大象传媒

I was 17 going on 18 and living in Chester when the war started and had just finished a secretarial course at college. I went to work at at Brookhurst Switchgear. It was a Sunday when Mum and Dad heard Chamberlain's broadcast and I remember them looking extremely worried as they had memories of the First World War. During the first weeks we busied ourselves making curtains for the blackout. My two elder sisters joined the ARP and my two brothers were still at school. I joined the Red Cross as a VAD, so we had one night a week of lectures and then I was able to work in the local infirmary on a Sunday. It was really hard work compared to today, we had to actually wash the bandages and deal with bedpans.
We had no bombing in Chester but the planes went over for the bombing of Liverpool and once they offloaded a landmine on their way back to Germany. Very noisy but luckily no damage.
We did various fund raising activities for the Red Cross, one of which wqas an auction at the local cinema, where someone paid 10 shillings for a banana. I had to take it to him and I was very jealous as I could easily have eaten it myself.
New clothes were a rare treat and were were always altering and adapting our existing wardrobe. We had to sew everything by hand and my sisters used to laugh at the state of my room which was full of things having been hacked to pieces in readiness for some wonderful new creation. Our local chemist used to make up tinted calomine lotion which doubled as liquid stockings and face make-up.
Chester was a garrison town and full of troops. There were dances all over town and we girls had a wonderful social life. We also had an army doctor and a captain in the engineers billeted with us. We didn't have to share our rations with them they just lodged with us.
My mother had a hard time feeding a family of seven on the rations allowed. We grew all our own vegetables and my mother used to bottle fruit, salt beans and preserve eggs in glass water.
After Dunkirk we had a lot of wounded in the infirmary and we also had a hostel just around the corner where the families of the wounded could stay when visiting them. We used to go and serve them meals and put a hot water bottle in their bed.
We were lucky as a family as we lost no one close and survived relatively unscathed.

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