大象传媒

I was five years old when the war started and I lived at Fishponds, Bristol on the main road. My earliest memories were of coming out of the infant school by the park in Manor Road and the siren started to warn of an air raid. I felt very frightened and ran home. I still feel funny and my stomach turns over at the sound of a siren. In the infants school we had brick air raid shelters in the playground and later when I went to junior school they were underground. When the sirens started we were led out to them and sat on benches and sang songs until the all clear sounded.

We had an Anderson shelter in the garden at my home and in the early years of the war in a night raid, I remember using it. As the war continued we didn't use the shelter, preferring to sleep under the stairs or staying in our beds.

Another incident that happened in the early part of the war was a German plane was shot down near the school and the pilot was killed. My mother was frightened it had landed on the school and woke my father, who was sleeping after night duty in the A.R.P to investigate the incident. He found it had landed near the hospital in manor road, a short distance from the school.

Other memories were of carrying your gas mask everywhere with you, and food rationing. We had ration books, which the shop assistant marked off and cut out coupons. Food was weighed out individually, sugar and tea from sacks, butter and cheese cut off large slabs, and bacon sliced on a machine by hand. You only had a small amount and it had to last the week. We used our portion of butter at weekends. There seemed to be queues at all the shops. Most people had allotments and grew their own vegetables, and we all seemed very healthy.

At the junior school I used to stay to lunch sometimes, but it wasn't very pleasant. The food was delivered in metal containers. The first course seemed to be a type of stew with vegetables. I liked the milk puddings and jam tart we had for afters. We had a 1/3rd pint of milk delivered in crates, which we had in the morning break. In winter the milk froze in the bottles and we would place them by the radiators to thaw out.

My friend Shirley lived about ten minutes walk away and we spent a lot of time together. Her family kept hens at the bottom of the garden and sometimes I would help collect the eggs. I used to like to see the baby chickens in their separate pen, yellow and fluffy. There was very little traffic about and with other children we played ball games and skipping in the road outside her house. When we were nine years old we both went into the children's hospital and had out tonsils out. We were in metal cots next to one another, and if I laid stretched out my toes would go through the bars at the end. We both took cut-out books with us and the pieces would fall out of the books onto the floor, which meant climbing out of our cots to get them, much to the annoyance of the nurses. My throat was very painful after the operation, even a sip of water was agony. The next day we were given porridge to eat. We didn't have any visitors and I was very pleased when my mother came to collect me after a few days.

We had sticky tape on the windows and think blackout curtains. My house wasn't damaged but there were bomb craters fairly near. I remember an air raid one evening, and the sirens went. My mother was keen to go next door to our neighbours, but on opening the door and seeing the shrapnel falling and the noise and search-lights, she was too scared to venture out.

I wasn't evacuated but some of my friends were. My aunt and cousin stayed with us periodically when the bombing was bad in London.

When the American soldiers arrived it was thought we might have some billeted with us, but they went to a camp at Frenchay which is now the hospital. You often saw the soldiers walking about and several of my schoolfriends mothers got quite friendly with them. One of my friend's sisters married one and became a G.I. bride, and went to Boston to live. There was an incident on the steps of the Vandyke cinema in Fishponds of two American soldiers fighting and the military police arrived and took them away, it was quite exciting. When the Americans left at the end of the war, they handed out sweets to the children. I went with my father and had some.

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