大象传媒

During the war my Wife, then Patricia James, aged seven the eldest of four Children living at home in Luton,( her elder brother was serving in the Army in Egypt. )
She recalls some of her wartime experiences as a child.

Because of the Bombing we had an Anderson shelter erected at the bottom of the garden, with bunk beds in. Dad, who was invalided out of the First War, trained us to always fold our clothes in a neat pile, shoes close by and coat at the ready if it was winter time, so that when the dreadful siren would wail (which I still hate the sound of) we were all ready to run to the shelter.
Dad had put a gramophone on the table in the shelter and played records to try to take the sound of both the planes and bombs falling away. He always found it difficult to stay in the shelter and after us children had fallen asleep he would go back into the house. I well remember on one occasion waking up to find no Mum or Dad there and feeling very responsible for my brothers and sister I ran to the house shouting Mum and dad have gone. It turned out that they were fast asleep in their own bed and I got a good smack for waking them up.

Everyone had Identity Cards with a number on, mine was DPON 1104. These had to be carried at all times.
Air Raid Wardens patrolled the streets at night to ensure that everyone had drawn their curtains and were blacked out with no chinks of light showing. If there was, he would shout out 鈥淧ut that Light out鈥�
Dad volunteered to become a Warden. One of his pieces of equipment was a stirrup pump which when placed in a bucket of water you were able to direct the jet onto the heart of the fire. (These were also useful to water the garden with!)

At this time Dad worked in a Hat Factory, which had been converted into producing camouflage, and he would bring some of the material home for Mum to work at on her sewing machine to earn a little extra money. The smell of the material was dreadful and I hated being anywhere near it. How Mum coped I do not know.

Saturday was shopping day. Mum would take me with her on the bus to the Town centre, getting off at the Town Hall stop and straight into Sainsburys. Not a bit like it is now, what with queues and coupons it would take most of the morning. I would go to the cheese counter, then back to Mum for further instructions which would entail going to either the Tea, Sugar or Butter counter from which we would only get margarine and lard. At all the counters we had to produce our Ration books and the appropriate coupons would either be marked or cut out.
From Sainsburys we would go to the market to get vegetables if available. Fruit was unobtainable unless you grew it in your own back yard.
Then to the treat of the day, the sweet shop on Park square. We were rationed to 2 ozs per person per week! I would try to choose something that would last like Boiled Sweets. If I felt like a special treat I loved a Fry鈥檚 Peppermint Cream Bar. Having completed our shopping we would catch the bus home, heavily loaded.

TWO

We never had any new clothes during the war, only hand me downs as Mum sold her coupons to get a little extra cash.

Like many other families we had evacuees staying with us at various times. I well remember in particular a Maltese lady with her two children whose husband was serving in the British army. This caused excessive overcrowding as they had one of the three bedrooms and shared the kitchen and bathroom with us.
The other bedrooms had two double beds in and in the winter to keep warm we laid our overcoats on them. There was no central heating in those days.
Not only was the house full of humans, we also had a dog, cats and a bird in a cage.

We were forbidden from playing in the back garden as this was planted with vegetables, so we had to play in the street.

Later in the war when DoodleBugs were being sent over, Mum had taken us on the bus to visit relatives in Aylesbury. It was a slow journey because all the buses were fitted with a trailer which contained Gas fuel, (Petrol and Diesel only being available for essential use). On returning to Luton the Air Raid siren went and a policeman took us to the nearest shelter. Poor Dad who was waiting to meet us, was nearly out of his mind as he was looking all over the place for us not knowing we were safe. Unfortunately in those days communication was almost non existent.

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