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Typed by a UCN Community Volunteer, taken from "Semilong at War" (Workers’ Educational Association Project).

‘In August 1939, I was a Girl Guide, and I went to Belgium with the Guides, and stayed in an annexe of a hotel in Bruges. There were eighteen Guides and forty-eight Lancashire Scouts. I went with a Northampton accent, and came back talking like a ‘Geordie’. My mother wouldn’t believe I had been to Belgium.

We travelled into Holland and Germany. Arriving back home, I told my folks that only the Germans were preparing for war. They tipped our small cases on the road. I think they thought we were spies in Girl Guide uniforms. There was no sign whatsoever of any preparations in Holland, Belgium or France.

They day war broke out, I was helping with the evacuees at Queens Road Guides, and, goodness knows why, we all cheered when war was declared, not knowing what was to come.

The following are memories of those early days:
· The young lads joining up — the excitement of leaving home, new uniforms, the independence, the leaves, and enjoying each day as it came.
· The gas masks, the ration books, coupons bought and borrowed and sold.
· The dreadful egg powder. The queues — we as a nation, are great queuers. If there was a queue, join it! It could be sausages, bananas, or the toilet for all we cared.
· British Restaurants were opened for an unrationed meal — ugh!
· A little bit extra under the counter for regular customers.
· The Black Market was ‘in’, but only in a small way, and every body was ‘at it’.
· The Blackout.’

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