大象传媒

I would be seven years old when the war began to affect the small Yorkshire village where I lived.
My carefree childhood seemed to disappear overnight and a different one took its place 鈥� like starting a different chapter in a book.
Food and clothing became rationed, and horror of horrors!!!! Sweets disappeared!!!! Everything we had taken for granted became so scarce that if my mother saw a queue forming outside a shop she would automatically join it, saying to me 鈥淩un home and fetch my purse!鈥� As you can imagine, tea-time was often a surprise!
A fresh egg was a real treat, as no food could be spared to feed the hens, and they, poor things, found their way one by one into the cooking pot. Any baking had to be done with egg substitute, a horrible powder which smelled disgusting and turned cakes a most un-appetising dark yellow. A request for anything that wasn鈥檛 on the pantry shelf would always bring the same response 鈥斺�� Don鈥檛 yer know there鈥檚 a war on?鈥�
Every inconvenience or misfortune that befell me during this period in my life I blamed on one person鈥�. And that person was MR HITLER !
Because of him nearly all the men in our village had gone to war. My sister and I would remember them every night in our prayers, asking for their safe return. One of them, we found out later, hadn鈥檛 gone to war at all, but was working in a restaurant in Leeds, so he was probably safer than us. I bet he got more to eat as well!
I don鈥檛 remember when the turning point came, but 鈥淒on鈥檛 yer know there鈥檚 a war on鈥� became replaced with 鈥淲hen the war is over鈥濃�︹�� and suddenly it was! The celebrations this brought about went on for days! Everyone pushed their pianos into the street, and trestle tables groaned under the weight of potted beef sandwiches, the inevitable deep yellow sponge cake and buckets of beer.
A giant bonfire was lit on the village green, and it was this that symbolised the end of the war for me, because there, blazing away on top of it, was a life-sized effigy of MR HITLER!

Anne Rodwell

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