大象传媒

MEMORIES OF MY WARTIME EXPERIENCES

My very early memories were being told of how things were and what happened to my family during the war years, 1939 to 1945.

DAY WAR WAS DECLARED

I can remember being told that on the day war was declared my mother was on holiday with my two older brothers, Tony who would have been just coming up to his 6th birthday and his younger brother, Geoffrey who would have just had his 2nd birthday. They were staying in a caravan at Portishead that belonged to my mother鈥檚 sister, Aunty Mary.

This caravan had a silver aluminium roof and because of this I can remember being told that my mother climbed on to the roof of this caravan and painted it black, she thought that being silver it would be visible from the sky and as such be a target for bombers.

I suppose at that time it seemed a real threat although now you can see the funny side of it.

EARLY TELEVISION

My father鈥檚 brother, my uncle Ron was one of the first people in Malmesbury to have a television set that he had made himself.

Uncle Ron was a bachelor and never married, and lived with my father鈥檚 parents at 121 High Street, Malmesbury, even after these parents had died.

Of course, I wasn鈥檛 born until 1943, which was during the war, but can remember being told that Uncle Ron had built his television before the war started, and as history tells us television transmissions were stopped during the war years so never used during this period.

This first television had a small screen of only 6鈥� square and was in a beautiful walnut cabinet. Again the picture quality wasn鈥檛 very good but I can remember having to sit almost on top of the cabinet to see the flickering picture

After the war when they started transmitting again, of course, Uncle Ron had his television all ready to receive transmissions again. Uncle Ron kept this television for many years, refusing to get a new one as he said it was good enough for him.

COUNTRY WALKS

Another of my memories is centred on one of our family walks that people used to do more than they do now. As we went towards Easton Grey, I can remember seeing a large fenced off enclosure with high watchtowers situated in a clearing in a wood, and was told this had been a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. It was very eerie to see this derelict site and often wondered about the prisoners who had been held there.

Another memory is of my father, as my father was a retained fireman this meant that during the Second World War he was not liable for call up for service in one of the armed services. Fireman came under the category known as a reserved occupation.

My father never talked a great deal about his time fire fighting during the war although I can remember a couple of things he did say.

The first was when the bombing blitz was at its highest and Malmesbury fire engines had been sent to help with a blitz raid on Bristol. My father was up a long turntable ladder trying to put a fire out from over the roof of the buildings when a bomb exploded underneath him. By the time he had managed to get down to ground level he found a lot of his friends and colleagues had been killed by the blast.

The other time mentioned, I am not sure whether it my mother told me and it was confirmed by my father or if my father had told me himself, it was on another or our country walks and this concerned a spitfire that had crashed in a small wood on the outskirts of the town. The plane had caught fire on crashing and by the time my father and the fire brigade had managed to get to the scene it was nothing but a charred wreck.

What stuck in my memory was being told that the fire must have been so intense that there were hardly any charred remains of this pilot left to bury, so they to add weight to the coffin they filled the coffin with stones. Unfortunately that is what is buried, more stones than body. I have never discovered the name of this pilot; I believe he was Royal Air Force, not Luftwaffe.

I think my father must have had some horrendous experiences during his war years, but as with most 鈥榝ighting鈥� people of that period they are very reluctant to speak about their heroic deeds.

GOOD LIVING

I can remember being told that we were better off than some people, because during the war years when nearly all food was on rations, a lot of my mother鈥檚 sister 鈥� Aunty Mary - clients would bring her fresh churned butter, eggs, bacon and occasionally a joint of meat. This was in exchange for Aunty Mary doing some small upholstery jobs that were required on their soft furnishings to enable these clients to keep their upholstery in a reasonable state. At this time fabric used for upholstered furniture was very hard to get and was like most other material strictly on ration, so as with most things during the war, it was a case of make do and mend.

The addition of fresh eggs, bacon or even a joint of meat, cheese etc were always greatly appreciated and were a good supplement to the daily rations that people could have during these war years. I am sure a lot more bartering went on at this period in time.

In addition to the extra food we as a family managed to get my Aunty Mary also had a store larder full of home made jams and pickles.

I can remember helping her make jam, I thought myself very privileged being asked to help. You had to wash the fruit fully to make sure they were perfectly clean. You then had to prepare the fruit for jam making, i.e. gooseberries needing topping and tailing, strawberries need to have the stem taken off, the same applied to raspberries not to mention black and redcurrants. You then had to make sure that all the required fruit was in a good condition to use. and depending on the amount of fruit you would add the required amount of sugar. All this was put into a special large preserving metal saucepan, and put on the gas stove to bring the fruit and sugar to boiling point; you had to keep stirring it so as it didn鈥檛 burn or stick.

When it started to boil you used a wooded spoon to spoon out a little bit of the jam on to a saucer, to test the consistency and setting properties.

When it was ready this was taken off the cooker you then started to fill the any old preserve jars - these were used every year after being fully washed, boiled and heated - to the very top, to allow for settling as they started to cool you really had to almost overfill the jars, after cooling down you then added a small piece of greaseproof paper to the top of the fruit and fitted a larger piece that covered the top completely and this was secured with an elastic band. You would stick a label on the front of the jar to indicate what was in the jar, also date made.

Aunty Mary鈥檚 garden provided a lot of the fruit she used for her baking; she had blackcurrants, redcurrants, raspberries, gooseberries, apples, pears and strawberries.

Apart from the actual jam preserves, Aunty Mary would also preserve other fresh fruit such as Apples and Pears so as these could be made into fruit tarts.

Apart from all the different preserves, Aunty Mary also made lovely fruit tarts. I still love gooseberry tarts. I can remember having to top and tail the gooseberries in readiness for cooking.

As I said Aunty Mary also made her own pickles and chutney. I can remember her making piccalilli and green tomato chutney.

She made Green Tomato Chutney by using the tomatoes left over on the vines at the end of the then growing season and wouldn鈥檛 have ripened enough for salads. You don鈥檛 seem to be able to get green tomato chutney anymore and shop bought pickles, chutney鈥檚 and jams just don鈥檛 taste the same.

CHILDRENS HOUR WIRELESS

I can remember of a winter evening sitting in a lovely cosy front room at tea time and listening to the wireless when Children鈥檚 hour was on. I loved listening to the stories from Toy Town about 鈥楲arry the Lamb鈥� and all the other characters.

There was always a lovely open fire, no central heating in these war years, and I was allowed to use the long handled toasting fork to toast myself crumpets with fresh 鈥榝armhouse鈥� butter for tea

I can also remember sitting and listening to the wireless for the special half hour comedy programmes. Our favourite shows to listen too were The Goons, The Navy Lark, Round the Horn, and Much Binding in the Marsh.

You don鈥檛 seem to get shows like this anymore, especially now we have television. These shows were light-hearted and left you feeling good.

MAKE DO AND MEND

I can remember being told about one of the dresses my paternal grandmother Poole made for me. This grandmother, she was my father鈥檚 mother, was trained as a seamstress at The Royal Court of St James where she worked on making dresses and repairs for the Royal Family.

This particular dress was made from small remnants of royal blue velvet. My grandmother had to make sure that the weave of all the different small pieces went the same way otherwise it would have looked like a patchwork quilt. She also very carefully cut away the nap of the velvet from each edge of all the pieces that needed joining, so as when they were stitched together the whole dress would look as though
it had been cut from one whole piece of fabric

Because I came from a family who knew how to sew, my Paternal Grandmother not to mention my Aunty Mary, during these first years of my live and while material was on ration all my clothes were hand made. I have some very early memories of being measured for cardigans and jumpers that were knitted not to mention my dresses etc. Nothing very much was shop bought especially if it could be made by yourself.

FAMILY HERO

I was given this copy of a certificate that was given to my father during the war because he saved a child鈥檚 life. I am told that he saw a young child fall into a river that ran at the bottom of our garden, at this time we lived at 46 Kings Walk, Malmesbury. On seeing this young child, I have been told this child was only about 3 years old; he didn鈥檛 hesitate but dived into the river. The child couldn鈥檛 swim of course and had started to drown so my father pulled the child out of the river and resuscitated it; hence he was put forward for this award.

I have tried to see if I could find the newspaper report for this incident but without any success.

This is a memory from my husband鈥檚 family side. It relates to an Aunt of my husband, her name was Mary Anne Holbrook, nee Bailey. Mary Ann was the sister to my husband鈥檚 father.

Mary Anne was unfortunately killed on 03rd May 1945 in a road traffic accident. It relates to the war time memories because at the time of this accident Mary Ann had been out to buy some bunting to hang outside her house to welcome her sons home from the war.

Mary Ann and her husband Frank Holbrook ran a small post office at Marksbury, nr Bath.

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