´óÏó´«Ã½

Before the war people did not queue, so that at a bus stop there would be a crowd of people waiting. When the bus arrived everybody would surge forward. It was not always the youngest and fittest who got on first. My grandmother being the case in question, a lady well into her seventies, would somehow manage to be the first on the bus. She used to do her main shopping at a new, very large Co-op in the centre of Newcastle. Again, as a teenager of about 14, I would be feeling very ashamed to see her arrive last and served first. After the war started, for safety reasons it was decided that where there were more than five people they must queue. And people obeyed, even my Grandmother.

I lived with my widowed mother in Slough, but I was staying with my Grandmother in the school holidays, August 1939, in Newcastle. All the children from the city had been evacuated to Barnard’s Castle, County Durham, and I was one of the few youngsters left. People kept asking my Grandmother what I was doing still there.

I came home on the Friday or Saturday before war was declared on Sunday 2 September. My Grandmother had bought me a straw hat because she said ‘Only the lowest of the low and the commonest of the common go out without a hat’. I was still wearing it when my mother met me at Kings Cross Station. Her first words to me were ‘take that hat off.’

At 11 o’clock on the Sunday morning we were clustered around the radio waiting for a broadcast by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. We were all shocked that it had come to that, only a year after the Munich agreement.

My Mother became an air raid warden, and I became an ARP messenger. We were supposed to go from one ARP station to another with any messages, in case the telephones were out of use. Stations were very often set up in the back of pubs, and the darts teams suddenly had a lot more members. But the telephones weren’t affected and so most the time, we sat around and mucked about, like teenagers at any period.

My sister was 20 when war broke out, and was working for the Civil Service, which was a reserved occupation. Her office was evacuated first to Kings Lynn, then to Manchester and then back to Red Lion Square in London. She decided that she wanted to join the ATS, but couldn’t unless she could find a replacement for her Civil Service job. So my mother offered to take her place. The London Evening News ran a story about them, with a picture, to encourage others to think of doing the same.

When he was 18, my brother enlisted for the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He underwent tests at first to see if he was better suited to be a fighter or bomber pilot. More individual characters would be chosen as fighter pilots, and the more stable characters chosen to be responsible for bomber flights. My brother became a fighter pilot. He trained as a pilot in the United States. ‘Tubby’ Clayton, who became a leading member of Toc H, sent newsletters to trainees families to let them know how their sons were getting on. They could write themselves of course, but young men don’t always remember to write to their mothers as often as they should.

When he came back he flew Hurricane fighter planes, and later became a night fighter pilot. I became very interested in planes and could recognise most of them. So one day, when I was coming home from church in the afternoon — evensong was held early so that people could get home before the blackout — I saw this plane flying low, so I stopped to look at it, and saw the iron cross on its side and was just wondering about it, when a man came and rushed me into his house to get me out of danger. This plane must have been on a reconnaissance flight and before it returned to Germany, or wherever it had come from, the pilot shot up some sheep which, owing to the war effort, were grazing on the sports field of an engineering firm, Peters, just up the road from where I’d seen it.

I can’t say much about my brother’s experiences in air fights because he was always very reticent. But sometimes a Hurricane would ‘beat up’ (swoop low over) the grammar school where he had been a pupil. And the teachers presumed that it was ‘that Billy Stutt’.

My school had underground air raid shelters built in the grounds, where we had to go if there was an alert. They were horribly cold and damp. We had to take our general work books and had a special timetable of work to follow while we were there. Fortunately it didn’t happen very often. The way in was down a ramp. But the emergency exit was up a vertical metal ladder to the ground. At the top there was nothing to hold onto to help you out and I had a terror of reaching the top of the ladder and having to get out without any support, a fear which remains with me today. And so I spent most the time in the shelter worrying about having to make an emergency exit, rather than whether Hitler was going to drop a bomb on me.

Because a lot of women were called up for war work, it was hard to find people to work in the school canteen. On at least one occasion during a domestic science lesson, we had to go into the kitchen to peel the vegetables for our lunch. We had a reasonable supply of margarine and lard for our cooking lessons, but very rarely had any meat. And so I learned how to make cakes and biscuits, but not how to make dinners.

In 1942 six of us at school volunteered to work for the Worcestershire Agricultural Committee during the summer holiday, combining war work with a holiday. At first we were all going to cycle there — about one hundred miles. But four decided to go by train, which they caught at Reading Station and had to stand all the way. My friend, Jean and I, still decided to cycle. I stayed with her in Wraysbury the night before. We set off at 7 o’clock and arrived at the camp, about five miles outside Evesham, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, not long after the rest of the party, who were a lot more weary than we were. We’d stopped and had a picnic lunch. The only difficulty was that all signposts had been removed and if one asked for directions, you would be treated with suspicion as a possible enemy parachutist.

We were sent out to local farms to work. Earning just over the amount we had to pay for the camp, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The only snag was that one day when there was no work on the farms, we were sent to Smedley’s jam factory in Evesham, where we were putting plums into tins for canning. Any that were a bit off were thrown into a box underneath. When we enquired what happened to those plums, we were told that they would be made into jam. So none of us ever touched Smedley’s jam again. We found the noise of the machinery in the factory difficult to handle, but we were on piece work and I managed to earn one penny more than the rest.

One day we returned to the camp to find that the cook, who was operating in an old farm building with a range, had walked out. We being young and foolish volunteered to do the meals: porridge for breakfast (which had to be started the night before), packed lunches for the workers to take out, and an evening meal, and at about 9 o’clock an urn of cocoa. There were about 50 people in the camp. This coal range was very slow to heat at times, and very temperamental, so one evening the meal was not on time. Most people were sympathetic and prepared to wait, but one man, who kept declaring that he was a friend of Harry Roy (the band leader) kicked up a fuss, and so we were all very tearful. One evening, someone (not me!) by mistake put salt in the cocoa instead of sugar, so we added more sugar to cover the taste. People kept coming back for more, they were so thirsty.

The camp locally was run by young men, conscientious objectors, intellectual types much to be admired by a young woman. It wasn’t long before we all became pacifists too, and vegetarians.

There were many US camps in the neighbourhood and most of our group went to some of their dances. I was considered unsociable because I had no fondness for the Americans and wouldn’t go. But when they came back, having had to fight for their honour, I felt vindicated. Once Italy had capitulated, the Italian prisoners of war were allowed more freedom and they used to come to the Saturday night dances in the village hall. The local girls were quite taken with their Latin charm and caused jealousy amongst the local lads. One night there was quite a punch up between the two sides.

In Slough, because of the expected danger to the trading estate from bombs, where they were making munitions, the area was surrounded by a smoke screen. As far as I can remember, this was simply barrels of smoking oil, or tar or something. The smell was disgusting and because of the blackout they were a hazard. My future husband happened to collide with one of the barrels and ruined a set of clothes.

Soon after the war, Aspro’s, who had their factory on the Trading Estate, put on a big dance for all the young people in the area who had joined any association to help the war effort. Clothing was still rationed, so we had to borrow long dresses from friends or relatives. However, we had no transport, so we had to pin up our skirts and go to the dance on our bicycles.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.