´óÏó´«Ã½

Looking back now I can feel the longing for war to be over with which somehow, even as young children, we were imbued. My own parents had half-heartedly discussed emigrating to Australia or New Zealand after the war and, aged five, I translated the odd sentences I’d overheard into reality. All my friends were told that we would be off to the land of Kangaroos and Koalas the minute the war was over. Unfortunately some of them talked and my parents were mightily embarrassed to be questioned about their future plans as if they were all signed and sealed. At five it seemed I was an accomplished liar and I remember mum and dad being very angry with me.

When the war was over we’d have bananas and ice-cream to eat, and as many sweets as we wanted and we wouldn’t have to eat corned beef. I hated corned beef when made into a ‘hash’ by my friends mother; for some reason my own mother never made this ‘hash’ despite all my pleas. Cooking must have been a real trial especially for the more unimaginative cooks. I can still see in my mind’s eye that half-shoulder of mutton with the bone sticking up which we seemed to have every weekend. We came of Yorkshire stock so the joint was always proceeded by Yorkshire Pudding and gravy which I loathed and was only prevailed on to eat if treacle was substituted for the gravy, Every Monday, wash day, the same joint was served up cold with chips and baked beans, very popular this, followed by rice pudding. On Tuesday the leftovers were minced up and made into Shepherd’s Pie and on Wednesday the dreaded corned beef appeared. Thursday might see tiny loin chops, with about a square inch of meat on them, or sausages, depending on what the butcher had available. On Fridays we always seemed to have cod, steamed and so boring! Dad couldn’t eat pastry most of the time or any rich food; just as well really as there wasn’t any.

Dad was too old to be called up so he carried on at the office working for the old L.M.S. and doing the work of two men. I remember his being an air-raid warden and towards the end of the war he became a Special Constable with a uniform and joy of joys a truncheon. My favourite retort when involved in scraps and arguments with other children was ‘I’ll get my dad’s truncheon’ or even ‘my dad’ll come after you with his truncheon’.

One night in his capacity as air-raid warden he and other men on our road were sent out to watch for German airmen said to have parachuted from their damaged bomber. There was thick snow on the ground and they became lost out in the country for ages. Eventually they sorted themselves out and arrived home in the morning exhausted, cold and wet. The parachutists had been discovered forty or fifty miles away! After drying off, changing and breakfasting they all had to go off to work as usual. Ad far as I can gather most adults existed on very little sleep during the war. They were either being bombed, working hours of overtime or out on voluntary duties, fire-watching and the like.

‘Dig for Victory’ ordered the posters and we did. Well I didn’t if I could avoid it because being a child my job was always the weeding or picking gooseberries and currants from prickly bushes. We had a large garden and vegetables were home-grown, a constant battle being waged against blackfly, (broad beans), caterpillars, (cabbages), slugs, carrot fly and other parasites.

Dad grew lettuces, onions, spring onions, marrows and cucumbers in a frame. Periodically a load of manure would be delivered by the local farmer and we had to shovel it into a wheelbarrow and spade it onto the garden. My sister was given a fair sized patch on which she grew sweet-peas and other flowers. My patch was about a square metre in area and my flowers were donated by my sister. They were pansies and she ended looking after them as well since my interest in gardening was non-existing.

When we were able to obtain any kind of fruit my mother would be busy bottling it in kilner jars. Sometimes we had damsons from the trees in a deserted cottage about two miles away. With neighbours we would walk there carrying baskets and spend all afternoon picking with anyone agile enough climbing the tree to obtain even more fruit. Also we picked blackberries every autumn and mum put them with apples to make blackberry and apple jelly which we loved. She bottled plums when she could get them and even occasionally apricots though where they came from I don’t know. Eating apples and pears we had from a friend with several trees and the apples were carefully wrapped individually in newspaper and stored. Kept that way they lasted quite well. The pears were bottled.

Tinned fruit was available occasionally from the grocer who delivered each week taking the order for the following week away from him. Anything in tins was dated by my mother to be used in strict order. We grew our own runner beans which were salted down in a big earthen ware crock. Eggs, when we could get a few dozen, were preserved in isinglass but we used dried egg as well.

Reading and ‘playing out’ were what I enjoyed. At the bottom of our garden ran a stream in which we children spent hours playing. We dammed it to create a pool in which we paddled to see how deeply we could step without the water going over the tops of our Wellingtons. We sailed small boats in it and where it ran under a road through a low tunnel, we followed despite instructions to the contrary. The tunnel emerged into an orchard, part of the land around a large house belonging to a local industrialist. We would creep out, scrump apples until spotted by the gardener and then either paddle back through the tunnel or, when we’d grown tall enough, climb back over the wall.

This same industrialist was quite friendly with my father and was the cause of a dispute between my parents. Years afterwards my mother explained to me what it was all about. My sisters health was poor since an attack of measles when she was seven had left her with a lung disorder. It seems this man had connections with the black market and offered to procure items of food like extra eggs and tinned stuff to give my sister a healthier diet. Dad declined on moral grounds; he was very opposed to black marketeering, but mum would have accepted anything if it helped his child.

British restaurants had been opened in towns and large villages and these provided plain meals at cheap prices. Our nearest one opened in what on Sundays was part on the Sunday School and my father took me there once. We had minced meat, mashed potato and cabbage and I didn’t like it at all, or the pudding which was spotted dick and custard. On Sundays you could still smell the cooking odours.

Later in the war I’d often be told to go down to the shop after the school for the bread 4 1/2d and 1 B.U (bread unit) for a 2lb loaf. It wasn’t a favourite task because the shop was in the opposite direction to home and I grumbled because I’d be late arriving home, have to carry two loaves all that way, (about a mile) and wouldn’t have as long to play out.

Clothing coupons were hoarded until there were sufficient for necessary items, but my mother was a good needlewoman so on the whole we were well-clad. New shoes or clothing for Dad were more of a problem and he had a last on which he used to repair our shoes himself.

Christmas was anticipated with just as much pleasure, in fact probably more, than today. Mum would have stored any dried fruit she could buy during the year to make cake and puddings. About September or early October out would come the currants and sultanas and my sister and I would have to sit and pick them over removing the stalks. I used to complain bitterly but, ‘You’ll eat the cake readily enough’ my mother would say, ‘So, you must help pick over the fruit.’ My sister, seven years older and much more patient than I, would encourage me and do everything she could to cheer me up including doing more than her fair share. I was always eager enough to stir the pudding and scrape out the cake mixture from the bowl. The pudding always contained grated carrot which to my mind was very strange, but no alcohol as that was too expensive for us. Mum always made a non-alcoholic ginger wine for Christmas which we drank from proper wine glasses. It was lovely and I wish I had the recipe now. We had a chicken-what excitement!- from the farm or a neighbour who kept poultry. It arrived with feathers on and Dad always did the necessary plucking and singeing before handing over it over to mum to be roasted. We ate sage and onion stuffing with it and home-grown sprouts and potatoes. Christmas pudding and white sauce followed though in those days I disliked the pudding and the sauce. The mince pies were a treat and sometimes mum managed a trifle.

On Christmas morning Dad always took my sister and I out for a walk so that mum could be left to get on with the diner. All I wanted to do was stay at home, play with the presents I’d been given and then have dinner. Walking wasn’t my favourite pastime. Presents were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. They would contain books, gloves, hankies and occasionally special things. Once I was given a black doll with clothes my mother had made and once she made me a nurse’s uniform. Stockings were filled by Father Christmas until at about the age of seven I discovered otherwise. There was always a sixpence in the toe, an orange and an apple, sweets (from the parent’s rations presumably) and small games and toys. Downstairs we had a radiogram and at breakfast time a record of Christmas Carols was played while Dad opened all the windows so that anyone outside could hear! His favourite Carol was ‘Christians Awake’. After midday Christmas dinner we listened to the King’s speech and played card or board games or listened to the wireless. It seemed to be a very special day and we would always attend a church service, either the one at midnight or the one at 8am. I was thirteen the first time I was allowed to go to the midnight service and the war was well over.

Early on in the war we were issued with sheets of corrugated iron and instructions to build an air-raid shelter in the garden. The neighbours got together and helped each other to dig a large square hole which was then lined and roofed with the corrugated iron. Soil was then spread over the shelter so everyone’s garden contained a hump either covered with grass or made into a flower patch. Steps were built leading down to it and a door fitted but there was no floor, just earth packed down hard. From somewhere my father had procured four old car seats and when the siren sounded there we sat, each on a seat in corner with a large eiderdown between us for warmth. One morning following a big raid on Sheffield, nine miles away, we emerged into thick fog and our house couldn’t be seen. Loud yells issued from me, I was sure the house had been bombed and my best doll was in there, that was all I cared about. During one raid my sister suddenly screamed and began jumping about. Dad switched on a torch and lifting the eiderdown away we discovered several frogs hopping around. That was it-we never used the shelter again as my sister flatly refused to enter it, so during subsequent raids we his under the table! She got into trouble because being so much older than me she had been told to keep calm at all times so as not to frighten me and wasn’t supposed to scream just because a frog had jumped on her bare leg!

We used to hear bombers flying overhead often, but I never really knew whether they were German or British. One night later on when I was a bit older Dad took me aside to watch a number of bombers going over and we could see holes right through the wings of them. Living about four miles north of Chesterfield we were relatively safe though attempts were made to bomb the nearby Stavely Works. Sometimes bombs fell in the fields and then we’d all go and view the crater and if we were lucky we came away with bits of shrapnel. These had to be secret trips for me as I had been forbidden to go anywhere near a bomb crater.

Since we were fairly safe, evacuees from London were billeted in the area and attended our large village school. We were told prior to their arrival that they came from London and had experienced dreadful events due to the bombing. We were not to mention Aeroplanes or ask anything about their lives in London as such questions would bring back distressing memories. Unfortunately these well-meant instructions had the effect of making us frightfully curious as to how the evacuees would react in such circumstances. Would they scream and cry? Would they fall on the floor in fits? We were dying to know. Imagine our disappointment when some of the boys started bragging about their knowledge of the different types of aeroplane and running about, arms outstretched, making engine noises and imitating the crump of bombs hitting buildings. What a let down, no hysterics, no fits.

My ‘best friend’ was an evacuee named Rita who lived next door but one with another friend. I was desperate to have an evacuee of my own living with me but we had no room spare so I ‘made do’ with Rita. She was one of a family of four girls aged from four to twelve years who had apparently arrived with ‘not to be separated’ notices attached. No one could be found to take all four so they were billeted in different homes in the same small area. Lily, the eleven year old, stayed with a couple of maiden ladies who were terribly shocked by her language and rough behaviour. They had a large garden backing onto woodland and when Lily wasn’t inciting the rest of us to mischief or broadening our vocabulary she was up a tree in the wood or haring round the garden. The smallest girl Joan, was only four and lived next door to us with a family who had two well brought up boys. Poor little thing, she was so shy and must have felt so bewildered being removed from her parents without really understanding the reason. Rita was frightened of no one and I thought she was wonderful and when the father came north and took his four daughters home after two years I was heartbroken. I wrote one or two letters to Rita and her parents sent me the story of Peter Pan but we lost touch quite soon. I never knew whether or not the four girls survived the war.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.