大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Site by Lisa Barker on behalf of Mary Barker, with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was living away from my home in Ireland, and was in London when the war broke out. I remember that September afternoon in 1939 when Neville Chamberlain announced that war had been declared on Germany. When they tested the air-raid sirens later that day to see if they were working, we thought that the Germans were about to bomb us straight away. We were only sixteen at the time, and were very frightened. Two of my friends and me packed our bags immediately. We hurried down to Euston Station, and caught the train to Holyhead, where we got the boat back to Ireland. I remember it would often take a long time to do the crossing, as the boat had to manoeuvre around the mines. One time it took us eleven hours to get from Dublin to Holyhead, a crossing which should only have taken two or three hours at the time. I didn鈥檛 return until three years later.

In 1942, I returned to England, under a government scheme, which only cost us 7s/6d. We had to enter either the land army, the forces, munitions, or nursing. I chose nursing, and moved to Birmingham, arriving at New Street Station at 6 o' clock in the morning, where I was met by Annie, who was nursing at Dudley Road Hospital. There was no option of becoming a housemaid, shop assistant, or secretary. Instead, everybody had to do their bit for the war effort. Every piece of iron was utilised to aid production. Even the railings from outside people鈥檚 houses were used. I was eighteen when I began nursing. We had to do two years in dermatology, which covered any skin condition.

As we were living at the hospital, we had to hand in our ration books. When I moved out of the skin hospital and into digs, I had my own ration book, which came to 3s/4d, which is about 40p in today鈥檚 money. For this, we were entitled to two ounces of butter, two ounces of cheese, and some tea, bacon, jam, sugar and bread, which we called black bread, due its colour. We couldn鈥檛 have any bananas. They were reserved for pregnant women. Fruit was limited as it was largely imported, and sugar and sweets were rationed too. We also had clothing coupons.

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