大象传媒

I have written my autobiography covering my childhood and below I have chosen some extracts covering the period on WW2.
I was four years old when a man named Adolph Hitler decided to wreak havoc in the world.
Of course I do not remember the announcement made by Neville Chamberlain and the first memories I have are of my parents sadness at having to part. When I asked my mother where my father was going she replied "daddy is going to work for the King". It made me feel very important but I was not to know the significance of this until I was older and the war had dragged on.
At the time I was living with my parents and my sister (who is two years younger than myself) in a street in the Redfield area of Bristol. Our street was called Orchard Square. Sounds good, but there was not a tree to be seen. 'The Square' as it was affectionately called consisted of 17 terraced houses set in a square. They were all two up two down with a lavatory at the end of the yard and a tin bath on the wall. Each house led directly onto the pavement.
At this time as I have said Adolph Hitler was causing havoc.We would shortly be going through a period which would affect all of our lives to some extent. However I was not aware of this. I was a small child setting out on my first adventure. That of starting school.
I was to remain at my primary school for only a short while as it was decided by my mother and grandparents that my sister and I would be safer away from the impending air raids and bombing. We were not evacuated in the sense that we stood on a railway station with our gas masks and nname tags. No indeed. We were taken to a little town called Mountain Ash, in Wales. We were to stay with some of my mother's relatives.
Now I don't know why we were removed from them but we were sent to live with an elderly couple. I will gloss over this period in my young life as we were not looked after terribly well, so much so that when my mother visited she decided to take us back to Bristol to face the bombs with her.
And so we came back to 'the square' and I resuumed my schooling as before.
My memories of the air raids and the bombing become clearer as I grew older. I remember one night in particular when my mother, who was rather hard of hearing, slept throught the warning siren. We awoke to the sound of bombs falling and my mother hastily got us up dressing me and wrapping a blanket around my sister. We ran along the road to our nearest shelter which was a brick construction surrounded by a ditch. In her haste my mother fell down the ditch dropping my sister. Fortunately we only suffered a few bruises.
Another ocassion I remember Mum decided to use the andersion shelter which we had in the back garden. Most houses had these shelters which were underground and very damp and earthy smelling. Anyway mum decided to make it as comfortable as possible adding blankets and candles. So much so that we fell asleep and slept through the all clear siren. Mum awoke to the sound of what she thought was the all clear but was in fact another warning siren. She took my sister and I up and made her way to our local buther thinking all was clear. She was soon made to realise her mistake.
I have many memories of our nights in the communal shelters. We would have air raid wardens pop in from time to time to reassure us. One night in particular one of these wardens came in informing us "it looks like Castle Street's gettin' it t'night" This was in fact true and the following morning our shopping centre in the centre of Bristol was flattened. It was to remain this way for a long time.We had The Bristol Aircraft Corporation quite close to us and this building was targeted night after night. On one of these nights we had an incendiary bomb drop into our lavatory, at the end of the garden,. Luuckily it did not explode and was soon detonated. We had to use our neighbour's 'lav' for a few days.
I well remember those nights in the shelters. We children would try to sleep , but when the bombing was very bad we would huddle close to our mothers who would try to reassure us although they must have been very scared themselves.
There were seventeen of us children living in the 'square' all much the same age. We felt that we were one big family and although we had our arguments they didn't last long. We were always there for each other and tried our best to have a good childhood despite the hard times.
I remember when I was older I would run 'clubs'. I would provide each of my playmates with a small card and each week a penny each was paid and duly entered on the card. We would also put on a concert when we would audition and the best performers picked to sing or dance. The 'concert' was held in our back bedroom which was empty as my sister and I shared a bedroom with our mother. Of course an admittamnce charge of one penny was charged to see the show and when we had enough funds from these events we would have a tea party or use it as bus fair to take us on local trips to the Bristol Museam or the Bristol Zoo.
We would spend hours playing in the street. Hopscotch, marbles, skipping, Queenie Ball, rounders to name but a few games.
In the school holidays we would scour the paper to find out which of our local cinemas were showing a double U programme. Our favourites were Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour and my special favourite Rita Hayworth. I was going to grow up to look just like her. Sadly this was far from the case.
One humorous event comes back to me. We had a fish and chip shop at the bottomg of the 'square'. It was run by a little old lady and she had four very attractive Irish girls living with her. Now we had an American servicemens station near us and of course the girls had their share of visiting servicemen. We loved to see the jeep arrive at the door of the fish shop. Tnese 'yanks' as they were affectionately known always carried the odd chocolate bar or stick of chewing gum and were very generous towards us children. Remember sweets were rationed at the time and in very short supply. One nigh the jeep duly arrived and was parked outside of the fish shop. The driver however had left the ignition keys in the dashboard. We had a young lad who was rather a mischievous lad and always ready for a joke. The temptation was too great for him and he climbed into the jeep and started the engine. Then proceeded to drive the jeep around the 'square' much to the amazememnt of the rest of us. There were soon a few grownups on the scene and the young American was alerted to the situation. He took the prank in good fun and our young playmate was heralded a hero by the rest of us.
During the winter months mum, my sister and I would sit around the fire making rag rugs. Mum would cut strips of material and draw A design on a pice of sacking. We would be given one design each to works on and a clothes peg in which to push the strips into the sacking. This resulted in very sore fingers put oh the pride we felt when the rug was finished and put on the floor in front of the fire.
Food at the time was in short supply and was strictly rationed.We were allowed a weekly ration of 6 oz of bacon or ham, 8 oz of sugar, 2 oz of butter, 8 oz of cooking fat2 oz of tea, 1 oz of cheese and 2 oz of jam. I myself would only have butter on my bread. I hated margarine and my mother solved this problem by cutting off my share of butter and placing it to one side for my consumption. When this was gone I ate no more bread until the ration was due again.
My mother would buy eating apples in the autumn and wrap in newspaper, placing them in a dark drawer. They were brought out again at Christmas and devoured over the festive period.
We children seemed to spend our lives queueing for such things as oranges when available. Potatoes and even Walls icecream. I remember the smell of a new tin of chocolate biscuits being opened by Mrs Vincent who kept a small grocery shop near us. She was a very fair lady and allocated a half pound only to each purchaser.
I often recall those days when I walk around our local supermarket asnd see the amount of food on display.
Food was not the only thing in short supply. Coal was also very short and we would have the odd delivery brought around by our coalman. He would walk through our passage with a sack of coal on his back. Dirty footprints were trod through but my mother was too pleased to get the delivery to bother about this. Our coal cupboard was under the stairs with the door leading off of the living room. Our coalman would throw the coal into the cupboard spreading coal dust into the room. This did not bother my mother.
When coal was very short we children would have to pay a visit to the local coke house. This would mean getting up at around 6 oclock in the morning and taking bikes or carts and walking a mile to the coke house where we would queue until the heavy gates were opend to reveal the pile of coke. We would watch in trepidation as the coke was shovelled up to the next in the queue fearing that the pile would be gone before it got to our turn. Imagine the euphoria when we eventually had a bag of this precious commoditiy hoisted onto our bike or cart. We would walk back home in much higher spirits and the camaraderie between us was worth all the effort involved.
My father was called into the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry and was in the front line from the start. He had his life given him after being blown up on a beach in Italy. The men on either side of him were killed. He was badly wounded but survived but was unfit to go back into the fighting line. He was put into an office and did desk works for the remainder of the war. I remember with pride the typewritten letters he would send me showing how well he was learning to type. He would also send my sister and I little gifts at times and oh how we treasured these.
Thankfully my own father was able to come home to us at the end of the war.
And so we lived out the war years in our 'square' until that glorious day when victory was announced. I remember seeing our rather severe maiden teachers linking arms and dancing in the playground. We children were allowed to follow a band around the streets singing and dancing. Then there was the street party. Our street was cordonned off and trestle tables erected down the middle. Bunting was put up and a piano brought out. We sang and danced into the early hours. I found a picture of this whilst going through my mothers papers. It brought the tears to my eyes to see all those young faces again
A few weeks later my father arrived home unexpectedly and I will never ever forget the joy we felt together with a little shyness. It had been four years since we last saw him.
As I write this, Remembrence day has come around again and I like tens of thousands of others stood silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. I was of course remembering all those brave men and women who gave their lives for our freedeom but I was also remembering the children who would have been my age at the time of WW2. Those killed in the raids, those orphaned or whose fathers did not return. I also remembered the little ones who died in Hitler's concerntraion camps. The innocent ones.
I feel privelidged to have lived through the war years hard as they were, and I feel indebted to those adults who worked so hard to make our childhood as happy as it was.
Shirley Cook

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