大象传媒

FOOD RATIONING

Winifred Barber

As far as the food was concerned, of course the rations were very small 鈥� 2ozs of butter each and a quarter of a pound of sugar and the tea was about one ounce. The meat was about 1s/2d worth, so you couldn鈥檛 have meat every day. Now sausages weren鈥檛 on ration, but you had to be at the shop as soon as it opened. Then you could get 1lb of sausages. Of course there was a lot of bread in the sausages and not a lot of meat.

We had special card, a white one and every month you could have something special with that card. The shelves at one end of the shop were full of these 鈥榮pecials鈥� and you could only have one thing. There would be things like tomato ketchup, daddies sauce, tin of treacle and all things like that. So if you had custard powder that month you couldn鈥檛 have any sauce of any kind. At Christmas in 1941, the factories were working really hard and getting on top of everything. They were building the planes, tanks and everything. The women had all gone back to work, and my sister who worked in the factory making landmines told me that when they first put on 鈥榤usic while you work鈥� how the production went up. People were working to the music and working quicker. It was a very good idea of the government to put music into the factories.

The factory where my husband worked, they were all working full tilt as well and he came home one day just before Christmas, and told me a notice had gone up in the factory to say that due to the pressure of work, they were all only going to have one days holiday for the Christmas period, so we couldn鈥檛 go home to my parents.
We had a little car and were only allowed 4 gallons of petrol a month which we used to save in order to go home to my Parents, but we knew we couldn鈥檛 make it in one day, so we decided to make a Christmas in our own home.

I decided to go to the shop to see if I could order a chicken, and the butcher laughed at me, saying that every bit of poultry he was likely to get had been ordered a month ago. I went home and I told husband, and said I would try to buy some belly pork belly draft and would buy it big enough to last for two days. I was going to make some white sauce and put plenty of sage in it.

The day before Christmas Eve a neighbour knocked on my door, she knew we were going to have to stay in our own home and she asked me if I would like a duck to cook for our Christmas dinner, which she had managed to get from a farmer friend of hers. I was so grateful. Christmas day came and I cooked it and my husband said it was delicious.

In 1942 just before I left South Wales, and my neighbour was coming in to have a cup of coffee one morning and she sat down and she was smiling. She said she had brought me a gift and she had brought me two onions. I couldn鈥檛 believe it, because I hadn鈥檛 seen an onion for two years. Apparently one of the farmers at the British Legion had managed to get just a few onion seeds and had brought her four of the onions he had grown, and she had given me two of them. I put one in a box with cotton wool and I sent it to my sister in Birmingham, she was so grateful and excited, and she took it to work to show everyone in the factory what she had got. What joy from just one onion!鈥�

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Winifred Barber (author) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

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