大象传媒

I was eleven years old at the outbreak of war and I don't remember feeling any sort of emotion at the time, except perhaps a bit of excitement. I do remember my father who was a soldier in the 1st World War calling the Germans all the names under the sun the most suitably repeatable one being "warmongers". He also said a few unkind things about Atlee too. I do remember my dad making wooden frames to fit inside all the windows and my mother covering them with blackout material and these we had to fit into the windows every night when it got dark enough to have to light the gaslight. We also were told to put skicky tape across all the panes of glass in the windows, these were placed from corner to corner usually in the form of a cross and we were told that this would prevent the glass splintering and flying into people's faces if we ever had a bomb fall in the near vicinity. War was declared in September and as the days shortened it was very strange to see the transport of the time-buses -cars ets with the windows all blacked out with a sort of blue paint and the headlights had a cover over them wjich had just a slit in them to allow the minimum light through. It was very difficult to see them from a distance and especially in bad weather so I suppose there must have been quite a few accidents although I don't remember hearing of any. The outbreak of war also coincided with my starting at senior school, which was Clapham Terrace and of course we always had to carry our gas masks everywhere we went and once a week we had a "gas mask drill" which involved the whole school being taken into the hall and us taking the masks out of the box in which they were carried and then we all had to don these horrible things as quickly as we could. I didn't like them very much as I always felt I was going to suffocate in it but we had to hold a piece of card over the bottom of the mask and breathe in and the result was that the mask tightened around your face and that was supposed to show that it was a proper fit. The boys in the scholl of course loved to breathe out in such a way that they makde a rather rude noise and set everybody giggling. In the early days of the war we weren't allowed to stay in school for lunches and so we always walked home to Rushmore Estate by way of the "ladderbridge" which crossed the canal by Flavels Foundry. One day there were four of us going home at lunch time and as we crossed the "ladderbrige" we could se an aircraft with German markings flying down the railway line and turning towards Flavels and as hje got closer he started firing. Of course we were frightened to to death and flew down the steps and hid under the arch until he had gone. This sticks in my memory for more than one reason because one of the girls with us started screaming and crying and I thought she was hysterical, and I remembered that I had read somewhere that if someone is hysterical the best thing to do was slap them across the face-so I did! Well it worked , but the thing was that we had a very riate mother knocking on our door telling my mother that if I hit her daughter again she would come and hit me ! We had very few cases of Enemy Activity in Leamington in comparison with places like Coventry and Birmingham etc. but there was a time that a bomber dropped a sitck of bombs across the town and one fell very close to our house in fact there was a direct hit on a house in The Close, off LLewellyn Road and we were sitting under the stairs because that was supposed to be one of the safest place to sit in the case of an air raid and it felt as though it had dropped in our garden. My sister and her friend were just turning into Llewellyn Road on their way home from the pictures and they were blown off their feet. She rushed into the house with a face as white as a sheet.
My mother was a wonderful manager as far as food was concerned I don't ever remember going hungry, mind you, I'm sure she went without very often to make sure we were OK. She was very clever because as there were six ration books in our house she registered with two Grocers and two Butchers shops-three books with each one and that way when she wanted meat she was almost sure to get a little bit extra because the butcher couldn't always weigh out the exact amount that we were allowed , and smae applied to things like butter and bacon. We were always given some money when we went into town and if wver we saw a queue outside a shop we would stand in line and get whatever was going. Sometimes it would be sausage at the port butchers or perhaps the greengrocer would have some rabbits. Carrots and potatoes came into their own during the war too, if what they say about carrots being good for the eyesight is true the wartime population must have had 20-20 vision all round , as we used carrots grated up in cake and biscuit recipes and we were encouraged to drink carrot juice too. It was the same with potatoes we were given Woolton Tips- Mr Woolton was the food Minister and every week he would come on the radio with different recipes using things like carrots and potatoes in place of flour and dried fruit. Dried fruit was in very short supply because of course we had to import it from abroad and the navy and merchant ships were more concerned with getting more important things into the country than that. Occasionally though there would be a consignment brought into the country and the shops would ration it out to their "regular" customers but it would probably be only about a quarter of a pound of currants and so those poor girls who were going to be married and wanting to have a wedding cake had to try a bit of "black market" and do some swapping with other people who didn't want their dried fruit and would exchange it for some sugar or a few eggs and in that way they could build up enough to make a reasonable cake for the occasion. Some mothers would make the cake which would in all probability be quite a small one and would then make an artificial cake from card and decorate it to look like a wedding cake and slip that over the real cake for the table at the reception. Then when the cutting of the cake time came it would be carried into the kitchen or wherever and the real cake would be cut into minute portions to be distributed among the guests and nobody the wiser. Another thing that future brides woukd do woukd try to find someone who somehow or other had got a parachute - they were obtainable -don't ask me how but they would then usse the material from that because they were usually made from silk- to make their wedding dresses. As the waar churned on rationing bit very deeply and sometimes the rations were cut to incredibly small amounts even to half an egg per person each week. That was a challenge to the shopkeeper! As I got older and was allowed to stay out with my friends a bit later in the evening we were always rather on edge on the nights of the full moon-which was called a "bombers moon" and it was a fact that the air raids did increaw on those nights and quite often our group meetings which were always on a street corner somewhere was quickly dispersed as we made a speedy head for home when the air raid sirens started. Clothes rationing was difficult too but as I was tall for my age and had "large" feet I always qualified for some extra clothing coupons which made it as bit easier for my Mum. There were some very sad tiimes tii as young men who lived in the area were sent off to war and were killed or taken prisoner one of our close neighbours lost a younger brother in the navy and I remember a boy that I had been at school with and who joined the Merchant Navy whose ship was sunk and he was in a lifeboat at sea before being rescued. I remember a friend of mine whose brother was in the army and who because he had been in the Territorial Army prior to war being declared had been among the first sent to France to fight and at Dunkirk he was taken prisoner by the Germans and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp. I remember how please she was when they received tne very occasional letter from him and she proudly brought one of his letters to school to show everybody and how strange the address looked and sounded. If I remember it correctly it was something like Kreigsgefangannapost, whatever that meant but she didn't see him again until they were repatriated after the war ended. At 14 years of age I left school and went to work at Lockheed in the "aircraft section" in the progress office. Unfortunately I hadn't been there very long when I was taken to hospital with rheumatic fever and effect my mother thought of sitting in very damp air raid shelters in the Eagle Recreation ground during the nights of the bombing of Coventry- my father would insist that we went there for safety- I was in hospital April to August 1942 an while there I saw a German bomber fly low over the hospital and we heard some loud explosions and later learned that he had targeted the Lockheed factory. Anyway in August the doctor came and told me that due to the hospital having to accommodate some patients from Birmingham who had been bombed out of their hospital I would be more to a convalescent home in Kineton. So in about 12 hours I had to learn to get out of bed and walk because I had been kept lying flat for the past 5 months and hadn't been out of bed- and I was put on an ambulance and taken to Kineton.

I think it was at the age of 16 years everyone had to volunteer for something to aid the war effort and so I joined the Red Cross and was attached to Detachment 507 we used to meet at Dale Street Church rooms for our training. Our commandant was Miss Irene England who much later became Mayor of Leamington. We had a very thorough training in nursing and had to do a certain number of hours woek at the Warneford Hospital as part of that training, my stint was done on Victoria ward. I remember Dr Clayton was one of our examiners. We really thought we were something special when we were dressed in our uniform and very proud of the red cross on our aprons, and our flowing headdress. We were asked to form a guard of honour on the steps of the Warneford Hospital when the Princess Royal came on a visit.
I remember our detachment taking part in a parade in Leamington it was probably to celebrate the end of the war but I remember having a fit of giggles during it because our detachment was placed with an American band behind us and an English one in front of us so that the front ranks were marching to a strict military beat while those of us in the rear ranks were being treated to a Glenn Miller type march. Goodness knows what it looked kike but my word didn't we feel proud! We weere sent as a detachment to meet the trains on Leamington Station when the repatriated troops were sent home travelling by train to their various destinations. We greeted them with cups of tea and coffee and sandwiches. I remember how tired and gaunt a lot of them looked it made me feel very sad and made me think how futile war is. Miss England was sent to Germany and was at Auswitch concentration camp to help with the release of the inmates there. She looked so ill on her return I think it took her a long time to recover from some of the awful sights she saw there. On a lighter side of course was the advent of the GIs. Because there was an American hospotal at Stareton outside Leamington we had quite a lot of the "walking wounded" who came into town and of course the girls thought they were wonderful. I think we all thought they lived in huge houses with swimming pools and big cars-just like the films, but they certainly were attractive because their uniforms were so much smarter than the English Army outfits and of course they had that certain air about them too. At that time I used to go about with a group of friends and we met three very nich young "Yanks" as we called them, Johnny, Clive and Willard; Johnny was my friend and he was very nice he had a girl back home the States and I think they just wanted to make friends. They had had a bad time in the fighting in the Second front and had suffered injuries and were being treated at Stareton before being sent back to Germany again. I took Johnny home and he got on like a house on fire with my family, and we were very grateful to him because he would often come to call for me with "gifts" of tinned peaches and tinned ham etc. The Americans seemed to cater for their soldiers very well. I expect it was illegal for him to bring these things to us but they tasted good. He went back to Germany but I never heard from him again- who knows what happened to him. On VJ day which was in August 1945 the Hospital at Stareton held an open day for anyone who wished to go and they organised buses from Leamington and all the surrounding areas and of course myself and friends went. Well it was a wonderful time because they had a rodeo and various side shows all with an American flavour and best of all they had a refreshment tent and to we people who were rationed still the sight of peaches and "real" cream and ham, usausages, burgers etc was sensational so we all tucked in and had a great time. Eventually we decided to go back home and we joined the queue for the bus to Leamington. Well we waited and waited and no bus. So a GI had been cycling round the park and we asked him when the bus would be coming to take us back home. He said he would go and enquire and within a matter of ninutes he was back driving a military type bus and we were all piling in. As we had been waiting for quite awhile the queue had got very long and he crammed us all into the bus so that we were sitting on each others laps as well as standing in the aisle. Allo went well at first but as we were going down the road from the camp all of asudden the bus veered off the road and mounted a steep bank on the opposite side of the road and came to a halt. Well by that time I who had been sitting on my friend's lap was now sitting on the floor in the aisle with a sheet of metal across my feet. everybody was trying to get out of the bus but because of the angle that it had come to rest at it was very difficult and in fact one lady sprained her ankle because of the drop from the step of the bus to the ground underneath. Eventually we all got out and were sitting on the bank at the side of the road feeling a bit shocked when an American ambulance came into sight and pulled up. The medical staff got out and ascertained who had been injured and one of the staff came to me and said "are you alright". I said "Yes thank you" and he dsid "does your foot hurt?" and when I looked down my foot was covered with blood. It appeared that the sheet of metal that had been laying across my foot when I came to rest in the aisle of the bus had been the base of the seat that we had been sitting on and it had cut into my foot. Any way all the injured were taken back in an army ambulance. I was mortified when it pulled up outed our house and people in the street stared and wondered what was going on. It took quite a while to live that down. Neither of my friends were hurt fortunately and they were taken back to Leamington by the usual transport. Afterwards we found out that the driver of the coach was in hospital recovering from malaria and shouldn't have been driving at all and evidently he had an attack while driving the bus.

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