大象传媒

By Dorothy Thornton:
I was born in July 1935 and war broke out in September 1939, when I was only four years old.

Some of my earliest memories are from my school years in Nuneaton. I remember being issued with a gas mask, trying it on and feeling frightened when I had to wear it.

I also remember bananas being on ration. My mother used to make banana and custard - that way , all the family got a taste.

On Sunday mornings, I was allowed to go to the cornershop and buy two ounces of sweets. Rationing was hard, but my father had an allotment which provided potatoes, greens, fruit etc. He also kept chickens and stored eggs in isinglass (a kind of gelatin) for use when the hens were not laying.

I remember being woken up at night and taken down to the Anderson shelter when there was an air raid warning. I also remember the night a bomb fell on the Coop Laundry, which was next to the main London train line in Attleborough. It was the train line the bombers were aiming for. We lived on the opposite side of the line, in Waverley Avenue. The blast blew the back windows out and brought the ceiling down in the back bedroom.

Despite the bombing and being down in the shelter all night, I still had to go to school. Walking to school we saw the devastating effects of the previous night's bombing.

I remember the street party after the war ended. We had a lovely time. All the neighbours came out, long tables were set up and we had a real feast. Afterwards there was dancing and singing in the street. Rationing continued for a long time after the war, but gradually we got back to some sort of normality.

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