大象传媒

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I was 7 when war broke out and the first difference it made to me was that we were unable to go on holiday that year. My father was billeting officer and was expecting evacuees. In the event, they turned up before he had billets for them all and quite a few went to Annesley Hall for the night. Most of the men in the village were either miners, railway workers or worked at Rolls Royce etc. so apart from a few, we didn't know any servicemen. One was my uncle who was a teacher and was replaceable.
We were on a main route for the movement of tanks and lorries and many times we have been caught on the wrong side of the road and had to wait ages for the convoy to pass. Not funny in the winter.
We were provided with Air-raid shelters. Small, square brick buildings set on concrete slabs with no footings. One bomb at the Badger Box and they would have been down like dominoes. There was a concrete slab at one end for sitting on but it made a good stage and we had a lot of fun giving concerts to our friends.

Rationing didn't affect us a much as people living in the towns. We all had gardens and used both back and front to grow vegetables and fruit and would swap with our neighbours. We had relatives living on a farm and occasionally they would give us a few eggs which were carefully stored in isinglass. However, we did get fed up with bread and jam, especially the mixed fruit jam - more turnips than anything.

We had to 'make do and mend', by 1943 I was at Grammar School. We were given extra coupons for uniform, and when our school blouses were worn out, we would cut off the sleeves and the collar, turn the blouse back to front so that the buttons were at the back, do a bit of embroidery on the front and we had a blouse for going out in the evenings.

Because our school (the local one) was not big enough for all the evacuees, we made use of the tennis pavilion - probably much to the disgust of the tennis club - and 2 extra teachers were brought in.

To my knowledge, only once was any bombs dropped in Annesley and they were only incendiary bombs left over from the raid. They were dropped in a little wood near Annesley Church but very little damage was done.

Our windows had to be blacked out. Upstairs, we had blackout curtains, but downstairs my father had made plywood shutters for each window. They took ages to put up because each window had it's own shutter and no other would fit.

Occasionally ENSA people would come and perform in the Welfare Hall. I think they felt that the miners and their families deserved some entertainments too. Some of them were very good and we children were relegated to the window bottom seats.
We were lucky I suppose. Our fathers were safe from fighting, our homes were safe from bombing and we never went short of food even though it was sometimes monotonous.

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