大象传媒

We were a big family with loads of aunts and uncles and cousins, we wanted to live or die with them, what good would our life have been without each other!

So we kids amused ourselves, we had great games in the air-raid shelters with our
cousins and all the other kids in our street, no one minded. We were enjoying our new found freedom.

We were told to dig for victory, Bill and I did our bit for the war effort. Bill grew turnips and I grew radishes they were both like rubber and riddled with maggots and slugs. But others had better success than we did. Every bit of unused ground was dug up and food was grown on it. Everything went on ration food, clothes, coal , milk, meat, sugar, tea, and some things disappeared from the shops completely. We never saw a banana or orange until the war was over. Our rations were meagre but fed us, they kept body and soul together. Some poor people had never eaten so well. For many of the poorer families rationing introduced more protein and vitamins. School dinners were introduced during the war, so that school children could have the best possible main meal of the day at lunch time. This would be a great help to their mothers, who were out working long hours for the war effort, in the ammunition factories. Our rations were meagre but fed us;

8oz sugar every 4 weeks
8oz fat every 4 weeks only 2 oz could be butter the other 6 oz was lard for cooking purposes.
2oz cheese every 4 weeks.
3 pints of milk, sometimes dropping to 2 pints per week.
1 packet dried milk every 4 weeks.
2oz tea every week.
4oz bacon (meat was rationed by price) 1/2d per head, the 2d had to be spent on corned beef.
1 egg in it鈥檚 shell per month per person.

There was always plenty of vegetables. People who had been blessed with green fingers grew them in their gardens. We ate lots of home grown fruit and veg and very little meat, fat and sugar. The kind of diet doctors would like us to have today. High fibre, low sugar, low fat.

Our bread was grey and stodgy but we didn鈥檛 mind, it filled us up. It was called the 鈥淣ational Loaf鈥� . We were allowed 2 big loafs a week for an adult and one smaller loaf for each child. Rationing lasted for 14 years, it started in January 1940 and finally finished in 1953. Even our sweets were on coupons you needed 2Es or 4Ds for a quarter of sweets. These coupons were cut out of your ration book by the shop owner. You were only allowed 12 oz of sweets every 4 weeks. We bought 2 oz at a time.
Life carried on as usual for a while but things were changing. The phoney war was now becoming a real war. We were now having air-raids day and night and we spent a lot of time in the shelters. Because we had to sleep in the shelters ground rules had to be made. No one was to come into the shelter drunk, all adults had to go outside to urinate, people were asked not to belch or pass wind because it was bad for the children. If anyone kept on offending a voice somewhere down the other end of the shelter would shout out 鈥淚s that pig in again鈥�? It made Bill and I giggle.

Hitler and his storm-troopers were now marching all over Europe and occupying most of the Continent. Everything was in short supply, it was utter chaos. The Germans had reached the Channel Island of Guernsey. Everything pointed to Hitler winning the war and we were expecting to be invaded at any time. Or be gassed. We were not allowed to stray far from our house so mum could find us at a moments notice, should things start moving.

But! Hitler first wanted to break Britain鈥檚 spirit, he wanted to smash London to smithereens. We were now expecting what the Germans called the 鈥淏litzenburge鈥� the Blitz on London.

The children were quickly sent away again, mostly to their former billets. Some would not go away again. Bill and I stayed in London with mum. It wasn鈥檛 long before German Messarsmitts and Luftwaffe bombers were flying over our heads and bombs were raining down on us.

The young children who were not sent away cried themselves into unconscious sleep in the shelters, we older children just hung to our mum. We were frightened and worn out from night after night of the wailing sirens, the droning of the bombers and the exploding of the bombs.

As the bombs dropped and rocked our shelter, the babies cried while others just whimpered. Some neighbours came into the shelter moaning 鈥淣ot another bloody air-raid鈥�, while others came in with their hair in curlers and dressed in their nighties carrying a thermos flask of hot sweet tea and a carrier bag with all their worldly goods inside.
( authors note; carrier bags were not the plastic supermarket type of 2005 but made of other material including paper).

Some people tried to sleep, while others snored their heads off. The shelters were packed every night. It seemed odd to us kids sleeping with all these strangers. But we all tried to cheer each other up with jokes about the Germans, The Fatherland, The Master Race.

When the All-Clear sounded the weary people picked up their kids, their bed clothes and their bits and pieces and went back to their homes: that鈥檚 if they still had one, well at least 鈥渨e鈥� had survived another night.

The Blitz: 28 days of savage destruction. From the 7th of September 1940 to the 5th of October 1940 ton upon ton of bombs were dropped on London.

We could hardly come out of our shelters. We had no food, no sleep, and no clean clothes. Bombs were dropping on London day and night. In that month 7000 people were killed and 9000 injured and countless thousands homeless.

When the people eventually came out of their shelters they saw their homes had gone, everything they knew and recognised had gone, they had nowhere to go. They just walked aimlessly about looking for relatives, friends and pets, till the ARP Wardens took them to Red-Cross centres where the Red 鈥擟ross and the WVS looked after them and made them a nice cup of tea and sent them to a rehabilitation centres. Tea in those days was the nectar of the gods. People would use any excuse to have a cup of tea. I still do.

On another night, 100,000 high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs were dropped on the London Docks and the City from 500 planes flying low and following the Thames water line. In another all night raid on the docklands, thousands were killed. These sort of raids went on all the time.

London was an inferno, most of the water mains had been ruptured and at one time the EWS had run out and water had to be taken straight from the Thames. Which meant at times there was no water if the tide was low.

Smaller raids went on all the time and at times you didn鈥檛 know if it was bombs or gas mains blowing up. It was the utter chaos of it all. One of the worse, was, always being dirty, never being able to wash, always having grit in my hair from the falling debris and how everything smelt of smoke. Most of the time we were without water and gas. Hot water was a luxury. We couldn鈥檛 even put the kettle for a cup of tea let alone have a wash at times as there was no water or gas.

I was always very concerned for my family and if the bombs had been dropped in their area, after the raid I would cycle down to them to see if they were okay. I hated the thought of them getting hurt. I couldn鈥檛 stand it. As I cycled to where my aunties and cousins lived I saw bombed out injured people walking the streets in a daze, bleeding , crying, and clutching their grimy, injured little children. Or crying children looking for their injured parents. People and animals were lying dead in the streets. It was terrible especially if you knew them. You would look at them and not believe what you were seeing!

This story was submitted to the Peoples war site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Rose McNamara - Wright, and has been added to the site with her permission.. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions鈥�

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