大象传媒

When the war started I was three years old; living in Morpeth with my parents. I remember clearly the day that war was declared; I vividly remember my Mum carrying me upstairs where everyone was listening to the radio. Everyone thought they would be killed before the war ended.

At school we had only female teachers, because all the men had gone away to war. School was very strict; teachers would walk up and down the aisles to check if everyone was working and they would punish anyone caught messing around. At school there were air raid practices, just like the fire drills of today. We used to call them 鈥楳oaning Minnies鈥� because of the sound they used to make. We had our gas masks strapped around our shoulders and we used to have to put them on when the siren rang out. If the air raid sounded while we were in school we were not allowed to leave until it was safe. If the air raid sounded when we were at home we had to stay there and not leave the house. In our kitchen there was a steel construction. The top was at least one inch thick with wire around the outside. This was our air raid shelter in our home. People slept inside their air raid shelters when the air raids were on so that if the house was bombed no-one would get hurt.

We were lucky, our house was never bombed but there were houses further down the street which were hit and a number of my school friends鈥� houses were bombed. On average there were 42 students in each class鈥o you can imagine the number of people who were affected. People lost everything. They had no clothes, no food but there was a great deal of community spirit, with people gathering around to offer help to those who needed it.

I wasn鈥檛 evacuated but evacuees were sent to our area. Nowadays we are all used to variations in regional accents but in those days it was really strange for us to hear accents from different parts of the country. We weren鈥檛 used to accents other than our own. We made good friends but when the war was over people lost touch.

I had lots of good friends. I remember the father of one of my friends was in the Merchant Navy. One day he came into class clutching a big bag. The teacher took him to the front of the class where she asked him to open the bag to show the class what he had inside. When he opened the bag it was full of peanuts; no-one had ever seen a peanut before, ever! His father had brought them back from abroad and ever since that day the boy has been called Peanuts. We still call him that today. Even after 60 years!

Rationing:
Throughout and following the war everything was rationed. Families received coupons allowing them to purchase food and clothes. As a family of 3 I believe my family was entitled to 5 rashers of bacon, 6 eggs, 4 ounces of sweets and very little else; this had to last us a full week. Fruit was not available until after the war.
Occasionally, the men who were serving overseas, or in the Merchant Navy, brought fruit back with them and their children would bring it into school to show the class.

Only the rich could afford electricity; most people had gas lamps. Similarly with cars, there were very few on the roads, with only the very rich able to afford to buy them.

There were no beauty products, toothpaste or proper soap. The soap we had was a horrible green colour and felt like sandpaper. It got the dirt off you but it took your skin with it! Even water was rationed. We were only permitted to have 2 baths a week and were never allowed more than 6 inches of water in the tub. We were disciplined and knew never to go over the limit. My parents came into the bathroom with a ruler and a marker and marked the 6 inch line telling me that I should never ever go over that line.

Women didn鈥檛 wear stockings so instead they would get a cup of strong pure tea, wait for it to cool and stain their legs with that. Then they would put a line down the back of their legs using a black marker. Women wore long skirts which came below the knee, so they didn鈥檛 have to stain their legs too much. You couldn鈥檛 buy underwear, so if a plane was shot down the women would use the parachutes to make their own silk underwear!

At school boys had to wear knee length grey socks with elastic bands to keep them up. Unlike today, socks did not have elastic in them. People had only one pair of school shoes which lasted them the entire school year. If your shoes were torn or holed, you had to use cardboard to patch them. We never got any new shoe laces either so we used to dye string black to look like the real thing.

Silver spectacles, with big silver steel rims, were very popular.

Entertainment:
There were plenty of things to do in the evenings. The cinema was still open, except on Sundays. As there were a number of Army camps in the area, if there was an attack expected, a message would appear on the screen saying 鈥渁ll army personnel to go to your camps鈥� 鈥� almost everyone in the cinema left to prepare for action. There were also musicians, singing and dancing.

There was no TV and only two stations on the radio so we had to make our own amusement but people did go out dancing and local musicians would play their instruments to entertain the crowd. The children would make up songs about the Germans and would sing them when the German planes flew over head.

For our weekend excitement, we went out into the roads and streets and looked at the holes where the bombs had hit. As boys, it seemed exciting to us to see what had been hit and what was still standing. We used to meet up under a gas lamp because there was no electricity. The only problem was that if a bomb hit the gas lamp it would have made a massive explosion!

Realities of War:
My Grandfather lived in Pigdin on a farm. An Aeroplane crashed there during the last year of the war, killing everybody aboard I remember the Air Force Ambulance coming to collect the dead bodies.

I was 7 years old at the time and it was a horrendous sight. As the ambulance men picked up one body the arm fell off. Horrific experiences such as this never leave you. They stay with you forever.

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