大象传媒

This story has been added to the People's War Website on by Helen Jubb on behalf of Mr and Mrs Stead with their permission.

My life in wartime was not at all glamorous. I was nineteen in 1939 when my fianc茅 got his calling. He applied for deferment and got 6 months to teach me to be a butcher, as he was self-employed. I had never worked in a shop and knew nothing about meat. I was twenty when we married, (April 4th 1940). The following February on my 21st birthday, he turned up. He had managed a weekend pass with volunteering to enter a boxing match. He was stationed in Sheffield at that time.

I had to cope with over 500 ration books and an allowance for a restaurant, which needed a twenty pound joint twice a week. That butcher鈥檚 basket was very heavy to carry from the shop onto a bus and then walk in Halifax to the restaurant. Not many women were driving then. As I was about 8st, 4lb, it was very hard lifting quarters of beef. We were then sent New Zealand lamb, frozen stuff wrapped in mutton cloth.

When the beef came in from South America, usually late, it was boneless like a big ball. I had to leave it all night with the electric fire on to thaw out, and then unwrap to cut it up. When I first started working in the shop, I had a pair of Clarkes shoes with hinged wooden soles. They were a godsend, kept my feet warm. When they disintegrated I wore dogs.

One night a customer of mine got an incendiary bomb though her roof which set the house on fire. On their way up to Scotland, they were put in a mill in Halifax opposite where I was living with my mother-in-law, but Roy could not have a sleeping out pass. They embarked to the Middle-East to get a train via Preston. There were blacked out stations, no porters, perhaps one woman. I stayed for 2 days with a Scottish family, but no sleeping out pass for Roy. They sailed from Glasgow around Africa to Egypt, about 300 men on board, had 2 days in Durban, then 3 years desert warfare. It was below freezing at night in the desert and over 90 degrees in the day. When it was over in North Africa they thought they were going to Italy, but their wagons went to Italy. They were stationed near Southampton where they waterproofed their wagons, then went across to France on D-Day and all survived. They got through and liberated Holland, were feeding the starving Dutch people. His Halifax mate eventually married an Eindhoven girl. Finished having got through to Berlin. In 1946 we had a reunion at Halifax barracks, many of them came and were friends until sadly they eventually died, the youngest went first. My husband, Roy died in 1993 of emphysema of which I know they all died. We sold the shop when he was 60, I am now 85.

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