephones.

I have a photograph dated March 1944, aged 16, before I joined the Land Army. The girls were encouraged to join the junior air corps and the boys the naval cadets. It was at one of the meetings that I first saw a black woman and she looked lovely in uniform. She had a dark khaki oak uniform. She gave us a lecture about the Americans coming over here to defend Britain, which I believe they did. We wouldn鈥檛 have got far without them. The Americans were so friendly. They always said hello or hi and would give us gum because we were only young then and they stopped to talk to us which was lovely. They wanted to take our photographs and they were so pleasant. I think they gave the older people chocolates and nylons.

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