大象传媒

DISCLAIMER:
This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Phil Sealey of the Somerset County Museum Team on behalf of Margaret [Peggy] Walker and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

"I left school in 1940, unable to get funding for a scholarship to a college in Bath. Somerset County Council agreed to part-fund me, but were in crisis because the evacuee programme needed all the money they could put into it. My headmistress pleaded, but was told there was a war on! I got a job as a companion to an old lady at Tarrant Keynston in Dorset. When I got there, I found her in a wheelchair, but she had a daughter at home and a second husband. I soon found companion meant skivvy. I was expected to work from dawn till dusk. The daughter ran the Post Office and was nice to me. In fact she puzzled me by begging me to go home before it was too late. During the month I was there, I went to Blandford on my day off. I had to walk there and back and was caught in an air attack with German planes machine-gunning pedestrians. Luckily I was unhurt.
I awoke one night to find my employer standing beside my bed in his nightshirt with a candle in his hand. When I cried out, the daughter came and took him away and I went home next day!
After this I got a job as a cashier and ledger clerk in a high-class grocery, wines and spirits shop. I worked there for two years, but hated figures and yearned for more education. During my employment there, all staff were expected to take part in a fire watching roster. Three of us at a time spent the night on the premises and if the air raid siren sounded, we had to patrol the block the shop stood in. We had to look for incendiary bombs in particular, but the biggest hazard we faced was American soldiers who by now were posted in the town!
My elder brother briefly joined the Observer Corps until in April 1943 he was called up into the RAF, having been in the Air Training Corps since its inception. He was accepted to train as aircrew. Later that summer he had rheumatic fever very badly. He was sent home on sick leave and an army doctor came to visit him. He was taken to hospital in Taunton where later my mother and I visited him. We found him at East Reach hospital, in Portman ward. It took us half a day to reach Taunton by steam train, which was the norm then, and half a day to return to the Mendips. Eventually after convalescence at Wiveliscombe, my brother returned to service, but he was permanently grounded. I dare say the illness saved his life, as aircrew had a high death rate. Virtually all the men who were training with him lost their lives.
Local men all over the country joined the Home Guard - a veritable Dad鈥檚 Army. Concrete bunkers seemed to sprout up on beaches and cliff tops along the coast to deter the enemy should there be an invasion.
One evening I went to visit a friend in the town and there was an air raid warning. Soon after the siren sounded, it was rumoured that my village had been bombed. We had heard the loud explosions. I wanted to cycle home as fast as possible, but my friend鈥檚 parents wouldn鈥檛 let me leave until the All Clear! It transpired that bombs had been jettisoned by a German plane, which was under attack by the RAF. Luckily the bombs had fallen in a field on the edge of the village. Next day the entire village trekked off to look at the damage. The craters were immense, very thought provoking. We always knew when the planes overhead was the enemy, by the heavy, throbbing sound of the engines. RAF plane sounds were quite different.
Each person in the country had to be issued with coupons, which had to be surrendered for all clothes or lengths of material, and all had the utility mark stamped on them, as did all furniture and furnishings. This was a great leveller as the mark guaranteed a good, but not luxurious, quality. Knitting wool was also on coupons. Even embroidery material had to be bought on coupons as well as cash. Everyone had to obey the wartime slogan, 鈥淢ake do and mend鈥�. Therefore dresses would be cut down to make children鈥檚 clothes, or a skirt, or a blouse, and when that was discarded the material became cushion covers, often in the form of patchwork, and finally dusters.
House and garden railings were taken away to be melted down to help the war effort. Home owners never replaced many. To boost arms production, towns and villages collected money by holding designated weeks. It was during my town鈥檚 Warship Week that I won 10 shillings for guessing how many beans in a jar. That was a large sum in the 1940s, though only worth 50p now. Air control towers were built on village playing fields; many had radar installed after that was invented.
Some other wartime slogans were 鈥淚s your journey really necessary?鈥� 鈥淏e like Dad, keep Mum鈥�, 鈥淐areless talk costs lives鈥�, and 鈥淒ig for victory鈥�, as lawns all over the country were dug up to be planted with vegetables, which certainly made diets more palatable. Being country dwellers, we had always done that anyway. It was a great innovation when the farm next door hired a Land Girl. These young women came from many and varied backgrounds and were dressed in khaki breeches, shirts and hats and brown shoes. The one near us was called Olive, and she became part of the village life and blended in well. In fact she soon occupied her own cottage and stayed on after the war.
Books became difficult to get, and the local bookshop run by three elderly sisters soon ran out of volumes and had to rely on stationery sales and small printing jobs. My mother cajoled a precious volume for me from their secret store for each birthday and Christmas as long as possible, the most precious to me being a beautifully produced book of Longfellow鈥檚 poetry. I particularly loved Hiawatha, and still treasure that Christmas gift of sixty-one years ago.
When I was called up for war work, I chose nursing but was told I was too young, so was drafted into a residential nursery instead. I was sent to Halsway Manor near Crowcombe, as a wing of the house had been requisitioned and the nursery installed there. I had no coupons for a dressing gown, so a skilled friend made me one of blackout material trimmed with coloured silk from an old blouse. This made the facing for the collar, cuffs and pocket trim.
Later the nursery was sent to Holnicote House at Selworthy and I went with them. I was only there a few months as my mother had a series of heart attacks and I had to go home to look after her and my small brothers. As she recovered slowly, I was re-drafted to work as a clerk in a national insurance office, which had been evacuated from London. I stayed there for the rest of the war.
A quiet war indeed, by a lot of people鈥檚 standards.鈥�

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