大象传媒

In 1939 when World War 2 broke out I was just 17 years old. There were a lot of people out of work at the time but I had a job in a factory working 48 hours a week for 10 shillings and 3 pence which in our money today is 51 pence.
As soon as war was declared all factories were put on ammunitions. We had to have identification cards and carry gas masks wherever you went. All food was rationed and we were all given a coupons book. We had coupons for sweets, clothing and petrol if you were allowed them. Shops soon became empty. The shopkeeper used to keep everything under the counter and only the regular customers got what they had. Everybody with a bit of garden began to grow their own vegetables. Fruit was very short and we could wait for 2 hours outside a greengrocers just for 2 bananas, 1 egg and if you were lucky 1 leek. Tinned fruit and salmon was a luxury perhaps 1 tin every six months. But word would soon get around when food of any kind was being sold. Then people just flocked to that shop.
I remember the first lot of incendiery bombs were dropped on Mornington Road the drone of the German plane was really horrible. It came over at 9.30p.m.,a lovely moonlit night,and we just couldn't understand what was happening. These bombs just fell everywhere. But we were ready for them. All our air-raid wardens were out telling us to use our buckets of sand that we had ready or our stirrup pumps. There was a lot of damage to house roofs and such but we soon had things under control. A few weeks later my Dad should have been on duty at the goods depot where he worked but he had changed shift with someone else and was lucky because that night the station was hit with a land mine and it killed all the men on duty.
It was not unusual to walk up a street and see all the windows broken in the houses if there had been an air-raid the night before. But you weren't afraid of anyone getting into your house. We had a land mine two roads away that took two families, nine people altogether. We got very worried because we had factories all around us that made tanks, ammunition and aeroplanes, also a goods station which were the kind of places that Hitler wanted to bomb. The air-raid sirens would warn us up to half an hour before the planes got to us so that women and children could take cover down the air-raid shelter buried in the back garden. We had bunks in there with blankets so that you could sleep down there because sometimes we would be there all night. I remember coming from work at 5.30p.m. and having to go straight down the shelter because the warning had gone and the all clear warning was sounded at 8.30a.m. the next morning, that was the terrible night when they bombed Coventry.
There were a lot of children evacuated to the countryside for the duration of the war. Some children were very happy but there were some that just wished that the war would end because they missed there Mums so much.
I got married during the war but couldn't have any flowers because it was not allowed to grow them. There was no wedding cake but all our friends gave us enough bits and pieces to put on a lovely spread. I remember my Mother-in-law entertaining the wounded soldiers on Saturday nights. People would donate little bits of food to give to them and my Brother-in-law would play his accordian for them and they had a good sing song.

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