大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Gillian Estall and has been added to the website on behalf of Philippa Kenyon-Slaney with her permission and they fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

I remember most vividly and guiltily the start of the war. I was ten at the time and the grown ups were talking about the likelihood of war. They told us that it would just mean that English and German aeroplanes would fight each other over the sea and everyone else would be quite safe. Some of our friends were quite excited about the idea but I was appalled by it so I wimpishly 帽 and secretly- prayed every night that God wouldn't let there be a war. On Saturday the 2nd September 1939 I forgot to say my prayers with the dreadful result that the very next day war was declared. I never confessed my wicked part in this but felt miserably guilty for months.

I do have more memories, though as I was a child at the time they are only light- weight and not in very in-depth.

Food: The Ministry of Food issued recipes - one I remember was for Carrot Cake, which wasn't as sweet as it seems to be now, it was simply that carrots being sweet you needed less sugar. When fruit was in season you could take your Jam Ration (1lb per month) in sugar and use it to make jam. I think the WI got sugar for jam - I remember my sister Rosemary and me helping to make it in the Village Hall.

Porridge oats were excellent for adding to minced meat to make it go further for cottage pie, shepherd's pie, etc. Sometimes these dishes consisted very largely of oatmeal and Bovril. As well as the regular ration of such things as meat, sugar, butter, margarine, cheese, jam and tea there were 'points' in the ration book which you could use largely for tinned things; Spam, golden syrup, corned beef and so on. Coffee was never rationed, though maybe scarce - Nescafe wasn't invented. My mother kept used Horlicks (yuk) jars full of ground coffee all round the kitchen against the day, which never came, when it was rationed. We had a small hoard of tinned and dry goods in a chest ready for the Invasion. This of course never came though one evening we thought it had.

My two elder sisters and I thought it would be fun after dark one evening to walk up to the Post Office with our letters.(Christmas "Thank you" letters maybe). We heard an aeroplane high above making an odd thrumming noise which German ones did. We looked up and saw a light or two, then several, then myriads of them sailing high overhead. We talked in awed tones of the Invasion and didn't know quite know what to do about it, till giggling with relief, we realised the lights were stars which looked as if they were moving as light clouds blew over them.

In some strange way we sort of knew roughly that the Normandy Landings were going to take place, ( though not where or quite when) and that my father, being in Mine-Sweepers, would be at the front of it all to clear the way. This was my second more prolonged bout of praying as it really occurred to me that my father wasn't immune, and could be killed. I didn't forget to do it this time and it was more successful than at the start of the war. I went to Boarding School about three years after war started. This school, first evacuated to Worcestershire in 'The Big House' of our village then moved to Hertfordshire. The Vth and V1th forms used to go Ashridge Park which was a Military Hospital, from time to time, to help sew medal ribbons and badges on to soldiers' uniforms. I took this very seriously and did my best sewing - it seemed the least I could do for these men.

Oh and before we went to school, my two elder sisters and I (11, 13, and 15ish) used to love to go on our ponies and visit two small encampments of soldiers nearby - each in charge of a Search Light. We had great fun chatting with the soldiers who had a variety of accents from all over Britain and were full of jokes - some of which happily we didn't understand. When we told our mother she said we should invite them to come to our house for baths which they did once a week. They had to share bathwater of course!

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