大象传媒

This story has been contributed by Val Potter of Age Concern, Hellifield. It was originally contributed to Age Concern in 1990.
Mabel Newbould got married in August 1939. On the day that war was declared she was out at the butcher's van and he told her the news. The family had no radio. They lived on a small hilltop farm. One day in May, a really hot day, after dinner, there was a knock on the door and it was an old man who was one of the home guard. He was shivering with fright. He held a gun to her tummy and shivering with fright said, stuttering, "Have you seen any German parachutists?"
"No!" She replied. "You're the first person that I have seen today." He went away and she heard no more for a long time until one day she asked if they had caught a parachutist. They replied "It was a cyclist and he had changed his clothes behind the wall."
Everyone was scared of invasion every night and, almost every night at 11.15 pm German bombers came over. They were so on time that she used to put her clock right by them.
Next morning they would find out where the bombs had landed. Usually the ones which had come overhead had landed on Manchester or Liverpool. The Battle of Britain was mainly for the South. One night they dropped 150 - 200 fire bombs on a field in front of a house. Everyone got under the kitchen table including the baby except for the husband who went out and got the sheep together. She was more worried about him than the bombs.
They lived about one and a half miles up the lane after the sharp corner at Cracoe, the lane leading to Throupe.
At the end of the lane was a camp of soldiers who were aged between 18 and 19. Every time they went up and down the lane they were stopped by the soldiers who demanded "Friend or foe?"
They christened the baby at a chapel and had a party afterwards. The party went on so long that they missed the bus and had to walk. One of the soldiers put his bayonet on the baby and demanded "Friend or foe?" They were terrified and said as quickly as they could "Friend". They got home at 11.30 pm.
They had a coal fire and as coal was rationed she would collect wood chips from trees about to be cut down. The first step in cutting a tree down in those days was to cut a tiny triangle out of the tree before sawing it and it was this wood that she collected. They were then the next best to coal that you could get.
The children never had ice-cream, sweets, bananas or oranges. The rations sent were only enough for the village and her eldest son who is 52 has never eaten a banana or had any ice-cream. He has not had an orange either, ever.
Mabel believes that if children today did not get so many sweets and ice-cream they too would never develop a taste for them.

The worst thing about working on a farm on those days was the double summer time. They did not have machinery and it was all hand work. Even though the cows had to be milked before the milk wagon came at 8.45 am which meant getting up at 6.00 am they did not get to bed until the early hours of the morning and they would be working in the hay field until 2.00 am.
They had 2 children and a baby at this point and she had to wrap them up and lay them under a big haystack.
She dreads it when they talk about double summer time now as it was such hard work and it upset the cows etc. They still had to be milked at 6.00 am.
During the war you had to fill in a form if you wanted petrol to say what you wanted it for as it was rationed. Her husband said when she did fill it in that she should put "For general farm purposes" The neighbours put a lot down such as auction mart and church which was 6 miles away and they got less petrol so Mabel's family used to help them out.
The Newboulds had Italian Prisoners of War who came from the area of Skipton where the caravan park is now, where huts used to be with hens in them. They came to work for the villagers. Mabel's family first had Mario from Northern Italy. He was tall. The others were short. One of her sisters worked at the ATS and was pretty and Mario made eyes at her. His grandmother worked on his farm in Italy and he said that he needed a wife for work when he returned home and so made eyes at Mabel's sister.
Mario was always demanding money and wanted it so he could go abroad. He wanted to go to South America to see his brother and they became so bored of his demands for money that they sent him back to the camp.
They had two Sicilians who were very little and had had smallpox, this had left them with ruts in their skin. Mabel says that they were two of the ugliest men that she has ever seen! They came each day but simply lay on their backs in the hay field and refused to work. They sang beautifully. Her husband got furious when they said to him that in Sicily the men did not work and that Mabel should do it all, pointing at her!
One day they came into the house and fetched a picture of Mussolini out and showed it to her and asked "You know him?" They said this of course with a foreign accent. She said something rude about Mussolini and they came for her with knives and their eyes sparkling with murderous intent. She screamed at the top of her voice, her husband in the yard heard and he came in. He took them straight back to the camp and they said "We expected these two back"
The following week one of them knifed someone and had to go to prison.

The Newboulds battled with rations and no petrol as everyone did in those days. The people today, in Mabel's opinion, don't know what rations were like.
There were quite a lot of fruit trees on the farm and Mabel used to sterilise them with a tablet and put them in kilner jars and store them. From these she would make a pie a week as sugar was rationed and she could not make more pies.
Later on in the War you could have sugar instead of sweets.
As they lived 22 - 24 miles from Skipton she would walk 6 miles to the bus and sleep at her mother's house in Carlton and come back the next day. The bus left at 8.15 am so she had to leave home at 6.30 in the morning.
The car was off the road and they had to wait 6 months for new tyres. There was a dance at Kettlewell so they went in their neighbour's car which was like a gangster's car! They gave him their petrol and they went to the dance all packed in and sitting on each other's knees. When they got to Kettlewell there was a policeman waiting for them and he said "Chief Police Officer is coming to the dance to check on the petrol and make sure people are not using it for their own pleasure". The policeman went on "Put it behind so and so's barn and then the officer will not know. You have got to have a bit of fun sometimes!" Dances were few and far between in war time.
When they had a baby the nurse came on a bike or in a horse and trap.

Two of Mabel's sisters were in the ATS and one on radar. They could tell a lot.

The Newboulds lost their cousin Willy on a ship in the North Sea when German bombers came over. One of the heavy doors on the ship came open and knocked him on the head. The nearest hospital was Glasgow and he was there all through the Glasgow bombings with his mother. His mother sat there by his bed thoughout the bombings. All the family contributed to her stay in a hotel in order that she could stay there by his bed. He died on his 25th birthday.
The sister on Radar on the Clyde was guarding the American submarines and one night they got on a train and the next day they were on the coast of Cornwall guarding the invasion boats and the soldiers ready to go. They said everyone seemed to know that there was something sad about the atmosphere.
The other sister, Edith, who had been a girl guide was stationed at Harrogate where she had to work at Menwith Hill doing top secret work in Morse. She had to sign a secrecy paper when she left and so to this day will not say exactly what she did.
The brother was 15 years younger and therefore too young to work.

The mother worked at Hellifield in the Railway stores.
When they lived in the Dales they saved their rations and had a really special evening ever so often called a "nap" evening. The men played the card game NAP and the women were in the kitchen all day.

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