大象传媒

My Early Memories 鈥� Written for my Grandchildren

I lived with my Mummy and Daddy in a first floor flat over a tailor's shop next door to what is now called the Gaumont Cinema in Commercial Road, Southampton. The cinema was then called the Empire Cinema. It used to be a theatre but became a cinema when people wanted to see films rather than go to the theatre. I can remember it as a lovely flat. I had my own nursery. It had blue lino on the floor and I had a lovely red tricycle for Christmas one year. It stood just inside the door near the wall and I used to look at it with such pride. It had shiny chrome wheels and a bell. Around the walls was a frieze - pictures of Noah's ark people. The frieze was the same height as my eyes, so I suppose, as I was only about four it was not very high. I also had a beautiful doll's house. It was white with a flat roof and electric lights that switched on in all the rooms. I could look inside the windows at the furniture in all the rooms. The three-piece suite in the lounge was made of matchboxes covered with material and sewn together to make the chairs and sofa. I also had lots of dolls. One was very special. I called her 'Precious'. I had a black doll and a Teddy Bear. I still have the Teddy Bear. He is the oldest thing I own.
You see when I was five something called 'War鈥� broke out. This changed all our lives. It meant that all the men had to join the army unless they were too old or too young or did an important job. We were lucky that my father was a Dental Surgeon who worked in a clinic in Cardigan Road. His job was very important because he looked after the teeth of all the children; so when ordinary people could not get petrol for their cars, he could.. We all had to be given Identity cards with numbers on. My Identity card number is now my Health card number. My father was ECOO: 6 1, my mother was ECOO: 6 2 and I am ECOO: 6 3! There can't be many people nowadays with such short numbers. We were all fitted with things called 'Gas Masks'. We had to practice wearing them in case the Germans dropped gas bombs on us. They never did but we had to carry them everywhere we went during the war just in case. They fitted little cardboard boxes that slung around your shoulder. Ladies carried them with their handbags and school children slung them across the opposite shoulder to their satchels.
Well anyway, nothing happened for several weeks after War broke out. It was a hot summer and it all started during September - long golden days they were in 1939. Convoys of troops were on the move everywhere. They camped on Southampton Common in Khaki tents. Lorry loads drove around and there were convoys of noisy tanks as well. In the sky appeared things called Barrage balloons. Big silver-grey, fish-shaped things tied to the ground by ropes and each one manned by a special squad of men in navy uniforms. Air-raid wardens were appointed. They were ordinary men who were too old to join up in the army, navy or air force. They were called the A.R.P. Their job was to see that no lights were allowed to appear through cracks in the curtains at windows. If they did, they knocked at your front door to tell you. We all had the window panes stuck over with strips of sticky paper to stop them shattering if there was a bomb blast and everyone ordered Air Raid Shelters to be dug in their gardens or ordered special dining room tables with steel re-enforcement so that they could shelter under them during the air-raids when the bombs dropped.
No bombs dropped for several months but when they did Southampton was the first to be hit. You see it was a big port where troops could leave for France. The Germans decided to wipe out the South Coast ports so as to make it impossible for ships to dock or depart. No one knew when a raid was coming. We had to listen for the Siren. It was a wailing noise that went up and down several times to tell people to take cover in the air-raid-shelters.
One afternoon she had one of her 鈥榝eelings' and told my father that she felt we ought to get out of the town that night. He agreed and said he would come home from the clinic and we'd all go to the 'Bungalow Cafe' for a High Tea on our way out to the New Forest. I used to like going to the Bungalow cafe. We used to have things like fish and chips and bread and butter with a pot of tea. We sometimes went there as a treat on Saturdays. This particular afternoon she packed us a picnic and collected all our oldest blankets and clothes all ready for when my father came home. As we left he picked up my silver serviette ring from the sideboard and slipped it in his pocket. He always said he never knew why! It had been my Christening present from Uncle Earnest, my mother's half brother. She told him she didn鈥檛 want to stop at the cafe but to get straight out into the country. It was very lucky because at 6 o'clock that evening the Bungalow Cafe was hit by a land mine and all forty people in it were killed. If we had gone there we should have been killed too and so I should not be here now and neither would you, nor my four children Gabrielle, Dominic, Petronella and Benedict. This brings me back to my Teddy Bear. He was the only toy I took with me. Our car was very small. I slept on the back seat stretched out, covered with rugs. My Mummy and Daddy had to sleep sitting up in the front seats. It wasn鈥檛 very comfortable for any of us. We did this for three nights in succession. Each night the flares and bombs exploded over Southampton Docks and the town. Each morning we returned to see more and more devastation with houses blown away, gaps instead of windows, roads blocked by police and A.R.P. wardens, electricity cables down over the roads, water mains burst and water running all over the streets.
The High Street shops disappeared one by one until only the old Roman Bargate stood out clearly and the Civic Centre clock tower and a few church spires. One morning when I woke up in the car under the spreading oak trees in the New Forest I watched while two planes had what was called a 'Dog Fight'. Puffs of ack-ack smoke surrounded these two planes as they fought desperately, circling each other around and around. In the end two parachutes descended landing with the airmen miles away over the moors and the planes crashed. I never knew what happened to the German. I suppose he was captured and put in prison until the end of the war. On the third morning of our adventures of sleeping in the car we drove back to Southampton. It was eighteen miles and it took very much longer to get into town. My father drove up Commercial Road and I was busy looking around at all the activity. I will never forget his voice when I heard him say, 'It's gone!' I couldn鈥檛 believe it. Outside our flat was a huge red fire engine. Firemen with helmets on were playing their hoses through what used to be our windows but were now huge gaping black holes pouring smoke. The inside of the house wasn鈥檛 there at all. It was just a shell. I remember standing on the pavement and screaming all the names of my dolls to come out to me. They were so real to me. They were like my children, I sobbed and sobbed. My parents just stood looking. There was nothing they could do. Their entire home, their photographs and treasures, birth certificates and important documents were all burnt up. The Grandfather clock that had been my grandfather's and possibly his father's before him all gone; silver, jewellery and ornaments, all gone. Our beds and tables and chairs, carpets, cooker and food, all were no more. What were we to do? I suppose we went to a rescue centre that day. I know we had to stay in Bed and Breakfast accommodation for quite a long while. My father still had to go to the clinic. My school had been bombed. All the dormitories where the boarders slept were wiped off the face of the earth. Luckily the boarders had all been evacuated to Bath. For the rest of my school life I was never able to have cookery lessons because the Domestic Science rooms were bombed at that time and were never rebuilt in time for me to have lessons.
Later, when the fire had cooled my father went scrounging around in the ashes of where the flat had been, He found the weight of the Grandfather clock and two Tablespoons burnt black. They weren鈥檛 even our tablespoons, they belonged to the people in the flat upstairs; but we kept them. Now, Gabrielle has one and I have the other. Take care of it. It has a long story to tell! My Teddy Bear too, could tell you quite a lot! He came with me when we went out to the New Forest, near where we had slept the night in the car. We found a farm called Lynwood Farm and stayed for two years there with some people called 'Stickland'; But that is another story!

1940 - 1942
What happened to us for the weeks between losing our home and going to stay on the farm in Lynwood is very vague in my mind. I can remember that we stayed for a time in a very cold house owned by an unmarried lady called Miss Baring. She had been very properly brought up. Her house was in the country and was extremely cold. Our flat had had central heating. I had never felt the cold in a house before. Getting up and getting dressed in icy bedrooms with ice forming on the insides of the windows was something I had never had to suffer before. Miss Baring did not like children. She thought that they should be 'seen and not heard'!
Every evening she served us 'Haslett1 for our tea. 'Haslett' was something we had never heard of before the war. It was a slice of cold sausage in the shape of a slice of cake. It was she who told me, "Little girl, if you have butter on your bread, you don't have any jam.鈥�
You see, as soon as the war began we were all given 'Ration Cards'. These were little fawn coloured books of tokens. Each token had a date on it. Each token represented small amounts of fats and sugar. If you had butter you could1nt have any cheese. Each person was only allowed two ounces of fat a week. Eggs were rationed to one or two per person per week. Sugar ration meant either sugar for tea and cake baking or to buy sweets from a sweet shop - not both. Bacon and meat were rationed. Every family had to register with a particular grocer and leave their ration books with the shopkeeper who cut out the coupons as well as taking the money for the food we bought. Bread was not rationed at that time. It was later, but not then. We could never buy bananas or peaches or grapes or any sort of fruit that had to be imported. I never saw a yellow banana until I was about or twelve. We could sometimes buy dried bananas. These were sticky brown stick shaped things rather like dates. Tea was rationed to only a few ounces a week. Coffee was not as widely drunk as it is today. It is said that the British won the war on their cups of tea!
Someone told my parents about this farm at Lynwood. It was three miles off the main Ringwood - Southampton road. Petrol was rationed but as I said before, my father had an essential profession and so as we were bombed out he could claim extra petrol coupons for commuting from where he lived to the clinic. The farm was a very poor one. Mr and Mrs Stickland lived there with their three grown up children. Raymond helped his father on the farm herding the cows and making the hay. Molly helped her mother with the dairy work. She got married to Albert while we lived on the farm and theirs was the first wedding I ever went to. It was held in Ringwood Church. Elsie lived away. She was a nurse or something. She had a very pinched face and was very thin; Molly was jolly and kind to me. Raymond let me ride with him on the tractor. He later became an Adjester for the New Forest. It was an important job looking after all the wild New Forest ponies and rounding them up each year. We lived on Lynwood farm for two years. The first winter we spent there was so cold. The ground floor was flagged with stone. There were no electric lights only oil lamps that smelt and some freestanding black oil stoves that let pretty patterns flicker on the ceiling. There was no toilet indoors; but outside there was a little house with a tiled roof. Inside was a plank with two holes over two buckets so that two people could go to the toilet together! Each time the buckets got full, the farmer would empty them into the cesspit at the bottom of the orchard. Inside the house there was a big farm kitchen with a large table. Just outside was a large covered area where the farmers took off their boots and where there was a hand pump. It was where the milk churns stood. There was no running water. We had jugs and basins in our bedrooms to wash. There was a 'parlour1 with a beautiful dining room table and an organ with foot pumps and stops. Sometimes I was allowed to play in there on it but as I did not know how to play it, it must have been awfully noisy for anyone listening. It is from this parlour that the glass fruit bowl came that I now have. It is very old and was a gift to my mother when we left the farm. You could say it was our first piece of furniture for our new home. The only time I can remember the parlour being used was after Molly's wedding when there was a party to celebrate. I liked living on the farm. There was a dog, called Rover, who followed me around everywhere. He was a black and white shaggy collie-cross with an Old English sheep dog. The Sticklands seemed to us to be very cruel to their animals. I used to go into the cowsheds on wet days and spend long hours in the straw talking to the little cows and calves. There were pigs in filthy dirty sties and some chickens in a wired area. They had to be fed twice a day and I used to go with Mrs Stickland to scatter corn to them and make sure they were locked up at night.
I soon started to go back to my school. Each morning I would leave my mother and travel with my father in the car, the eighteen miles back to Southampton. It took an hour and a half in those days. There weren鈥檛 the high-speed roads we have today. We were often held up by roadblocks looking for escaped prisoners of war or to check that we had permission to be driving our car and had the right sort of petrol. During the day there were often air raids and all the nuns would take us down to the cellars at school where they would say 'Hail Mary鈥檚鈥� and tell us stories until it was over. We could hear the thumps and shudders as bombs dropped and we would listen for the particular noise that the German aeroplanes made as they went overhead. We would listen and say, 'It's one of ours:' or 鈥業t鈥檚 one of theirs! We used to collect lumps of shrapnel. Shrapnel was melted metal from damaged aircraft or exploded bombs. We would swap these at school and would make prized possessions of our collections.

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