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WHEN WAR BROKE OUT

When war started I was 19 years old and working in Brighton Telegraph Office, Ship Street, Brighton. I now live in Broadstairs and am 85 years old. This was an important communications centre for the south of England, and a complete underground telegraph system beneath the office (in Ship Street) was secretly built and disguised in case of invasion. In that way messages could still be sent. For emergency, an escape route was planned from here in tunnels to Horsham, a distance of 18 miles, with food and drink along the way in places like chalk pits. We, young girls, were issued with a rifle and taught to shoot. When invasion seemed imminent, we had drill. Thank goodness it was never needed.

The telegram has not been in use since 1982. It was a vital form of communication during the war, although to see the uniformed telegraph boy riding up to the front door with the ominous yellow envelope on his hand, struck dread in many hearts fearing bad news of loved ones fighting for their country.

RATIONING IN 1941:

My husband was an air-gunner in Bomber Command, and when we were married in February 1941, rationing had begun to make itself felt in this country. Our wedding cake was unable to have icing on the top, but the confection we stretched the rule and put a layer of marzipan through the centre.

If we went to tea with a friend or neighbour, it was customary to take a tiny screw of tea or sugar in a paper bag (also scarce) as there was rarely enough to spare.

Personally, I found it most difficult to manage on my family’s soap and sugar rations (having 4 youngsters and rationing continued until the fifties). As they were too young to eat many sweets, I exchanged our sweet coupons with friends for sugar…Bananas were unknown, and citrus fruits rarely appeared in the shops — pregnant mothers had priority. When my husband came home form the Middle East in 1943, he brought lemons with him. I raffled three in the services canteen where I helped out in the evening. The local hospital Matron won them, and was delighted to be able to make lemonade for some of her most ill patients.

School meals were started during the war years to ensure children having a main meal because so many mothers were working for the war effort, In spite of shortages and restrictions, the nation’s health was good because of new eating patters — less sugar and fats, more learnt about vitamins.

HELLFIRE CORNER:

In the winter of 1941, the place to be for disturbed sleep was Hellfire corner, as the south-eastern tip of England came to be called.

I was living with my father and mother in Margate, my husband, then 25, was serving with the RAF. Almost nightly, usually round midnight when the hated air raid siren wailed, we would drag ourselves up from warm beds, fumble for torch and extra blankets and pull on thick slacks and jumpers over our nightclothes.

We’d collect our handbags holding any valuables or documents, and, not forgetting to lock the back door, after downing the lights (because of blackout regulations), we’d steal into the night.

Ack ack guns (anti-aircraft) barked and searchlights would be sweeping the sky seeking the enemy bombers that nightly droned across to London’s dockland, as we groped our way down icy oaths to the Anderson shelter (it is now our garden shed) at the bottom of the garden, where after supper Mother had prepared for the inevitable vigil by placing stone hot water bottles onto the crude bunk beds, and talking down a flask of tea, and sandwiches.

The steps down into the narrow shelter doorway wee steep and slippery. I shall never forget the dank smell of the corrugated iron cavern, three parts underground, and the equally pungent smell of the guttering oil lamp that Dad kept trimmed and filled.

Sleep didn’t come very easily, for one thing my father would keep popping outside to investigate a particularly loud “crump”, or droning aircraft engine. We would shrink under the grey utility blankets as we heard the sinister whine of the diving German Stuka plane, a sound that, even today, really chills my blood when I hear it on the television in a war film.

After the explosion of the falling bomb, we would guiltily “Thank God” in relief — because it hadn’t hit us.

When the “All Clear” siren screams, it was debatable whether to go into the house or stay in case of another raid. Mostly the lure of a softer, warmer bed drew us up into the darkness, where we could hear our neighbours also emerging from their shelters, grumbling as they fell over the watering can, filled in case of incendiary bombs.

“Let’s hope we don’t meet each other again tonight”, they would call out over the hedge, managing a laugh and a joke, even though the broken nights meant weary days for the men and women who had to go to work the next day.

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