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Part two of the transcript of an interview with Maggie Fink nee Jones, by her grandson as part of a school WW2 project in 2001.

Maggie Fink, nee Jones was born in November 1934, so was aged 4 at the outbreak of War. Her parents lived in Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, during the war, though she was away at Boarding school in Bristol, before her school was evacuated to Devon. Her father was a solicitor and reserve fire fighter during the war. She has four older brothers, two of whom were in the Forces.

Q: What were the worst things about the war?
A: Being away from home for me was definitely the worst thing I hated it. And, I suppose the bombing and the - there was always that fear there of what might happen. You know - when you went to bed at night you were never quite sure whether something dreadful would happen during the night. And hearing about people you knew, being killed in the war that wasn't nice. And I had my favourite cousin - he was in the air force and I used to always worry about him a lot. He flew Mosquitoes and Beaufighters and all that, and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. But I mean, I have to say, we were lucky because, of the family, only his brother was killed. One of my cousins was in the Shanghai prisoner of war camp in Singapore and he had a terrible time - he was very, very ill when he came back. But apart from that we were a pretty lucky family on the whole.

Q: And what was the best thing about the war?
A: The end of the war (laughs) when VE day came and we hung out the flags and the gas masks we hung them out of the window that was fantastic.

Q: I'm going to ask you some questions about the blitz
A: Oh… - I was very, very young then.

Q: What are your memories of the Blitz?
A: Sitting under the kitchen table with my brother who had mumps (laughs)

Q: How were you directly affected?
A: We weren't really - it was just the noise of it - all the aircraft went over us. But it was all going on in London. It wasn’t really going on around Welwyn. It was very much…. You could see it - you could hear the bombs and hear the guns and so forth - and it was scary. But we were very lucky.

Q: How did it affect the people you knew either directly or indirectly?
A: As I say I was very young - I was only 4 so I don’t remember an awful lot of it - the people around us - we just thought how lucky we were, we didn’t have an air raid shelter, some people did have air raid shelters. There were air raid shelters in the town that people used to go to, but we never did. And I know my mother was on her bike one day, cycling home and she was actually fired at as one went over and she just threw her bike down and threw herself into the ditch. I think that was the occasion when they were trying to get to De Havilands… to bomb De Havilands.

Q: Did anyone you know lose their house or possessions or family?
A: No I don’t know anyone who did

Q: What did people do if they did lose their house?
A: To be honest Luke, I don't know, you know the…. I suppose the various authorities found them somewhere to live - but I really don't know what did happen to the people who lost their houses. I mean, I think in Welwyn, I think not more that one dozen houses in the whole war were actually bombed. So there were very, very few.

Q: Can you remember the attitude people took toward the blitz?
A: I think everyone was just very scared about, you know, what was going to happen. I think everyone, you know, I think everyone wondered were we going to… were the Germans going to win, were they going to be able to… but I don’t think anyone ever said it. They just kept it to themselves.

Q: Trying to keep Morale high.
A: Mmm.

Q: What did your mum and dad do to help during the blitz?
A: Well as I say dad was in the fire service and my mother - we used to fire watch at the block where dad had his office. Someone had to stay there at night - to make sure that there was no there were no bombs dropped - and if an incendiary bomb dropped they had to try and put it out before it sort of, before a fire burnt down the offices. People used to take it in turns to stay in the office overnight to make sure everything was OK - and the other thing I remember… rolling bandages I can remember doing that…. I can remember having bandages to roll and the other thing was counting bundles of catgut for sutures now I suddenly remember that. I had to count them into bundles of 100 or something.
That was all done for the red cross - but I don't know if Mummy did anything else I can't honestly say I can remember… everyone had an allotment. Oh yes. There was the pig club. That was the other thing, people owned - people got together, they owned a certain number of pigs, so you collected your potato peelings and anything that was left over and it was called swill - and this swill was collected into a bin and the pigs got this to eat. And then once a year, or maybe more, I can't remember the pigs used to be slaughtered… butchered and everyone belonging to the pig club would get bacon and ham. And we kept chickens that was the other thing.

Q: Did you get eggs and things like that?
A: We had our own eggs up. And we used to you know - dad used to wring their necks and we had chicken to eat as well. Which had gone past their laying stage and poor things would get their necks wrung and we would have them for dinner.

Q: Why were things rationed?
A: Because a lot of the food had to come from abroad and the convoys of Merchant Navy ships that brought it were very badly, you know, the Germans tried to destroy them, and managed to destroy a lot of them with the U-boats and so obviously it was important to produce as much food as possible in the country and so there wasn't, there wouldn't have been enough to go around it would have been people with money would have been able to afford it but people without wouldn't have been so it was decided that it should be rationed so everyone got a fair share. And that everybody therefore had a reasonable diet

Q: What foods were plentiful?
A: Well anything you could grow yourself obviously and a lot of people did grow food, things like apples and plums and things like that that were grown in this country you could always get those. Tomatoes were quite scarce but every now and again when tomatoes ripened, because we didn’t have greenhouses, so when the summer came and suddenly there would be a great glut of tomatoes in the markets and things like that. But no food was really that plentiful. There were no oranges or stuff like that.

Q: What foods were rationed?
A: Meat, butter, eggs.

Q: Was tea rationed?
A: Yes it was I remember we used to get little tins of a special sot of salt I can’t remember what it was called now you took a tiny teaspoon of this and added it to your teapot so you didn’t need to use so much tea.

Q: And how did rationing affect your diet?
A: Ha, Ha, Ha, it was probably better in some ways, I mean I can never ever remember going short of food, I’m sure people probably did but I can certainly nerver remember it.

Q: What other things except for food were rationed?
A: Clothes and that was, they were really, rationed the number of clothing coupons you got were very few, most people sort of handed down from one person in the family and so on and there used to have a lot of second hand shops where you could swap clothes and things like that a lot of swapping went on and so forth and if you had relatives in the forces often they would let you have their clothing coupons because they had uniforms so they didn’t need clothing coupons, so yes, clothes were… you know… really difficult to get.
And furniture you couldn’t buy furniture, something called utility furniture which young couples getting married were allowed to have so much furniture of this utility stuff. It was very cheap, you know, not very good. And that lasted for years too, you know after the war.

Q: How was rationing organised?
A: Everybody had a ration book and everybody had an identify card, so that you had to produce your identify card in order to get a ration book and so when you bought your… when you went along to the shops to buy anything you took your ration book along with you and they would cut out these little bits of paper to show that you’d had your ration for the week and so on and so forth, and then there were points as well and you could use the points for things, other than…. you know….. tinned fruit and things like that, and jam and that sort of thing. And there were so many points you were allowed.

Q: Could you save up things for one week and you know get more things for next week?
A: Do you know Luke, you could with points… but I don’t know if you could. Certainly you could with clothing coupons but I don’t know if you could with other rations. I really don’t know about that, whether you could save then up, you know, for meat and things like that… I’m really not sure about that. Probably not, thinking about it, and if you kept chickens you weren’t allowed eggs, because you got something called balancer meal to feed the chickens with, instead of eggs. But, because I was away at boarding school, I wasn’t considered a chicken keeper so I was allowed a couple of eggs a week, something like that. And then there was dried egg which was foul, hated it, instead of… it came in tins and it was a yellow powder and you mixed it up with water to use it for cooking and it was dried egg really…. and you just added water to it and it was called reconstituting it. It was horrible - some people loved it and there was something else like that as well. Oh…. dried milk, that was the other thing, again it was just a powder. And you were asking if children did anything… they used to collect rose hips to make rose hip syrup because that was very rich in vitamin C and so children were supposed to drink rose hip syrup

Q: Did you get any extra food except your chickens?
A: Well we did, we, because we used to get food parcels sent from abroad, from time to time, from America with dried fruit, currants and raisins and things like that and jellies and odd things like that. They were sent to people who…. that belonged to….. I’m not sure…. I think Dad was a freemason and so the masons in America used to sent food parcels to people in England and so from time to time we use to get these parcels. Which was lovely. (Laughs)

Q: How did people cope with rationing?
A: Pretty well, I think, on the whole. Once you’ve got used to the fact that…. there used to be lots and lots of cookery hints. Some of the things that people made you’d turn your nose up now, you just made the most of it. People made pastry with liquid paraffin, and cakes with liquid paraffin and things like that and quite bizarre some of the things people made. And you couldn’t buy cream.. so you made mock cream out of evaporated milk and dried milk and things like that. You know if someone was having a party, you’d try to make something a little bit special. Like that… we were probably in a lot of ways, a lot fitter than people are today because you had to walk or you cycled, you know… no cars people went by bus or train or bicycle or walked.

Q: And were all foods that were rationed always available?
A: As far as I know, they were. But I really don’t know because it wasn’t really something I was involved with very much. The food appeared on the table as far as I was concerned.

Q: And what did you like least about rationing?
A: Not having sweets I suppose, and fruit… oranges and things like that, you know, you never saw. I think when fruit came back that was something very special. And my cousin brought me 2 bananas from Cairo because he’d been to Egypt on a special course and I had to share them with the whole school, I think we got 2 tiny slices each.

Q: What did you know about the black Market.
A: It was something people used to talk about and I’m sure it went on you know people buying up stuff. And selling it at very high figure to people. But it wasn’t something I really knew much about. And if you were caught you would be very severely punished - that much I do know.

Q: Were there any other ways of getting other things than the black market, petrol and stuff?
A: You couldn’t get petrol at all, you know, it was really something you just couldn’t get. People, you know, if you had been seen driving a car…. the only people who were allowed to drive a car were people in very important jobs. And apart from that, you know, I don’t think people did drive.

Q: Did your Dad get petrol for the fire engine?
A: Only he was not allowed to drive it except for that. Right at the beginning of the war you were allowed to drive, but after the first year there were no cars around. Occasionally you used to get cars with gas balloons on top. They used to drive cars with gas, using gas, but that was very, very rare that you would see that, but there was absolutely no petrol to be had at all.

Q: Right I’m going to ask you a few questions about the home Guard.
A: (Laughs) I don’t really know much about the home Guard. (Laughs)

Q: Do you know what the role was of the home Guard?
A: The idea was that, if we were invaded, they would be there… with whatever they had… to protect this little island of ours. So, you know, if they didn’t have guns they’d use forks and they kept an eye open for anything unusual that was going on, but they were very, sort of, you know…. a very haphazard lot, if Germany had invaded I don’t think they’d have been able to do much…. they would have tried, I’m sure. I don’t think they would have been able to do much.

Q: Who was in the Home Guard?
A: Who was in the Home Guard? People who were too old to be in the forces, and people who were too young to be in the forces, sort of the young 16 or 17 year olds and people who were not…….

Q: Unfit to fight?
A: Unfit to fight.. yeah… they were also in the Home Guard.

Q: Did you know anybody who was in the Home Guard?
A: Well one of my brothers was in the Home Guard. He used to ride a motorbike - he was what they called a dispatch rider.

A: What was the attitude to the Home Guard?
Q: You know, I think everybody just rather… sort of laughed at them, to be honest. You know it was sort of … and there were people like the air raid wardens as well who used to.. they would sort of make sure all of the blackouts were properly drawn so that, you know, no light showed out of windows and they would come and bang on your door and say your lights are shining, and such like and they also….

Q: Put out that cigarette.
A: Yes if there was…. or if you had a torch or something like that, they’d come and tell you off. And if there was a incendiary bombs, or something like that, they had stirrup pumps… they use to put out the fires and such like. But as far as the Home guard was concerned - it was a bit of a joke really.

Q: Do you think they had an important role?
A: I think…Yeah to a certain extent… I think they did at the beginning of the war when people… it was sort of a morale booster in a way I think You felt that, you know, people were actually doing something.

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