大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Kayt Turner of Stockport Libraries on behalf of David Reid, who fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Recollections of the End of the Second World War.
I was born in March 1943 (in Dewsbury Maternity home, West Riding of Yorkshire), and consequently my recollections of the Second World War are relatively scant. However, I think they are worth recording because the mind of a small child does have some insight into contemporary events and society. In general terms these notes are not so much 'war memoirs', but a small child's impressions.
Time passing does not have much meaning for a small child, and the sequence of events in my memory did not become structured until my fourth or fifth birthday. It may be different for others, but that is how I see my past. Consequently, my memories may be out of order, fragmentary and with no prior recollections or judgements, but they are those of somebody with 'new' recording eyes. Also they may unconsciously run over into 1946, the year after the end of the war.
My first recollection is I suppose, not a memory, but a record. After my mother died in 1999 I was clearing out her flat, and I came across a letter from my mother to my father. Father, by profession was a textile designer, and because of his knowledge of chemistry, machinery and running large factories he was sent to help manage a large high explosive factory at Ranskill, near Doncaster.
His recollections, and diaries, are fascinating in their own account, but I will not dwell on his 'explosive' activities, apart from saying that he and his colleagues must have indirectly responsible for changing the face of large areas of Europe and elsewhere. However, pa was away from home, but I was not immediately conscious of this.
My mother's letter, written about three weeks before I was born, was just the normal husband-wife family gossip and business, but she did say that she had been to the doctor. I, the baby, was apparent healthy, but I needed 'turning over', and this gynecological requirement had been accomplished. I was always a 'difficult' baby, and clearly started early!
My mum - my generation of children progressed from the term mother to mum - must have read somewhere in an 'advanced' thinking journal or newspaper that dummies were bad for children, and she refused to employ them on me. I think she also worried that I would swallow it and choke after reading about such cases in the newspapers. Consequently, I yelled and yelled and yelled, and was responsible for many sleepless nights. Perhaps that's why I was an only child! My mother's sisters my aunts Peggy and Mary did not approve of this, and whenever they looked after me, which was quite frequent because my mother continued to work a few hours a week in the family business, a privily hidden dummy would appear. The dummy would be dipped in honey, and yours truly went off to sleep, and was 'good' and 'no trouble'! I was told this many years afterwards, with some glee, behind mum's back.
My earliest clear memory is of vapour trails in the sky. I was aware that they were left by passing aircraft, but they created a continued interest and fascination. Sometimes they just passed over at a great altitude in a straight line, but sometimes they weaved about creating complex patterns of loops. I suppose that the latter were training flights by friendly aircraft because the air raid sirens never went. Occasionally warning air raid sirens did go off, but it was just a noise to me until I learnt to recognise the concern in the faces and eyes of some adults. Our neighbour Mrs. Holt used to get upset, but most people appeared to phlegmatically disregard the threat by the end of the war.
I did, when I was several decades older, hear a joke about bombing that circulated in several versions in nearby Huddersfield (fifty years later it is still in circulation). The gist of this, and I suspect that it was a response to an over-exact enforcement of Air Raid Precaution regulations, was as follows. You have to imagine an exchange between a not over concerned but phlegmatic Yorkshireman, and someone who is over anxious and terrified (an alien from Lancashire perhaps, or from the benighted southern parts of the Realm!):
'Aren't you woried?'
'Nah, yon Adolf wearn't get me!'
'You'll get blown up by bombs!'
'Nah, wearn't 'appen to me!'
'Your 'ouse will be in bits!'
'Nah, I'll be 'int White Lion at time'
'You could be there!'
'Nah, I'll be 'int Cross Keys!'
My Aunt Peggy had an air raid shelter in her garden at Thornhill, Dewsbury that was built privately by my Uncle George Worfolk. Basically it was a brick oblong structure sunk below ground level, and capped by about one foot of concrete. My uncle must have had 'contacts' to obtain the materials! The inside floor was made of concrete, and a metal pipe protruded from the side of the structure, which served as the chimney for a small stove. On top of the brick and concrete uncle heaped a great pile of earth. In retrospect it looked like a small barrow or burial tumuli.
According to my aunts it was only ever used in 1940, and only one bomb was dropped in the locality; this appears to have fallen uselessly in a field near Healey Mills railway marshalling yard. However, its presence and solidity was reassuring. My aunts and grandmother avoided using it if possible, and my Aunt Mary said she preferred dying in her bed! The only people who appeared to take comfort from the air raid shelter were the Liverpool relatives who stayed for a few months during the heavy bombing of 1940. It always fascinated me as a child, and was so solidly constructed that it was still intact fifty years later. I used to play in it as a child, and it became all sorts of imaginary places. Psychologically, the air raid shelter was a permanent reminder of the war years.
One of my other earliest recollections is of V.E. Day, which celebrated Victory in Europe, and held the 8-9, May, 1945 (there was a two-day holiday). All the Reid/Worfolk tribe and hangers-on assembled, and, as it was a fine and sunny, we spent the occasion in the garden sitting in deck chairs (the garden with the now redundant air raid shelter). I remember holding a union jack, and several of the adults had larger flags that they carried around in a determined fashion. All my elders were smiling and obviously happy, however, they mostly sat and talked and did nothing much. Pa was there in his grey striped suit, my Grandmother Reid and Bill Sykes my Aunt Peggy's intended.
When I think about it now they must have all been exhausted because they all seemed to slump in chairs (in other words they didn't play with me as much as I wanted!). Clearly everyone was very relieved that the war was over, and the sense of satisfaction was quite tangible. In retrospect I would sum it up as an exhausted contentment. I was conscious of something important without really quite knowing exactly what. There was no hysterical rejoicing as in the manner of central London.
My mother took some photographs with her 116 Kodak camera, and I can be seen 'well wrapped up' with a hat. Mum was obsessed with wrapping me up, and I often had a 'swaddled' look, but she was determined that I didn't get a chill. This was the 'natural' opinion of most mothers at a time when there were no antibiotics, and pneumonia and rheumatic fever were not uncommon and sometimes a death sentence.
In retrospect I often think how much of my young years was conditioned by the aftermath of the war, and how its influence remains. Over the years a child hears gossip and comment, and I never fail to be amazed how much remains in the bedrock of thought. I remember a family friend had been a Japanese Prisoner of War, and he appears to have survived by drinking the blood of animals slaughtered for the Japanese military kitchen. It horrified me as a small child, and still does.
Other recollections are slightly more amusing. In Staincliffe, Batley, where I lived with my father and mother, there were a considerable number of Eighth Army veterans who had served in the North African deserts. I remember listening when my mother was talking to one, a neighbour of ours. They were talking about a popular singer of the day who, was commonly referred to on the B.B.C. as the 'forces sweetheart'. He described her as the 'screaming cow' and this, I remember, was the opinion of many northerners who considered her as an 'accented' southerner! (NB American singers, because of their accents were class-neutral were accepted).
Another clear recollection of mine is of how cold linoleum was. Carpets when I was a small child were usually restricted to a square in the centre of the room, and its surround and areas like halls and kitchens were covered with this material. I suppose that there were other colours, but my recollection is of a dismal patterned brown colour. When you got out of bed in the morning your feet did not touch comfy carpet, but cold lino. I can remember crawling over this material, and up the hall towards the front door. Besides being cold it was slippy. After "escaping" I would be grabbed, and put in the swing.
The swing was in the kitchen, and designed to keep me under surveillance. This was made of wooden slats, and affixed to the ceiling by four thick cords. The front part could be lifted to insert the child (me). I could be watched, swung gently, talked to, shouted at, left alone quite safely for short periods and fed without the adult having to bend. It was much more sophisticated than a high chair.
Feeding small children was a real problem, especially when they were being weaned onto solid food. Bottles of prepared meals didn't exist, but National Dried 'bottle' Milk was available in blue tins. I can't remember this weaning phase of my life, but I remember one of my mother's cronies explaining the problem many years later. Children's food had to be cooked, and then sieved, mashed or strained (liquidisers were only seen in American films). I suppose what very small children got what was a pulverised portion of the family's main meal. My mother was very partial to steamed fish, potatoes, vegetables (in season) and parsley sauce, and I suppose this is what I must have eaten regularly.
I was not a "good" eater, frequently refused food and, according to my aunts, regularly infuriated my mother by not feeding. I am not sure if this was because of the limited nature of a rationed diet, or my natural inclinations. I suspect the latter. My memory is that I drank a great deal of tea, and tumblers of milk. The milk, and this was before the days of bottles, was delivered every morning by a horse drawn single-axle cart that carried two or three churns of fresh, and often still warm, milk from a local farm.
The milkman knocked at the door, and he carried with him a small cylindrical pail containing several gallons of milk with a pint-measure scoop (it could have been a half-pint, but I don't really remember). I remember that my mother could get as much or as little as she wanted. I am unclear about if milk was rationed, it might have been half or three-quarters of a pint per person per day, even so because of milk's liability to go sour or curdle in warm weather the regulations were probably not strictly applied. In any case my mother was not one to allow regulations to get in her way. The housewife had several milk jugs, and these were not the polite little excuses that appear on the tea table, but two-pint affairs that would hold enough for the day. The milk then went in the larder, a cold, but un refrigerated cubby hole, where food was stored (this was a time when fridges only appeared in American films, and audiences gasped at their contents).
Tea was, of course rationed, but I never remember been without. Perhaps it was easier in our house because my father only drank coffee (Camp coffee in a bottle), or perhaps my mother had 'supplies'. Sugar was a very scarce commodity, but the ration could be eked out with tins of Glucose (s5/-d per. Tin), and honey. Growing up without sweet things meant that I never missed unrationed sweets, and am still indifferent to sugar and its taste.
I remember eating porridge, or having it spooned into my mouth, and being an only child I usually had the ration of the only egg a week. This was usually served boiled, then removed from the shell chopped in a cup and then helped into my mouth by thin strips of toast. As a small child I don't remember much meat, but the ration was only tiny. Fortunately, one of our neighbours was a pork butcher, and another worked in the Co-op butchery department. So, there were always possibilities of 'extra'.
There were sausages, but I remember, years later, my Aunt Peggy describing them as 'bags of mystery' because their relationship to meat was at best tenuous, and nearer vegetarian products because of the large content of soya filler. Occasionally, I was given what I described as 'scraper' biscuits (these were plain sweet biscuits covered with a raised pattern of tiny semi-circles, they looked like the holes in a grater, thus 'scraper' to me), but sweet biscuits were very rare. There was also 'jelly' produced from the gelatine made by boiling bones, and then flavoured with fruit flavour and essences. I ate it avidly, but was innocent of knowing how it was made.
Our house was potato chip free because my mother had burned herself on a chip pan as a young woman, and she wouldn't have a chip pan in the house. She always used to 'cluck' with disapproval when reading in the local paper about chip pan fires. In this she was in agreement with my father who used to complain about the endless chips served in his factory canteen. There was also rice pudding, and egg custard made with American dried egg powder.
Occasionally we had omlettes made with egg powder, but the result was rather leathery if edible. I remember rhubarb, usually made from the clump of rhubarb at the bottom of the garden, and custard. Fruit, especially apples, were available in season. There was also home made jam made with blackurrants, raspberries and gooseberries. The fruit was usually grown from plants in my Aunt Peggy's garden. 'Blackberrying' in the countryside also became a popular summer activity, and I remember accompanying my Aunt Mary on one of these forays.
Many of our wartime neighbours lived off their gardens or allotments. Our immediate neighbour, Mr. Holt, was an avid vegetable gardener, but his pride and joy was his greenhouse and tomato plants. I remember him tending these with tender loving care. Nothing was too good for them, including dried pig's blood. This came as a powder, water was added and applied by watering can to the plants. As a small child I used to watch him with fascination.
There is one thing I do remember, and that was the severe rationing of cheese. Two or three ounces a week per person barely made a cheese sauce or fed a skinny mouse, and I remember my mother experimenting with making something that looked like cottage cheese. To do this she allowed milk to go sour or curdle, and then poured the coagulated mess, I can describe it in no other terms, into a muslin bag to drain. I can remember sitting in my swing, and watching it drip, drip, drip. There was also something of an 'off' smell. I think the recipe involved the addition of finely chopped onion. My father, heroically, ate some, but I remember he didn't look very happy! Mother didn't attempt to try it out on me because I was clearly prepared to yell! The cheese experiment was not repeated.
Although I have some glimpses of memory where food is concerned most of the previous paragraphs derive from talking to my mother and Aunt Peggy during the decade before they died. My mother used to get her rations from the local Co-op, near the Shoulder of Mutton public house, and I seem to remember that a large shopping basket accounted for the week's grocery rations. However, you must remember that vegetables and potatoes were obtained from a greengrocer's shop. At this time the huge barn of a shop building was full of empty shelves, and the window full of dummy packets. I also remember mother reading Good Housekeeping magazine for cookery tips. I came across a few copies after she died, and compared to today's monstrous glossies, it was about the same size as a skimpy church magazine.
In our kitchen there was a huge, to my small eyes, Yorkist range. I only mention this because its presence filled my infant years. This was made of cast iron, and required frequent black-leading - a filthy process. The coal/coke fire in a grate served a multitude of purposes: it heated a fire-back boiler, baked in a fire oven beside the grate, boiled a kettle on a hob and kept the kitchen snug (if there was enough fuel). In the morning it required a huge and laborious effort to rake out the ashes before laying a fresh fire. The heat it generated also dried the washing on a creel (rack in Lancashire and Cheshire. I can remember when I first cam e to Stockport asking for a creel in a local shop and being looked at as if I was a mad foreigner - then I explained what it was, and the cry went up: 'it's a rack'). This comprised two metal end pieces that supported long and thin wooden slats in holes. The washing was draped over the slats, and the device was hauled up to the ceiling by very thin ropes. A contemporary habit was stoning the edge of the doorsteps with coloured stones after these had been ritually washed once a week - I suppose it was an expression of housewifely pride.
One subject I must mention is that of the widespread habit of obtaining 'extra' rations in addition to and beyond what was an individual's due through coupons. Officially it was called the Black Market, or, I suppose, the law of supply and demand (the film 'A Private Function', is a good introduction). I have mentioned 'supplies' or 'extra', but these are euphemisms. As a small child I was aware of it, and took it for granted as a normal part of daily life. At its most basic its operation was simple: money talked, and butter and cheese was a 拢1 for a pound weight.
The legal part was the exchange of ration or clothing coupons, but this sometimes shaded off into additional and extra where money changed hands. During an age when most women were still housewives an immense female community network existed, and the 'tom toms' soon discovered wants and supplies. Connivance rapidly followed. As a small child I often listened to my mother gossiping to and with her neighbours, and even to the young such as me it was an obvious piece of economic activity. (If you want to understand the wider picture read - Donald Thomas, An Underworld at War: spivs, deserters, & civilians in the Second World War (2003)). Virtually the entire population was involved to some degree, and even its milder manifestations were adopted by the honest and upright as a survival technique. The authorities only prosecuted the most flagrant of abuses - if a more rigorous policy has been followed most of the population would have been in jail!. The waters of reticence and hypocrisy closed over this activity when rationing ended progressively during the early 1950s. Occasionally, when looking back, the adults in my family would give a knowing laugh and smile. (NB What a population will necessarily tolerate in wartime because of a severe military emergency did no psychologically apply in time of post-war peace. Putting aside my infant hat I would say, in retrospect, that the roots of the rise of criminality during the next half-century can be traced to the consequences of excessive rationing in Britain. In Western Europe rationing ended much sooner, and during the late 1940s, for example, tinned cream could be had in Germany - the defeated power- without rationing. In Britain ships importing food often carried two or three times the amount of food that was required for rationing. Thus rationing became a form control over the population. If you wanted a good meal the place to go was Ireland.). It is easy to criticise, and especially when the usually juvenile critic has not lived through an era when the populace: 'Shivered with Shinwell, the Minister of Fuel and Power, and starved with Strachey, the Minister of Food!'
I will mention two specific examples of self-help. One kindly lady whom I knew as a child, and was exceptionally kind to me, used to ice cakes. Her speciality was wedding cakes and, inspite of rationing, icing sugar could be 'had' at a price. As a very small boy the precise mechanics of the 'trade' escaped me, and I simply record what I remember. Only in retrospect did I appreciate that the amount of sugar involved could not remotely have equated to the individual sugar ration. I used to watch the icing curl out of the icing tools, and was allowed to eat small pieces of the spoilt crumbs.
Just like every other small child I was entitled to a ration of orange juice. This came in clear glass medicine bottles with old-fashioned cork tops. The orange juice was concentrated, and could be diluted, but I got it neat on a tablespoon. I have this half-recollection that the juice was not completely refined because it had tiny unpulverised bits in it, but it was drinkable.
My mother, in common with all her pre-antibiotic generation, had a horror of illness, and was determined that I should thrive. Consequently I had extra supplies of orange juice which she paid for at the price of s5/-d per bottle. Objectively, this was unjust to other children of my generation who were thus deprived of what I was drinking, but morality, or government regulations, to a mother protecting her only child is an abstract and remote concept. (In other families it was clothing that was important, and tailors were often prepared to sell material or made up clothes without coupons. What counted was personal knowledge, contacts and established trust. It was much easier to do 'business' if you were known, considered reliable, and not a employee of officialdom. My Aunt Peggy told me years later that when I was a baby I had a Silver Cross pram. This was a new one, one of the few made during the war. She didn't explain how she 'fixed' it!)
My mother's concern for my health was not just faddyness because antibiotics like Penicillin were only just becoming available to combat illness, and all concerned mothers watched their offspring for the slightest symptoms of childhood complaints. I remember being chesty, and having a great many colds, but in a smoky industrial town like Dewsbury virtually the entire population both afflictions were virtually the norm. The remedy as applied to me was camphorated oil: first my chest was rubbed with this preventative, and .then more oil was pored on a small square piece of wool or felt that was pinned to the inside of my vest. I suppose the camphor helped breathing, but I suppose I smelt like a walking biological hazard. Perhaps I was lucky because the two little girls on the other side of Grange Road had goose greese applied to their chests on greeseproof paper - I suppose dirt saved us because life was less antiseptic than today, and we picked up anitbodies by playing out.
I do slightly remember my Uncle George Worfolk's workshop cum business at the rear of 5, Robinson Street, Dewsbury. He was the youngest of my mother's family, and by far the cleverest. G. W. was a model maker of genius, and I remember a wonderful eight foot scale model of a Lancaster bomber that he made. It was a talent that he turned to his advantage during the Second World War. Fortunately for him, he had rheumatic fever as a child, and this illness was one category that excluded him from conscription into the armed forces - I say fortunate, but that was only with retrospect, because as a child he nearly died.
When the war started George started making model aircraft kits under the brand name Warcraft, and, being called Worfolk the alliteration of surname and brand was an immense help. Then the Gods smiled upon him, and the government actually provided a subsidy to help the manufacturers of model aircraft. The reason was simple: they wanted models to be made so that children, adults and members of the armed forces would recognise friendly aircraft from foe. His assistant in this enterprise was a chap who rejoiced in the name of Bill Sykes. Bill was a jolly individual with a round chubby face, and like my uncle he was excused from being conscripted (my mother said he had 'flat feet', but I think she was just being sarcastic!). Bill was a capable 'fiddler' with any equipment, and a highly competent electrician. For a time he was engaged to my Aunt Peggy, but she broke it off. I can just remember the workshop with risqu茅 cartoons in chalk drawn on the wall. Here rough body parts for models were cut out of wood with fret saws, and then packed into small boxes bearing pictures of the aeroplane (the wood was anything George could get hold of because balsa wood was simply not available during the war). The other thing I remember was the fog of strong cigarette tobacco smoke that hung in clouds around the place, but at the time 'everybody' smoked, and nobody thought anything about it. Because of the business a car and telephone were part of the premises. At the time most families simply did not have access to these facilities.
Such is the mosaic of disparate, jumbled and fragmented memories that have lodged in my mind. Unconsciously, the war must have been a highly formative influence, because, when I was a little older I kept asking my aunts: 'Tell me about pre-war!' I suppose it must have been represented to me as a golden age of plenty in an age of austerity. There are other odd snippets such as my mother listening to Workers' Playtime on the 'wireless' every lunchtime, and the avidity with which adults listened to the B.B.C. news. I also remember American uniforms, but I do not recall the context

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