大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mrs Florence Wright and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Florence Wright fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

This was 3rd September 1939. I always remember that date very clearly because it is the birthday of my brother-in-law 鈥� not quite as significant event as the war being declared. Now we were at war with Germany.

I was seven years old when war begun. I clearly remember a man calling round to tell the people about 鈥榖lack out鈥� their houses. This made it very difficult for the enemy to see when they came over in their planes to bomb important places.

Three weeks earlier we had electricity installed. Gone were the old gas mantles jutting out of the walls. No matches needed. Just flick on a switch and there was a big glowing light coming forth from a little round bulb. Sheer magic! It did seem disappointing having to block all the windows up to stop light escaping outside. It would have been nice to have been able to leave the curtains wide open and let the neighbours see we had gone all modern. There would be no end to it all 鈥� electric iron, instead of the old spit-on-it flat iron (spitting was necessary to check that the iron was hot enough to use), then there would be an electric washing machine instead of the old dolly pegs, then the electric carpet sweeper. I remember Aunt Emily using the electric iron for the first time. She was petrified in case it electrocuted her. We kids dare not laugh but she was looking rather comical wearing rubber gloves and Wellingtons! Fortunately she came through the 鈥榦rdeal鈥� quite well.

My dad and Uncle George were in First World War. Dad was badly injured and was in and out of hospital for many years. My two sisters and my brother and I came to live with Uncle George and Aunt Emily because my dad needed a lot of care. Everybody reckoned that the First World War was the war to end ALL wars but within twenty years War reared its ugly head once again.

Uncle George was a wise old owl. When Mr Chamberlain (England鈥檚 then Prime Minister) went to have meetings with Herr Hitler in Germany, Uncle said he was a stupid man. He told Hitler all about our battle strengths and weaknesses and sure enough war was declared. Hitler would be smiling to himself. Can鈥檛 tell you what uncle said about Chamberlain鈥檚 umbrella 鈥� but, wherever he was supposed to have put it, uncle said somebody ought to have opened it up when it got there!! Thank the Lord Winston Churchill took the helm and managed to bring us through it all.

FUNERALS: Nobody spent a fortune on wreaths or the like. One neighbour would pop in with a cup of sugar, another would take a quarter if tea, or a few eggs and if you had a home cured ham you would cut a lump off and give that. Some would take round a tin of dried milk. It was so difficult during the war as every bit of food was rationed; an ounce of this, two ounces of that. We all had a silly little ration book with lots of pages in, divided into squares, each page lettered A, B, C and so on and the little squares numbered which represented weeks. The shopkeepers used to keep a little pair of scissors hung on a long string and every time you bought your allotted amount of sugar or butter, etc, along came the scissors and snipped out the appropriate coupon square.

My uncle kept pigs. Whenever the gilt had a litter they were always miscounted. One had to be 鈥榠nvisible鈥�. Every pig had to be registered with Ministry, so one little pig was spirited away until the inspector had done a head count. There was always a willing helper to hide the piglet for an hour or two in exchange for a nice big lump of pork.

The local butcher would willingly kill the 鈥榠nvisible鈥� one for you for part of the pig. No money changed hands in the deal. For a while everybody ate well but for every pig killed two books of meat rations were surrendered for six months. When leaner times came around you would get up one morning and find a couple of rabbits hung on the back door. Nobody mentioned it but a shilling was placed on the kitchen window that night and the following morning it was gone.

We also had a few chickens. We kids would take a turn in feeding them and gave them all a name. I remember the first one being killed to eat. My brother sat at the table blubbering his eyes out. He wouldn鈥檛 eat a thing and called everybody else a load of ruddy cannibals! We had a few eggs from the chickens that were left but we also had an allocation of dried eggs. They came in a tin in the powdered form. If there was a drop of milk to spare this egg powder was mixed to a paste and fried. The nearest likeness when cooked was boot leather. Baking became a nightmare. There was egg-like fruitcakes that contained chopped up prunes, if you could get them, and there was never enough butter or lard to put in a cake, but again those that had a pig could spare a bit of rendered down lard for their cake.

When meat was in short supply again the mid-week dinners consisted of onions and potatoes 鈥� home grown of course 鈥� quite palatable and filling. One day my cousin called to our house and Aunt Emily gave him a bunch of onions. He took them on the bus but the police flagged the driver to stop, found the onions in the luggage hold and asked who owned them. Well unbeknown to cousin Sydney there had been a spate of vegetable stealing in the villages around and in all innocence he owned up. Two policemen pulled him off the bus and locked him up until the next morning. They would not listen to his alibi. We didn鈥檛 know where he was and his wife said he hadn鈥檛 arrived home so everybody was worried. The next morning they listened to his story, still not believing him, but they contacted our local bobby and he cycled down to our house to check on what he had told the others. Aunt Emily told him she had given him the onions, but he swore there was more onions in the bunch the previous night 鈥� as he said; 鈥淐an you really trust a copper?鈥�

We had coupons for sweets. There were half a dozen sweet shops but we never knew which one was going to have a supply in until the last minute. Everybody would gallop down the street to try and get some, but many a time there was not enough to go round. My favourites were Five Boys chocolate bars and Starry Ways, they were like poor mans Mars Bar, without the toffee on top, similar to Milky Way bars. My next best favourite was a halfpenny Kalii-Bunker. One of them would make a whopping big jug of lemonade.

The war dragged on but I didn鈥檛 grow fast enough. I wanted to be a landgirl, work on a farm and wear trousers. Aunt Emily wouldn鈥檛 allow us girls to wear them, apparently they were not ladylike.

None of us were old enough to go into the forces or work on munitions as the grown-ups had to do. We still tried to do our 鈥榖it鈥� for the war effort. Aunt Emily had a string of letters behind her name for all types of dancing and she had produced many shows and pantomimes before she took us all in and cared for us.

Now once again she rushed in on full throttle producing and presenting concerts to raise money for the Forces Comforts Funds and we didn鈥檛 escape either. Whilst our schoolmates were out having fun, we stayed at home to practice dance routines. Uncle Will bought lots of marionettes and had to operate them. Manipulating dolls on strings was no easy task. We stood holding the dolls up straight until our arms were nearly dropping off and we hadn鈥檛 finished there. My brother played the cornet, my eldest sister played the trumpet, my other sister played the banjolele and I played the accordion. In those days we didn鈥檛 own a car and the village hall was a mile away. It wasn鈥檛 so bad walking that mile carrying a trumpet or banjolele but, I swear my arms grew two inches every time I carted the 120-bass accordion up the village. We gave concerts all over the district and raised quite a lot of money. Aunt Emily never took a penny out of it. She worked her socks off sewing all the costumes for the shows. We even gave a show at a munitions factory. Every day the radio used to have a lunchtime slot called Worker鈥檚 Playtime and we did one of them. We all enjoyed doing the shows and were always pleased to take the final curtain to loud applause. The audience had to clap loudly. Uncle Will had instructed the caretaker to lock the doors just before the closing chorus of 鈥淲e Must All Pull Together鈥� 鈥� and he hadn鈥檛 to let 鈥榚m out until they did AND then stood to attention whilst singing God Save the King!

While we were all busy doing our little deeds old Hitler kept sending the Bombers over to destroy our towns. Children kept arriving, all ages, with their sad little paper parcels and gas masks. Local people searched their sad little faces in hope of finding a child that might match their lifestyle. Our household numbered eight so we did not have any spare room but, our next door neighbour took in two brothers from Birmingham and cared for them as their own. We all became firm friends. I had another friend called Hazel. Hazel came from Leeds. She was a grand pal but she would keep wiping her nose on her sleeve and bite the ends of her gloves off. She couldn鈥檛 pronounce Florrie, so she always called me Frolly. Alas she went back. When I was married my husband took me to visit his friends Lillian and Bert. We talked about the evacuees arriving. Apparently they took two little lads in from London and before they left home their Mother had 鈥榮titched them up鈥� for the Winter. Lillian wanted to bath them but fought like little tigers when she tried to undress them. According to them this stitching up was done every Winter and they stayed like that until Springtime. Lord knows what they must smelled like by 鈥榦pening up time鈥�.

My Uncle George was told to accompany George Gilbert (a neighbour) for fire-watch duties. Every time the sirens wailed the two Georges went out on duty. George Gilbert went home as soon as the all-clear sounded but, we invariably had to go in search of Uncle George. He was, a rule, propped up against the gas works wall, snoring his head off. If a bomb had dropped on the gas-o-meter about 20 yards away he would have wakened with a heck of a bang.

Throughout the war, we all tightened our belts, gave all our iron railings to help make guns, or whatever, or knitted socks for soldiers. We knitted vests for ourselves. Aunt Emily unravelled every woolley she could lay her hands on, washed it to straighten it, oh boy we had the brightest striped vests one ever set eyes upon. When we took off our jumpers to do P.E. the rest of the kids in school had near hysterics. If they鈥檇 have seen what was under them they would have burst with laughter. Aunt Emily insisted we wore a piece of red flannel nest to our chest with a layer of goose grease and a little camphor bag suspended round the neck (a mothball flat-ironed).

My aunt did most of the knitting. When the sirens sounded we would be kept safely under the sturdy kitchen table, with our gas masks. Aunt would sit in the corner of the room, knitting. The louder the bombs sounded, or the German planes 鈥榟onked鈥� overhead, the harder the old needles rattled away. Nobody spoke, the atmosphere was too tense. We all kept singing patriotic songs and every night we sat around the fireside saying a prayer for all family members and the soldiers, sailors and airmen, then came the ritual of supping a large spoon of cod liver oil and a lump of black spinach/Spanish, but there was trouble if we slavered on the pillowcase.

Eventually the war ended. Victory was supposedly our. Not really when you think about it all. Mothers lost their sons or daughters, young wives became widows and children lost their fathers. Where is the glory in that? I don鈥檛 see it is so.

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