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This story has been added by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Cornwall CSV volunteer Linda Clark on behalf of Miss Dorothy M Terry. They both understand the site’s terms and conditions.

Home was Putney, SW London and I was just 21 when war was declared on Sunday morning September 3rd. There was an air raid warning almost immediately. Having had a dramatic journey home from Switzerland, cutting our holiday short, the previous week, we were on one of the last cross channel ferries. My fathers’ school was evacuated to Woking. One sister was a house surgeon at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London and the other was teaching in Essex. My own Domestic Science College was evacuated from London to Torquay, it was my third year, and my mother and grandmother went to friends in Taunton.

I started teaching in September 1940 at a school near Hampton Court and due to the ‘Phoney’ war, mother was back in Putney and we were at home. Mother and I had been shopping and as we returned we saw the red glow in the sky in the East. The bombing had begun and by Christmas our home was still standing although it was not habitable. I used to cycle from Hampton to Woking for weekends and many times during the Battle of Britain Air Raids I had to jump off my bicycle and go into the roadside hedge.

Staff had to fire watch one night in three. During the air raids the pupils were all moved into the school corridors. I found the floor very useful for cutting out garments if it was a needlework lesson!

By Easter 1941 I was teaching in Sidmouth and I joined the St John Ambulance Brigade. When I had to register I wanted to join the WRENS but was told to stay teaching. There were food allowances and clothing coupons for teaching. Mothers’ choice for their daughters was nightgowns. We bought blue and yellow cotton and Tussore silk redundant parachute panels off coupons and made garments from them. (I still have one blue nightdress). We used cards of stranded cotton to knit vests and pants and drew a brown line up the back of our legs, pretending we were wearing stockings. I was able to persuade the Headmaster to let me stay in the cookery room when the Air Raid Siren sounded, unless bombs actually went off, because food was too precious to waste by turning off the gas. In April and May 1942 the school was turned into a Rest Centre after the Exeter and the Plymouth Blitz. On both occasions I was responsible, with the help of some junior S.J.A.B girls, for catering for between 30 and 40 people. We had no large scale equipment but a scoured out copper was good for cooking green vegetables and a small zinc bath was used for potatoes with a wooden rolling pin for mashing them. We were supplied with a sack of porridge oats and large tins of corned beef. A new zinc bucket inside a zinc bath made a good porringer, cooking slowly overnight on the equivalent of a Cornish Range. I could write a recipe book on the uses of Corned Beef. Food was given by local people and somehow we managed. I was also taking evening classes on War Time Cooking — Wooton Pie, Cornish Pasties made with potato pastry and Marzipan lcing with semolina, dried egg and almond essence. Batter made with dried egg and carrot cake isn’t new and we constantly made use of nettles and blackberries and we picked rose hips for syrup.

I spent the rest of the war in Ramsey in Huntingdonshire which was almost one large airfield. We used to count the Lancaster bombers going out from the nearby aerodrome and then waited to go to sleep until we had counted them back. The school had army cadets for the older boys, Junior WAAF for the older girls and Scouts and Guides for the juniors. I was the first Girl Guide Captain and I can remember D Day as if it was yesterday. After assembly one morning whilst I was sitting at the Grand piano the Headmaster came onto the platform and announced that the invasion of France had begun. He turned to me and said ‘The National Anthem please Miss Terry’, after which he walked out. He had been in World War 1 and knew the loss of life that was about to take place. VE Day and VJ Day are both just as clear a memory.

Food rationing went on long after the end of the war and more foods were included, bread became rationed. I had moved to Colchester where the High School was on two sites with three hundred girls in each and a canteen in each. In those days the Domestic Science Teacher was responsible for the school dinners. I could only have sausages for one canteen a week so they alternated. Carrs Biscuits would only let me have a tin of chocolate biscuits if I had bought a tin of cheese biscuits as well. Thankfully the School Meals Service came in whilst I was there. I had been teaching for almost 10 years before all clothing and food rationing ended. The School Meals Service meant I could then concentrate on teaching.

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